261
My test day post below. I expected better, but I am satisfied. Lower than my practice test scores but that is how the cookie sometimes crumbles. After speaking to 4th years interviewing, the people in my range didn't really fare all that differently than the 270+s. This is of course entirely in the context of STEP2 CK. So from a practical standpoint, this doesn't make too much of a difference. My ego is a bit bruised but that speaks to more how fragile my sense of self is. I really went all in on third year and invested too much of my self esteem into silly numbers. I neglected people in my life, who care about me. I have a lot more important things to fix come fourth year. Onwards.
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Took it today
STEP 1: 247
Rotations- all honors
Average raw score on shelf exams: about 90
Shelf exam percentiles- Ob-gyn- 95th Surgery- 80th (would have done better if I had medicine first) Neurology- 99th Psych- 99th Medicine- 99th Peds- 99th FM: 95th
During year
Ob Gyn- read Beckman's, casefiles, UWISE Questions, U World Questions, NBMEs
Surgery- read Devirgilios twice, U World Surgery, Pestana Audio twice, Pestana book and questions, NBMEs
Neuro- Read Aminoff, case files, firecracker neuro cards, U World, NBMEs
Psych- Read First AID for Psych a couple times, Zanki, U World, NBMEs
Medicine- U World, annotated it into STEPUP2 Medicine supplemented stuff with Goljan Rapid Review, Zanki Medicine, Broencephalon Medicine, NBMEs
Peds- U World, WiWa, Zanki, NBMEs (background was strong enough at this point)
U World- 73% first time through (I blitzkrieg the relevant section near the beginning of rotations and keep reviewing them over and over)
U World 2nd pass- done mostly on my phone in FM rotation (my last rotation) and read all of Goljan's Rapid Review Pathology (this somehow helped me with random **** and contextualizing everything)- 86%
Dedicated Time 3 wks
UWSA1 as a diagnostic- 265
First two weeks
Weaknesses (got 99th on medicine and peds on the diagnostic) were psych, obgyn, and surgery- so redid all obgyn questions slowly and all surgery questions slowly. also reread all of devirgilios- took about 2 weeks (relearned a lot of medicine just doing this too since there is a ton of overlap_
UWSA2- 271
Redid all of WiWa for medicine and peds
2 Days out- To re-familiarize myself with the style NBME 6 and 8 back to back (fried by brain). Scored 267 and like 258 respectively (lot of dumb mistakes on 8, scared me)
1 day out- free 120- 93%. Biostat and ethics review (well worth it)
Exam:
Someone said this earlier and I agree: The questions were similar more similar to the shelf exams than for STEP1. Shelf exams prepare you pretty well and give you a good idea of what it will feel like, particularly the medicine and surgery shelf exams.
The questions were a mix. Some freebies, mostly medium level, and a few ultra vague or ultra specific pain in the ass types. I finished blocks a lot earlier than I did for STEP1. The questions I didn't know tended to be very specific nuances of common conditions rather than random diagnoses. What made me very happy about how I felt, regardless of what my actual score will be, is that I didn't feel regrets about "not studying" certain things during the test. The types of things that stumped me were stuff that I genuinely did not see before or saw before on floors but just couldn't remember specifically enough. It was an extremely fair test. It was way less out of left field compared to STEP1.
Don't neglect learning how to interpret images on floors. Don't neglect just common protocals followed on floors, ideally look up why things are done for the reason they are done. Try to always be curious about pathogenesis of treatments and diseases. Anyway, laid it all on the line. As you can see my practice scores all ranged. I'll get what I get. Certainly an element of luck to it as well."
What do you guys think? I’m a Non-US IMG, planning to apply for IM or Psych (no need for visa).
usmle-score-correlation.blogspot.com
