So if it still says scheduled on the NBME website we're good?
72% is really good. Think I finished around there with a 74% and avging 75% on UW so id imaging youll start out on UW around the same spot which I think is pretty good. Gone are the days of “10% answered correctly”
Nice, thanks for the encouragement!
To renege prior to March, I agree. But when it reaches the point where people are studying 5 months to hear it's delayed (for the 3rd time) only 48 hours beforehand? I don't imagine the deans are going to hear their thousands of MS2s cry "Save Us!" and whisper "No"
As a DO student lol yes i would rather get a numerical score and have to take Step 1 during surgery than take a pass fail step. 2-3 months of hell to match the specialty of my dreams at the program I want vs pass/fail exam and have all my hard work go to **** and be limited to community programs and family medicine? id rather go through hell for a few months of my life 10 times out of 10. I dont go to harvard or hopkins lol if i did then P/F step all the way!
I mean have they actually posted anything more than this little corporate-speak deflection towards "complexity" and "stakeholders"?
I can def see why DO students aiming at competitive matches would be willing to tolerate Hell itself for six months for a numerical score.
I dunno, I appreciate your perspective but don't you go to a top school, and weren't you also someone who didn't really start studying for Step till dedicated? I'd much rather be in this hell for the next few months than have the last 2 years of my life, days of which were hell smashing the space bar, be meaningless. I'm sure anyone, even your "average Joe" who didn't Zanki, wouldn't want to have gone through weeks of dedicated and then be told the exam is going P/F. That's the kind of thing people need to know about at least a year in advance, so they know how much effort to put into their studying. The only people that would advocate for this, just like the only people who advocated for P/F Step in the first place, are people at top schools and people who know they won't do well. This does nothing to solve the problem of the backlog and the NBME would be better off trying to figure out an alternative testing solution than making Step P/F, that doesn't actually address the problem of having to wait months to test.
Pretty sure efle goes to a top 5 medical school. I love the guy hes really helpful with a lot of things on here but I dont agree with wanting Step to be P/F. I would literally cry like a 2 year old if that happened lmao
Noticed that lol. Also noticed the same thing on Reddit, most people are against this except for the few that you could tell were from top schools. NBME and USMLE can stick their heads as far up their butts as they want, but we all know the majority of test takers didn't want P/F Step when it was originally passed, let alone now. There was a reason why you only read articles about it from students at T10 schools.
It doesn't. At all. What would is either contracting with other companies that offer secure test taking, or letting schools administer the exam.
Maybe specialty choice is a better lense than school attended. I can see why a future Ortho or ENT or whatever would brave Hell for a numerical score, whether they're DO or MD. But, much like with medical school admissions, SDN tends to be an echo chamber for the hyper-elite to discuss the most competitive pursuits. Most med students don't depend on a high score enough to warrant suffering what's currently in front of them.
Or they could just do what they're currently planning on doing, which is add Sunday dates and night hours? There's no reason for the measure taken to be so drastic.
I feel this is another cop out argument. I want to do IM, and my top factor in considering where I want to go for residency is location, so I'm targeting a lot of community programs. I'd still be super pissed if this happened. We want to show our merit because we want to get recognized for our hard work, not because we want to go into x speciality. Yeah of course if you're gunning for ortho there may be more pressure to get a higher score, but I think it's such a cop out argument to say that if you want to go into a specialty that's not as competitive you must not care about anything and you'd rather just coast.
Hey man, if that works for your local prometrics, more power to you. Everything within 100 miles of me right now was booked out to late July or August before the 50% cancellations became known. The backlog will only continue to pile up during the limited capacity testing and I don't think adding a day will solve the issue. I also can't imagine overnight testing will be a popular option.
It's very noble that you care enough about displaying your hard work that you'd put youself through 5 months of dedicated, get cancelled on 48 hours beforehand, and shrug it off. But you've got to recognize most med students aiming for their hometown community IM programs would react to that scenario very differently.
We can keep arguing back and forth, but I guess at the end of the day it doesn't matter because nothing we say will make an impact on the decision anyways. All we can do is wait and see. But, I think you're misunderstanding my point: I would be livid if my exam got cancelled at all, whether it was today or 2 days before I'm supposed to test. I would be upset, I would cry, it would crush me. But telling me that I can take it in 3-4 months and have it P/F would not make me feel any better. As mentioned, how would NBME address those who've already tested and would have scores applying with those of us who wouldn't? I mean, you want to provide an option for students to opt into P/F like most universities are doing, power to them.
The point of talking about this stuff isn't to change it, just fodder for good discussion! In other words I like stirred pots.
Lol fair enough, you did admit you love playing devil's advocate 😛
I'm an average joe that wants the second lowest specialty by step score and rather take it in the middle of surgery than P/F
Why?
Remember that open commentary period that was a dead 50-50 split between student submissions favoring score and favoring pass/fail? Pepperidge farms remembers.
I bust my ass there past 2 years with a numeric value in mind. Plus I have regional preferences I wanna get and hope the step will help with that.
Because how do you know it doesn't? I'm in school in the Midwest. I want to go back home, which is South Florida. Not exactly NYC in terms of competitiveness, but not rural Montana either. My Step score is what I hope will open all the doors for me. How do you know I will have the same outcome without it?
No, the random sample surveys they sent out (that I was paid to fill out) never had their results released. But I'm making the point that other kinds of echo chambers also exist where everyone hates what the Step has become. We can write them off as elitists and idiots who couldn't score competitively, but they also have reasons for ignoring your view!
Because having a Pass along with everyone else won't be why you fail to match community PM&R in South Florida. For christs' sake you've still got a 80% match rate with a 20X score where they know you bombed the test. If you're having difficulty getting those interviews you've got bigger problems than a Pass.
This was specifically talking to someone interested in community hospital for a low-score specialty. If you want a 250 because it'll help your match in something like IM or EM and you're aiming high, then I think you fall in the same crowd as the surgical subspecialty people banking on their numbers for their match.
It will be way you wont match PM&R the area the person you love is. Honestly learning medicine is a means to a end for me, it's not some trust for knowledge. A strong step will help me get to that goal better than a Pass
