USMLE Official 2019 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

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libertyyne said:
ok, then either I failed or 5/24 scores arent coming out tomorrow.
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Same, permit still there and I took it the same day. Even if we got our scores early they wouldn't be out until next week anyway because it's a minimum of 3 weeks, scores release on Wednesday, and our exam was on a Friday.

I refuse to piss myself with fear until someone says the permit is gone this coming Sunday.
 
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Me after not going outside for 7 days, subsisting on cans of beans doing 140 UW questions+review/day

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So what is the best thing to do 5 days out? I pretty much have 2-3 full days of studying left... People have said read FA but that is so boring.... would reading Pathoma be better, since it is a little more concise? It is really hard to pick out weaknesses at this point as it is mainly an application problem vs deficient knowledge on a given topic

Would it be better to just power through 1-2k anki cards/day of pathoma/zanki instead of reading?

Besides that I am doing my UW flashcards (takes about 2 hours) and I am going to do Stats/pathoma 1-3 Saturday.
 
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Just took the thing....jeez
Feel like I blacked out or something because I can only remember the mistakes I made that I looked up between breaks.


TLDR: basically what 90% of everyone else says post exam.


I definitely made such simple mistakes I’ll be kicking myself over after having reviewed that flash card/fact 10-15+ times. Other than whatever careless/dumb mistakes I made, I wanna reiterate what @AnatomyGrey12 said. 80% of the mistakes I made, I was going to make no matter how much more I studied. I marked like 5-15 per section which is less than my usual but I was far more uncertain today. Honestly if I had a decent rationale for choosing a vs b, I felt ok but many of my marked weren’t like that. Definitely guessed a decent amount. Maybe they wanted me to apply or extrapolate principles that I didn’t quite connect

Overall it felt like it was similar the free 120 for the first 2 blocks then became super hard after then less hard again. Difficulty is hard to gauge because the exam has a lot of gimmes but the hard questions are way harder than anything I’d experienced before. I would absolutely read that guy Ben Whites explanations for the free 120 - he says a few general test taking principles that are super useful. Had 2 questions that weren’t exact repeats from the free 120 but pretty close.

The exam definitely had tricky questions and distractor traps for classic associations which made me question/overthink things by the end. For example (not the actual question) they would ask something about h pylori and the answer choices would include maltoma or triple therapy but that wasn’t what the question was asking. Stems were pretty short for me with a mix of short 3-4 sentences on average and a few longer ones that rarely ever needed a full read through. Had a full 10-15 mins to review per block not that it was really helpful.


Not really sure what to feel at this point. But I’m already impatient waiting for this stupid score so I can get on with my life. The apathy/dissociation/disappointment is real.
 
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Frogger27 said:
So what is the best thing to do 5 days out? I pretty much have 2-3 full days of studying left... People have said read FA but that is so boring.... would reading Pathoma be better, since it is a little more concise? It is really hard to pick out weaknesses at this point as it is mainly an application problem vs deficient knowledge on a given topic

Would it be better to just power through 1-2k anki cards/day of pathoma/zanki instead of reading?

Besides that I am doing my UW flashcards (takes about 2 hours) and I am going to do Stats/pathoma 1-3 Saturday.
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Yeah I’m basically doing UW incorrects and reading a section of FA hoping to memorize a chunk. Free 120 tomorrow then who knows
 
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kb1900 said:
Stems were pretty short for me with a mix of short 3-4 sentences on average and a few longer ones that rarely ever needed a full read through. Had a full 10-15 mins to review per block not that it was really helpful.
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Crazy--I had so many novel length stems it got to the point I couldn't read all of it in some of them. FAT walls of text.
 
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TheaterOfTheme said:
Crazy--I had so many novel length stems it got to the point I couldn't read all of it in some of them. FAT walls of text.
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Gah I wish I had that. So many question where I was wishing for like 1 more tiny tiny detail instead of having to guess about “the mOsT LiKelY”

Lol @ that autocorrect. Gonna leave it there
 
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SynapticDoctah said:
Taking step 2 in 1.5 weeks but coming back here to tell y’all to trust your practice exams. Loll. Prolly never heard that before. Haha
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This completely is ambiguous to me. Because...which practice tests? A few weeks out from step I was in the 220s-230s then in the last two and a half weeks I scored 254 on UWSA1, 244 on 18, 244 on 21, 236 on 23, and 254 on UWSA2. So that’s a huge range tbh
 
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Drp695 said:
This completely is ambiguous to me. Because...which practice tests? A few weeks out from step I was in the 220s-230s then in the last two and a half weeks I scored 254 on UWSA1, 244 on 18, 244 on 21, 236 on 23, and 254 on UWSA2. So that’s a huge range tbh
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From what I remember from last year, the NBME exams mostly underestimated by a few points, UW1 overestimated by 10-15 points, and UW2 was most predictive. From the people I spoke with, including myself, our UW2 scores were within 2 points of the real test.
 
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SynapticDoctah said:
From what I remember from last year, the NBME exams mostly underestimated by a few points, UW1 overestimated by 10-15 points, and UW2 was most predictive. From the people I spoke with, including myself, our UW2 scores were within 2 points of the real test.
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I will buy you dinner if I get my UWSA2 score. No chance in hell at the rate of stupid mistakes I've counted now.
kb1900 said:
Gah I wish I had that. So many question where I was wishing for like 1 more tiny tiny detail instead of having to guess about “the mOsT LiKelY”

Lol @ that autocorrect. Gonna leave it there
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I mean, it didn't help me hahaha. Who knows...
 
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TheaterOfTheme said:
I will buy you dinner if I get my UWSA2 score. No chance in hell at the rate of stupid mistakes I've counted now.
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I feel the exact same. Except that I can’t remember a damn question for some reason? I straight blacked out for 8 hours


Maybe a blessing in disguise but idk I feel like crap either way
 
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Just finished UW1 Got a 234. By far my highest predicted score. I was averaging a 210 for NBMEs 16-20 so its a wierd feeling seeing this score for me.

I'm 5 days out from my exam. So hopefully this score is predictive of my performance on monday haha.
I plan on taking UW2 on Satarday so well see what happens.
 
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Neopolymath said:
The free 120 is like a breath of fresh air compared to UW.
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Lol this. I missed a handful just because I was trying to make it harder than it was.

Also, anyone know what a “good” score is on this free 120 thing. I’d honestly not even heard of it until like a month ago.
 
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MakeLifeHappen13 said:
UWorld question on PCP then proceed to spend the next half hour watching youtube videos about people high on PCP. That's studying right?
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I had a PCP question yesterday too. It sounds like you have superpowers for a couple hours.

"Went to the bathroom & snorted unknown super-substance"
"Beat up the security guard"
"Took out 4 police officers"
"Feels no pain"

When is this man's Marvel movie?
 
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NecrotizingFasciitis said:
I had a PCP question yesterday too. It sounds like you have superpowers for a couple hours.

"Went to the bathroom& snorted unknown super-substance"
"Beat up the security guard"
"Took out 4 police officers"
"Feels no pain"

When is this man's Marvel movie?
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Bro, the show is called Cops lol.
 
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Anyone looked over the old free 120 questions? Getting desperate looking for things to do and thinking of reading them over given that lots of people have said that a couple Qs from free 120 have popped up on exam
 
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232 on NBME 23. Overall I thought it was a better/more fair test than 20, 21, and 22. It seems as if the new NBMEs test way more on physiology/pathphysiology than straight pathology. It's either that or I notice those questions more because I hate those questions.

Gonna take a small break and then take take 24. Yaayy..... (edit - nvm, not going to take it, not in the mood)
 
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kb1900 said:
I feel the exact same. Except that I can’t remember a damn question for some reason? I straight blacked out for 8 hours


Maybe a blessing in disguise but idk I feel like crap either way
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Yeah same. The week after my test about 8 questions trickled into my head and I learned I had missed about 4 chipshots and had only gotten right 1 of the ones I remembered, and now I legit can't remember anything outside of those. Sometimes I wonder if I actually even took it.
 
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Paris Geller said:
That's what happened to me after the MCAT. I couldn't remember a thing about the test and was slightly concerned that I had blacked out and gotten a 0.
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Maybe it's our body's way of making sure we still like doing this. Like forgetting the pain of childbirth so you don't dislike your child.
 
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Cha boi coming at you post exam

Throwing in a warning for anyone taking their exam soon to not read this if youre bound to be a nervous wreck cuz this isnt what you wanna see



Had a mini panic attack last block and had to concentrate on not passing out but i survived! Still got a bit of lip and fingertip paresthesias but we’re gucci

Alright lemme hit you with it straight. I already know of 5+ slam dunks i missed, so yeah thats fun. Decent amount of embryo and too many novel lab techniques/cell bio qs. Like yo if i wanted to be an embrylogist or a phd wet lab cell biologist id have walked off a short pier by now nbme.

At certain points i felt like i wasted 2yrs studying the wrong things because everything i knew wasnt on there. But im THAT dude thats always pissed off after exams and may tend to over exaggerate because all i can think about (obsess about) are the qs i didnt know. The more i calm down the more i realize a decent amount of it was manageable, a lot of mistakes i know i made because i convinced myself they were pulling a UW trying to trick me (but they weren't).

Im probably gonna spend the next month googling questions i got wrong, but idk if i can even think of how to go about phrasing them and typing them into the google search bar without typing out “wtf”

Throw some Fs in the chat
 
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Scrubs101 said:
Im probably gonna spend the next month googling questions i got wrong, but idk if i can even think of how to go about phrasing them and typing them into the google search bar without typing out “wtf”
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Don't do it bro. That ain't worth it for your mental health. Go and do something to forget about all this garbage. It's over.
 
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AnatomyGrey12 said:
Don't do it bro. That ain't worth it for your mental health. Go and do something to forget about all this garbage. It's over.
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Fair point, tbh i dont even remember enough to look up anything atm hopefully it stays that way and doesnt trickle back

Gonna ignore comlex stuff for at least today if not tomorrow as well
 
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Scrubs101 said:
Fair point, tbh i dont even remember enough to look up anything atm hopefully it stays that way and doesnt trickle back

Gonna ignore comlex stuff for at least today if not tomorrow as well
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Honestly I felt the OME OMM videos covered literally everything in my test. You can watch those in 3 hours on 2x speed. Just do that and know a viscerosomatic chart to regurgitate on your scratch paper and you'll be golden.
 
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AnatomyGrey12 said:
Honestly I felt the OME OMM videos covered literally everything in my test. You can watch those in 3 hours on 2x speed. Just do that and know a viscerosomatic chart to regurgitate on your scratch paper and you'll be golden.
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Did you do any other studying between or just OMM? Also comquest or combank more similar?
 
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Scrubs101 said:
Fair point, tbh i dont even remember enough to look up anything atm hopefully it stays that way and doesnt trickle back

Gonna ignore comlex stuff for at least today if not tomorrow as well
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100% have the same post exam feels. I questioned everything I spent 6 weeks and 2 years studying and nothing makes sense. But slowly it’s realizing I’m fixating on probably 20-30% of the questions at best.

Some questions are trickling into my head and honestly googling them makes me think they might have been experimental. It’s just not worth it at all. Get through your last exam and kick back a few. All we can do is get in the right headspace to chill before themess that 3rd year will be
 
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Scrubs101 said:
Cha boi coming at you post exam

Throwing in a warning for anyone taking their exam soon to not read this if youre bound to be a nervous wreck cuz this isnt what you wanna see



Had a mini panic attack last block and had to concentrate on not passing out but i survived! Still got a bit of lip and fingertip paresthesias but we’re gucci

Alright lemme hit you with it straight. I already know of 5+ slam dunks i missed, so yeah thats fun. Decent amount of embryo and too many novel lab techniques/cell bio qs. Like yo if i wanted to be an embrylogist or a phd wet lab cell biologist id have walked off a short pier by now nbme.

At certain points i felt like i wasted 2yrs studying the wrong things because everything i knew wasnt on there. But im THAT dude thats always pissed off after exams and may tend to over exaggerate because all i can think about (obsess about) are the qs i didnt know. The more i calm down the more i realize a decent amount of it was manageable, a lot of mistakes i know i made because i convinced myself they were pulling a UW trying to trick me (but they weren't).

Im probably gonna spend the next month googling questions i got wrong, but idk if i can even think of how to go about phrasing them and typing them into the google search bar without typing out “wtf”

Throw some Fs in the chat
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Congrats on being done dawg! Definitely take some time off before studying OMM haha

Any advice on studying this cell bio/lab techniques other than knowing the basic stuf (Blots, PCR, etc) I’m guessing when you say novel techniques there’s not much you can prep for.

Any other last minute advice/words of wisdom for us taking in next couple of days?
 
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Frogger27 said:
Any other last minute advice/words of wisdom for us taking in next couple of days?
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Be as rested as possible.

I felt like the hard ones I couldn't have prepared for, and the ones I could answer, I was thankful for a clear mind.

I think that the way scores will be differentiated is more due to nailing down the easy stuff than it is getting lucky on the hard stuff
 
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Frogger27 said:
Congrats on being done dawg! Definitely take some time off before studying OMM haha

Any advice on studying this cell bio/lab techniques other than knowing the basic stuf (Blots, PCR, etc) I’m guessing when you say novel techniques there’s not much you can prep for.

Any other last minute advice/words of wisdom for us taking in next couple of days?
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Yeah def,

So chapters 1-3 of pathoma are gold and a quick review the day before helped me solidify a decent amount of points alone.

Do a quick review of the sketchies youre weakest on if you can, i missed a couple easy points by just forgetting stuff that is 100% in sketchy.

Agreed with the above, everyone struggles with the hard ones. Knowing the easy one cold will set you up and coming into the exam with a clear mind will set you apart from the rest on the applied knowledge qs.

Little thing regarding rest, melatonin helped me a ton. I felt incredibly well rested and fell asleep at like 10pm last night (i usually stay up till 1-2). For reference two nights ago i was so anxious its took me for ever to fall asleep (no melatonin).

However i will say i had some ridiculously vivid scary dreams and woke up in a sweat several times, but fell back asleep right away every time. So IMO worth it for a being well rested
 
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Scrubs101 said:
Yeah def,

So chapters 1-3 of pathoma are gold and a quick review the day before helped me solidify a decent amount of points alone.

Do a quick review of the sketchies youre weakest on if you can, i missed a couple easy points by just forgetting stuff that is 100% in sketchy.

Agreed with the above, everyone struggles with the hard ones. Knowing the easy one cold will set you up and coming into the exam with a clear mind will set you apart from the rest on the applied knowledge qs.

Little thing regarding rest, melatonin helped me a ton. I felt incredibly well rested and fell asleep at like 10pm last night (i usually stay up till 1-2). For reference two nights ago i was so anxious its took me for ever to fall asleep (no melatonin).

However i will say i had some ridiculously vivid scary dreams and woke up in a sweat several times, but fell back asleep right away every time. So IMO worth it for a being well rested
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Did you give the melatonin a test run at all or just use it last night for the first time??
 
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