USMLE Official 2020 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

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CyrusHabs7695 said:
is UWSA1 known to over-predict because the questions are easier or because the curve is over-generous, anybody know the reasoning?
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I think it's more the curve. I actually had a lower percent correct on UWSA1 than any of my most recent NBMEs yet my score was 10-15 points higher. The curve on the real deal likely falls somewhere between UWSA1 and the NBMEs.
 
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Cath Up said:
Isn't the Tl;dr that he literally made AnKing????? That would do it.
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I mean, the deck itself is 30K cards. The OG Zanki base deck is 17K and lolnotacop is 9K+. So him and his team only contributed 3-4K max. I think he even used the BG deck as a base, which would make his team's contribution even smaller.

Edit: Now that I checked his update logs, he didn't even really add many cards. He mainly just made it streamlined and organized.

I think the real tl;dr here is be a master test taker, lol. He mentioned that at the beginning, like within the first few minutes haha
 
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slowthai said:
I mean, the deck itself is 30K cards. The OG Zanki base deck is 17K and lolnotacop is 9K+. So him and his team only contributed 3-4K max. I think he even used the BG deck as a base, which would make his team's contribution even smaller.

I think the real tl;dr here is be a master test taker, lol. He mentioned that at the beginning, like within the first few minutes haha
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Yeah I just watched a lot of the video and he clearly is a naturally good test taker, but also just phenomenally hard worker. Dude was doing 4 blocks a day in dedicated. I've gotta work on my rookie numbers!
 
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I never did Anki, just did FA & UW really well and would google stuff I wasn't satisfied with. Hearing everyone talk about various anki decks, I'm wondering if its worth downloading anking and just skimming through it to pick up anything thats missing from FA/UW. No idea how long this will take, or if theres even any "extra" stuff in these decks at all. Any advice?
 
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maieutic said:
I never did Anki, just did FA & UW really well and would google stuff I wasn't satisfied with. Hearing everyone talk about various anki decks, I'm wondering if its worth downloading anking and just skimming through it to pick up anything thats missing from FA/UW. No idea how long this will take, or if theres even any "extra" stuff in these decks at all. Any advice?
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Id just do questions instead. Kaplan or Amboss since you did UW already. Is your test soon?
 
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Maybe im getting a little ahead of myself but anyone who is trying to match Uni IM stay off the IM WAMC thread lol Unless you are at a top tier MD program and you have a 270+ step 1 with 20 pubs then better be happy matching only community programs. SDN sucks sometimes lol but this thread makes it worth while #crewlife
 
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Deecee2DO said:
Id just do questions instead. Kaplan or Amboss since you did UW already. Is your test soon?
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No idea when my test will be, prometric is still closed in my country. My best guess is July.

I already blasted through Amboss when Covid first shut down everything.
 
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Deecee2DO said:
Maybe im getting a little ahead of myself but anyone who is trying to match Uni IM stay off the IM WAMC thread lol Unless you are at a top tier MD program and you have a 270+ step 1 with 20 pubs then better be happy matching only community programs. SDN sucks sometimes lol but this thread makes it worth while #crewlife
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Im not at a DO school but ive looked at a bunch of the DO schools match lists in the past and there are a million good university IM matches, literally zero percent chance ALL those people were even 240+ scorers & had publications. Now im sure matching at Hopkins or something is a different story
 
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Deecee2DO said:
Maybe im getting a little ahead of myself but anyone who is trying to match Uni IM stay off the IM WAMC thread lol Unless you are at a top tier MD program and you have a 270+ step 1 with 20 pubs then better be happy matching only community programs. SDN sucks sometimes lol but this thread makes it worth while #crewlife
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every med student in the Internet is somehow 90%ile, it seems

Don’t worry, plenty underdogs out there, I consider myself one!
 
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Deecee2DO said:
Maybe im getting a little ahead of myself but anyone who is trying to match Uni IM stay off the IM WAMC thread lol Unless you are at a top tier MD program and you have a 270+ step 1 with 20 pubs then better be happy matching only community programs. SDN sucks sometimes lol but this thread makes it worth while #crewlife
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Yeah the echo chamber gets a bit old sometimes haha. N=1 but someone from my school this year matched a really good uni IM program with COMLEX only lol. Also, last year we had a match at WashU for IM, not sure what that person's scores were but I can nearly guarantee they weren't insane.
 
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Deecee2DO said:
Dude youre gonna give me nightmares
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haha youre going to end up scoring in the 250s even though you get a mean, median mode question wrong and the usmle test grader is going be like

1590768535915.png
 
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Also, been lurking on Reddit and it seems like the curve for NBME 18 is starting to get crappy like for the other ones, so might not be super accurate as a score predictor anymore? People saying 87% correct was a 242, and 85% was a 236..
 
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fldoctorgirl said:
Also, been lurking on Reddit and it seems like the curve for NBME 18 is starting to get crappy like for the other ones, so might not be super accurate as a score predictor anymore? People saying 87% correct was a 242, and 85% was a 236..
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If this is the case I might not even bother. Was planning on taking it a week before the real thing & don't need this type of confidence destroyer :laugh:
 
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Type2Fiber said:
That was wild. I'm not sure what i expected but it honestly wasn't bad. Felt like 70/30 uwsa/nbme

I'm sure I missed some gimmes, I spent almost 2 minutes remembering what the mode is on my last block, but overall not too bad
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Any tips on what you would've studied more or anything? Congrats on being done bro
 
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fldoctorgirl said:
Also, been lurking on Reddit and it seems like the curve for NBME 18 is starting to get crappy like for the other ones, so might not be super accurate as a score predictor anymore? People saying 87% correct was a 242, and 85% was a 236..
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I took it this morning and got my lowest score ive gotten on any practice test haha I got 67% correct and didnt even break 200. I got a 65% on UWSA1 and got a 230.. Which one is right?!
 
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Type2Fiber said:
That was wild. I'm not sure what i expected but it honestly wasn't bad. Felt like 70/30 uwsa/nbme

I'm sure I missed some gimmes, I spent almost 2 minutes remembering what the mode is on my last block, but overall not too bad
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@CyrusHabs7695 watch me get the same thing on my test
 
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Cranjis McBasketball said:
I took it this morning and got my lowest score ive gotten on any practice test haha I got 67% correct and didnt even break 200. I got a 65% on UWSA1 and got a 230.. Which one is right?!
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Im not 100% sure but id guess somewhere in the middle. Definetely over a 200, prob in the 220s? Not a chance ~70% doesn't get you in the 200s on the real deal
 
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Cranjis McBasketball said:
I took it this morning and got my lowest score ive gotten on any practice test haha I got 67% correct and didnt even break 200. I got a 65% on UWSA1 and got a 230.. Which one is right?!
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Yeaa I was gonna take it tomorrow but maybe not anymore? Was the breakdown for 18 similar to the new exams where you could easily go through the exam and count how many you got wrong, or is it like the old ones where there are a lot of overlaps when you review the different subjects?
 
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CyrusHabs7695 said:
Im not 100% sure but id guess somewhere in the middle. Definetely over a 200, prob in the 220s? Not a chance ~70% doesn't get you in the 200s on the real deal
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Thats my guess too. I mean if Uworld AVERAGE corrects is like 60% id assume it only takes 50ish% to pass otherwise i feel like way more people would fail each year
 
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iforget2 said:
Yeaa I was gonna take it tomorrow but maybe not anymore? Was the breakdown for 18 similar to the new exams where you could easily go through the exam and count how many you got wrong, or is it like the old ones where there are a lot of overlaps when you review the different subjects?
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I just did review incorrects and just kept hitting next and counted it up
 
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fldoctorgirl said:
Also, been lurking on Reddit and it seems like the curve for NBME 18 is starting to get crappy like for the other ones, so might not be super accurate as a score predictor anymore? People saying 87% correct was a 242, and 85% was a 236..
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Thats cray. Ive been hearing same thing. 18 doesnt seem too accurate to me anymore. I heard 22 is actually not bad but still underpredicts but honestly name an NBME that doesnt lol. Regardless we still got UWSA2 which is pretty accurate. What have you heard about free 120? Accurate?
 
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Cranjis McBasketball said:
I took it this morning and got my lowest score ive gotten on any practice test haha I got 67% correct and didnt even break 200. I got a 65% on UWSA1 and got a 230.. Which one is right?!
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Yeah, that definitely can't be right haha. I'm just going to assume it's not that predictive anymore, because those numbers are crazy.
 
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Deecee2DO said:
These are pretty dope scores. Rippin 70s and 80s you gucci
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Thanks fam you're my voice of reason every time I want to lose it haha. I know overall it's good and a lot of people would kill for it but it's just a bit frustrating because I hit in the 80s going up to 87 for a few days in a row and then bounce back down.
Deecee2DO said:
Thats cray. Ive been hearing same thing. 18 doesnt seem too accurate to me anymore. I heard 22 is actually not bad but still underpredicts but honestly name an NBME that doesnt lol. Regardless we still got UWSA2 which is pretty accurate. What have you heard about free 120? Accurate?
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I haven't heard much about the Free 120. Honestly people's opinions are all over the place so I try not to put too much stock into it...a couple of people said Wednesday when they got their scores that 21 and 24 were close but then I saw other people who got in the 220s on those and scored 240+ on the real deal. The NBMEs are just such a crapshoot that I really don't think any of them can be counted on to predictive, just wanted to report on 18 since it's gospel on here that it's been a predictive one but it seems that is no longer the case? I mean I just don't see how it can be predictive with a curve like that. I think the best way to utilize NBMEs is to look at your % correct and see if you're making progress there rather than the 3 digit score.
 
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Deecee2DO said:
Thats cray. Ive been hearing same thing. 18 doesnt seem too accurate to me anymore. I heard 22 is actually not bad but still underpredicts but honestly name an NBME that doesnt lol. Regardless we still got UWSA2 which is pretty accurate. What have you heard about free 120? Accurate?
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For me, free 120 was lower than form 18/UWSA2 and my real deal was closer to those two, about 20 points higher than free 120 estimate i think.

I also kind hated the free 120, there were some weird questions on it imo, and while there was some of that on the real deal, it didnt seem to match my score
 
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SuaveCardigans said:
For me, free 120 was lower than form 18/UWSA2 and my real deal was closer to those two, about 20 points higher than free 120 estimate i think.

I also kind hated the free 120, there were some weird questions on it imo, and while there was some of that on the real deal, it didnt seem to match my score
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Oh wow thanks for input on that! Im hearing 18 has a crazy curve now. Seems like you have to destroy it to get 240+ on 18 like almost 90% correct
 
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Another wave of COMLEX cancellations hit my class. This is just insane. People losing their slots like 10 days before the exam...
 
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Found this comment from 4 years ago regarding the increasingly harsh curve on NBME 18 that I found interesting.

"Reason the curve has gotten steeper is bc literally tens of thousands of people look up these answers on SDN, and the older forms have been out longer, First Aid puts all of these NBME form Q's in the new editions, and I can guarantee a fair amount people are looking up some answers while taking it. Source: i have done this for a couple questions lol. So, the scores are skewed. Ironically the UWorld assesments give you the answers, so of course no one talks about those online, and those percent scores are more realistic IMO. Many people who have taken NBME 19 recently are scoring between 5-20 points higher on real thing."
 
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