Anyone feel like giving me a little prediction for my score? I take my exam in Friday and kind of feel like I should push my test back, but honestly I am so burnt out I want to get it over with.
UWORLD (2nd pass 80% completed with 72% correct)
Did OME through the year
UWSA1 4 weeks out 240
NBME 6 3 weeks out 218 (freaked out by how low it was)
NBME 7 2 weeks out 237
NBME 8 (friday) 256
USAW2 (today) 249
Not sure what to think of my scores and my UWORLD expires today so I also have no idea what else I should study.
SIDE NOTE: I was scoring 225-236 on my practice exams for STEP1 last year and made a 218 on the real deal (although I did have a little panic attack that day) so... my luck is not good.
It's hard to advise you on what to do without knowing what your target score is...
If your goal is simply to pass then I'd say, yes, you are ready and you should take the exam this friday. If your goal is to score 260+ then that is probably unlikely at this time and you need more time to continue improving.
With the exception of NBME 6, you have shown consistency across multiple practice exams with a 10-15 point increase in performance on your two most recent practice tests. You are essentially "peaking" at the right time just a few days before your real test and you want to simply ride that wave of peak performance and confidence into the real test. There is some data that suggests delaying standardized exams too long can actually lower scores because of the burnout effect and redundancy. By the way, I also had a ridiculously low NBME 6 score that was 26 points below my next lowest score for all the rest of my practice tests, so I would just disregard that test. I don't know why the scoring system on that particular exam is so stringent.
Anyway, after hearing past experiences from countless numbers of students it seems as if the two UWORLD self-assessments are the most reliable predictors of the actual real score, FOR THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE. There will obviously be exceptions to this, and on occasion some people end up having a bad test day and bombing the real exam (this is impossible to predict and not very common so lets just not worry about that and keep our thoughts positive lol). It seems as if most people score somewhere close to the average of their two UWORLD Self-Assessment tests, given that they were taken close to the real exam day. So I'd say a reasonable prediction for you is around 245. And given that you broke the 250 barrier on NBME 8 and this was recent, I would predict mid to high 240's.
Please note that this is not an exact science and I am not a prophet or an expert in score prediction lol. I'm simply basing this off of talking to other students at my school and reading experiences of other students on forums for the past couple years. The standard error for Step 2CK is pretty large (I believe they report a 9 point SE), so I would give yourself a +/- 10 point confidence interval. But if you read the information on the USMLE website, they state that with repeat examinations you are expected to score within 1 standard error of your score only 2/3rds of the time! So let's say, hypothetically speaking, you get a 245 on the real Step 2 CK. If you were to repeat the test with a different test form with different questions, then you are expected to score between 236-254 only 2/3rds of the time. This means 33% of the time you could score outside of this range, that's ridiculous!! I'm not trying to scare you or discourage you at all, I'm just trying to demonstrate to you that there is a fair amount of variability for this exam, much more than Step 1. So predicting scores with certainty is difficult.
Nevertheless, the NBME's and the UWORLD assessments are the best tools we have. UWORLD assessments being the most accurate predictors in my opinion. So just believe in yourself, go in there with confidence knowing that you prepared to the best of your abilities, and trust your practice scores. Free your mind of any other nonsense and negative thoughts (including all the crap I wrote in the previous paragraphs lol) that will deter you from the ultimate goal which is to be the best physician you can be and improve the quality of life for your patients. Nothing else really matters at the end of the day. Best of luck!!
Instead it gives me a Start button to begin my application for Step 3. However, under FCVS, it is still blank under "Pass/Fail status" in Examination History.
