USMLE Official 2019 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

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Chibucks15 said:
Just took 17. That curve is damn harsh. 80%-ish is a 211? I mean damn I thought I turned a corner haha 39 days to go...need that 230.

Any advice on heme studying? The cascade and inhibitors and all that just don’t wanna stick in my brain. Also biostats was taught terribly at my school so any resources for that would be helpful also.
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Need biostats as well
 
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For biostats I basically just decided one day to memorize the page in FA. I wrote all the equations out over and over until I got it down. Now before an NBME or UW block I write it all out from memory on my scratch paper before I start and it makes them much easier. Most of them are usually easy points once you know how to set everything up.
 
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AnatomyGrey12 said:
For biostats I basically just decided one day to memorize the page in FA. I wrote all the equations out over and over until I got it down. Now before an NBME or UW block I write it all out from memory on my scratch paper before I start and it makes them much easier. Most of them are usually easy points once you know how to set everything up.
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Nice I might do that. I’m gonna need all the free points I can get so ethics and biostats need to be huge on the June 17th exam
 
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Chibucks15 said:
Just took 17. That curve is damn harsh. 80%-ish is a 211? I mean damn I thought I turned a corner haha 39 days to go...need that 230.

Any advice on heme studying? The cascade and inhibitors and all that just don’t wanna stick in my brain. Also biostats was taught terribly at my school so any resources for that would be helpful
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Sketchy antiplatelet and coagulation videos are actually pretty good for most that cascade if you follow FA diagrams after to connect it all. Boards and beyond also does a good job if I remember right.

Boards and beyond was also great for biostats.
 
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Chibucks15 said:
Just took 17. That curve is damn harsh. 80%-ish is a 211? I mean damn I thought I turned a corner haha 39 days to go...need that 230.

Any advice on heme studying? The cascade and inhibitors and all that just don’t wanna stick in my brain. Also biostats was taught terribly at my school so any resources for that would be helpful
Click to expand...

Edit: libertyyne beat me to the punch with the same vids
You will not get a 'normal' biostats question wrong after watching these videos:

Biostats review: youtu.be/75pQPB1RF50
Biostats extra: youtu.be/VMI9UuNqoGI
 
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Chibucks15 said:
Just took 17. That curve is damn harsh. 80%-ish is a 211? I mean damn I thought I turned a corner haha 39 days to go...need that 230.

Any advice on heme studying? The cascade and inhibitors and all that just don’t wanna stick in my brain. Also biostats was taught terribly at my school so any resources for that would be helpful
Click to expand...

this video and part two for biostats. My biostats UW % is like 98% correct after watching this. Absolute money videos.

Heme has been tough for me, I end up having to rewatch pathoma a few times for that
 
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This might be a dumb question but...is the actual exam font size like what is standard on uworld/nbmes? is text size ajustable like in uw?


I ask becasue when i took the MCAT 2 years ago i legit struggled on the first section with getting used to the size 20 font and had a minipanic attack trying to figure out if the physics words were things i had never heard of or i just forgot how to read well
 
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Took UWSA2 2 weeks ago and got a 249. I'm taking NBME 18 tomorrow and i'll be finished with UWorld on monday but have an entire week to study after that. i have a list of weak spots that i'm gonna study next week but otherwise i've run out of things to do. any advice on how to productively spend the last week?
 
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Haven’t kept up at all with this thread lol. Maaan I’m burning out lol. Exam is on June 17th. Got about 950 questions left in uworld and gearing up for the first uwsa on Monday when dedicated finally begins. Haven’t taken an none. I’ve been totally half ***ing it this week though. Decided to kick back for a day and just chill.

Sure woulda been cool if my school taught more biostatistics than one lecture in first semester by a guy who mostly complained about teaching the lecture.

Or if cardio taught us how to read ekgs.

Or if biochem even kinda tried.

Thank whatever it is you pray to for outside resources. Hope everyone is surviving. Sending good vibes.
 
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Paris Geller said:
How many UW questions per day are people in dedicated doing? I've been trying to do 80 and it seriously takes me forever to review them.
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doing 40 for the first 1/2 or 2/3 of dedicated and ramping up to 80 for the last bit. starting slow and steady and it's been working for me
 
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Paris Geller said:
How many UW questions per day are people in dedicated doing? I've been trying to do 80 and it seriously takes me forever to review them.
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i've done 80-120 questions every day. i set aside 2 and a half hours to go through them. it usually takes 45 mins-50 mins to finish the questions, and a few weeks ago it was taking 2 hours and 30 mins or 2 hours and 45 mins total. now, i'm getting through the questions and reviewing them in about 2 hours. eventually you get to the point where you're reading an explanation about something that you know inside and out cause you've had 5 questions on it already and you can just skip it
 
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Paris Geller said:
How many UW questions per day are people in dedicated doing? I've been trying to do 80 and it seriously takes me forever to review them.
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i do about 80-120 questions a day. I read every question of the explaination and go look up something if i dont know it. Takes about 6ish hours.
 
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The biostats videos were awesome. Thanks, guys! Now if I can just re-learn biochem/cell bio by June 17th I will feel ready. Should I just watch all of BnB for this and do questions? I'm a huge Zanki guy but this is the deck I didn't do because it just seemed absurdly low yield.
 
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Neopolymath said:
The biostats videos were awesome. Thanks, guys! Now if I can just re-learn biochem/cell bio by June 17th I will feel ready. Should I just watch all of BnB for this and do questions? I'm a huge Zanki guy but this is the deck I didn't do because it just seemed absurdly low yield.
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Everything I've seen in the NBME's or UW for biochem was in the BnB vids I watched at the beginning of dedicated
 
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Paris Geller said:
How many UW questions per day are people in dedicated doing? I've been trying to do 80 and it seriously takes me forever to review them.
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I usually do 1 or 2 blocks a day. It definitely took me a long time to review them. 1 block took 4 hours to review at first, but you get faster as you learn how to skim explanations for key facts and also as you miss less. I'm down to about 3 hours now. Just gotta make sure those hours reviewing are efficient and you are gaining knowledge from it.
 
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medicineman1234 said:
Do you card incorrects?
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I have not been consistently. I will sometimes quickly pull up some relavent zanki or light year cards that I put into a u world incorrects deck. I have been putting off making a incorrects deck. I might just spend a day to get it done , but frankly my time is better spent doing more questions and hitting more cards.

Im doing about 1200-1500 reviews a day plus the 2-3 blocks, so it doesnt leave a lot of time for making a deck.
 
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libertyyne said:
I have not been consistently. I will sometimes quickly pull up some relavent zanki or light year cards that I put into a u world incorrects deck. I have been putting off making a incorrects deck. I might just spend a day to get it done , but frankly my time is better spent doing more questions and hitting more cards.

Im doing about 1200-1500 reviews a day plus the 2-3 blocks, so it doesnt leave a lot of time for making a deck.
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I'm at a similar review count it's nasty af.
 
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libertyyne said:
I feel like I'm not doing enough to be completely honest. I also watch 2-4 20 minute episodes of a TV show every day throughout the day.
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keep those in your schedule man, it may just be the last thing keeping you sane haha plus thats minimal time wasting compared to me. I had to go download an app that shuts off everything on my computer besides the board necessities and that still hasnt worked fully at stopping my procrastination lol

zanki is your content
UW is your questions

thats all you need in board studying, if it works best for you it works best for you. I found myself constantly comparing myself to what everyone else was doing and thinking "should i be doing that too??", nah everyone has their way of studying and no one can do everything in every way
 
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Scrubs101 said:
keep those in your schedule man, it may just be the last thing keeping you sane haha plus thats minimal time wasting compared to me. I had to go download an app that shuts off everything on my computer besides the board necessities and that still hasnt worked fully at stopping my procrastination lol

zanki is your content
UW is your questions

thats all you need in board studying, if it works best for you it works best for you. I found myself constantly comparing myself to what everyone else was doing and thinking "should i be doing that too??", nah everyone has their way of studying and no one can do everything in every way
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Thats what makes it so tough. Nobody wants to talk about how their doing (for obvious reasons), so there really isn't a measuring stick like there is for class exams. If you don't do well on one, you adjust and move forward. Here, I don't even know what I don't know haha and everyone is so individualized its hard to gauge progress, except against NBME curves and UW, which everyone uses different
 
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Chibucks15 said:
Thats what makes it so tough. Nobody wants to talk about how their doing (for obvious reasons), so there really isn't a measuring stick like there is for class exams. If you don't do well on one, you adjust and move forward. Here, I don't even know what I don't know haha and everyone is so individualized its hard to gauge progress, except against NBME curves and UW, which everyone uses different
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So much this. That's why I hate talking to people about what I'm doing for boards. Anytime someone asks me I try to shut down the convo pretty quick. Except on here for some reason; it's nice on here.

Whenever I hear people talk about what their doing it makes me second guess what I'm doing & I have to remind myself that it literally doesn't matter b/c there is no way to study for boards incorrectly as long as you are making progress, aren't completely miserable, & are learning the material well in a timely manner.
 
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Neopolymath said:
The biostats videos were awesome. Thanks, guys! Now if I can just re-learn biochem/cell bio by June 17th I will feel ready. Should I just watch all of BnB for this and do questions? I'm a huge Zanki guy but this is the deck I didn't do because it just seemed absurdly low yield.
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I haven’t done an nbme or uwsa. But i can attest that every biochem question I’ve had in uworld is straight from that deck. My schools biochem dept is a joke but maturing that deck has me in the 93rd percentile right now for biochem.


But it hurts
 
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NecrotizingFasciitis said:
So much this. That's why I hate talking to people about what I'm doing for boards. Anytime someone asks me I try to shut down the convo pretty quick. Except on here for some reason; it's nice on here.

Whenever I hear people talk about what their doing it makes me second guess what I'm doing & I have to remind myself that it literally doesn't matter b/c there is no way to study for boards incorrectly as long as you are making progress, aren't completely miserable, & are learning the material well in a timely manner.
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back a few years ago when I took it all the tools in my class would say they are gonna do like 30,000 practice questions and make a 299 on usmle. most of the tool club did not do good. People get weird and anal around board season and for some reason they think one upping everyone else on practice questions makes them cool. Its like, whatever bro
 
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half way through nbme 22. wtf is this so hard??? was a mistake not hammering anatomy before this exam. marking ~20 questions each block.... maybe i sholudnt have done this one as my first lol

also didnt realize that the NBME forms are longer each block and dont have a break built in. i literally have to exit the exam to simulate a break. between the short question stems and lack of explanations, im thoroughly confused why these exams are the best we have other than UWSA1/2.
 
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kb1900 said:
half way through nbme 22. wtf is this so hard??? was a mistake not hammering anatomy before this exam. marking ~20 questions each block.... maybe i sholudnt have done this one as my first lol

also didnt realize that the NBME forms are longer each block and dont have a break built in. i literally have to exit the exam to simulate a break. between the short question stems and lack of explanations, im thoroughly confused why these exams are the best we have other than UWSA1/2.
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yeah, honestly i planned on doing every nbme, but after going through a few I feel like they are not that useful in terms of learning . Probably ok in terms of assessment.
 
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NecrotizingFasciitis said:
So much this. That's why I hate talking to people about what I'm doing for boards. Anytime someone asks me I try to shut down the convo pretty quick. Except on here for some reason; it's nice on here.

Whenever I hear people talk about what their doing it makes me second guess what I'm doing & I have to remind myself that it literally doesn't matter b/c there is no way to study for boards incorrectly as long as you are making progress, aren't completely miserable, & are learning the material well in a timely manner.
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**** i am TOTALLY doing something wrong then...
 
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Scrubs101 said:
**** i am TOTALLY doing something wrong then...
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This is totally it. I dont feel miserable or as pressured as some of my class mates who have been freaking out. Oddly at peace with the whole situation. May come and bite me in the behind after I get the results.
NecFasc92 said:
Remember: the nbme is who writes step and the NBMEs are retired actual step questions.

Imo, people think it’s more like Uworld because the formatting is exactly the same and the stems are longer than the NBMEs. But the vagueness of the stems and the answer choices were much more similar to the NBMEs. YMMV
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Was you final score more inline with nbme averages or with uworld % correct and uswa2?
 
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NecFasc92 said:
The latter. My NBMEs were crap. Making silly mistakes on those guys really tanks your score. But, we didn’t have all these new ones: are they just as finicky?
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i havent taken the new ones yet. But i hear some of them are too easy and some of them are too brutal. Would you reccomend taking all of them ? even if you have already done all the old ones?
 
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kb1900 said:
half way through nbme 22. wtf is this so hard??? was a mistake not hammering anatomy before this exam. marking ~20 questions each block.... maybe i sholudnt have done this one as my first lol

also didnt realize that the NBME forms are longer each block and dont have a break built in. i literally have to exit the exam to simulate a break. between the short question stems and lack of explanations, im thoroughly confused why these exams are the best we have other than UWSA1/2.
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Ended up with a 225 on NBME 22 (74% correct).

Have mixed feelings on this being my starting-ish point with 4 weeks to go esp with no data out there. Will probably take uwsa1 next so I don’t get too down

Gotta fix my anatomy and fat metabolism knowledge base. > 15 incorrect between these two subjects
 
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NecFasc92 said:
Remember: the nbme is who writes step and the NBMEs are retired actual step questions.

Imo, people think it’s more like Uworld because the formatting is exactly the same and the stems are longer than the NBMEs. But the vagueness of the stems and the answer choices were much more similar to the NBMEs. YMMV
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I don’t really have an issue with the vagueness of questions or answer choices. I actually thing that’s one of the weaknesses of uworld - there’s excess clues and the answer choice screams out to you. In that sense reflecting on the NBME I thought it was superior. Taking the 2 UW blocks after the NBME was a weird feeling (87% on both but also almost ran outta time after getting used to the short stems)

On the other hand I still maintain that the NBME not providing practice exams that actually simulate the test and no explanations is ridiculous (at $60 each no less...its a racket). Shorter stems etc. just reinforces the fact that these are throwaway/retired questions and thus inherently weren’t good enough for the real thing.
 
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libertyyne said:
the closer the exam approaches the more convinced I am that I have forgotten everything and know nothing
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I resign myself to FM every time I get a question on an NBME that makes me go, "I don't even think this is english." At this point I'll be thrilled with anything over 230 and then move on with my life. The only thing that is comforting is knowing that we are all feeling like crap about it together lol
 
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Wonder what to think about this: got a 246 on NBME 21 last week and a 246 on NBME 20 today. Any idea if that means some sort of improvement or not? Not sure what to make of this - really hoped to improve (obviously) but from what I understand 20 is harder than 21, but I guess that should reflect itself in the curve
 
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