USMLE Official 2020 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

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What do you guys think about doing the old/retired NBME exam vs Amboss/kaplen when you run out of UWORLD questions?
 
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You guys. It happened: I finished the Zanki Step Deck today, after 1.5 years of grinding. I am 3 days away from completing Zanki Pharmacology and Lolnotacop, putting me at Zanki Step, Zanki Pharm, Lolnotacop, and TurnUp2OMT all completed. There were days when I didn't think this day would come lol. It is so awesome to see 0 suspended, 0 unseen....

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fldoctorgirl said:
You guys. It happened: I finished the Zanki Step Deck today, after 1.5 years of grinding. I am 3 days away from completing Zanki Pharmacology and Lolnotacop, putting me at Zanki Step, Zanki Pharm, Lolnotacop, and TurnUp2OMT all completed. There were days when I didn't think this day would come lol. It is so awesome to see 0 suspended, 0 unseen....

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Let's goooooo. How far out are you from gameday
 
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fldoctorgirl said:
You guys. It happened: I finished the Zanki Step Deck today, after 1.5 years of grinding. I am 3 days away from completing Zanki Pharmacology and Lolnotacop, putting me at Zanki Step, Zanki Pharm, Lolnotacop, and TurnUp2OMT all completed. There were days when I didn't think this day would come lol. It is so awesome to see 0 suspended, 0 unseen....

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Thats fire. Congrats!
 
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Chelsea FC said:
What do you guys think about doing the old/retired NBME exam vs Amboss/kaplen when you run out of UWORLD questions?
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Definitely go for Kaplan if you haven't already. I haven't done many UW questions so I can't really say how they compare, but Kaplan has been great with exposing my weaknesses and teaching me things that weren't in zanki (especially anatomy). I bought Amboss because I heard it's great for Step 2, and have done a couple questions for Step 1 and it's definitely challenging, but still helpful in knowing the little details.
 
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Deecee2DO said:
Kaplan all the way. Amboss too difficult (teaches you to overthink) and NBMEs have little for you to learn from (no explanations). My personal opinion
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They said they are releasing a bunch of the old ones free with explanations (the quality of said explanations is up in the air.)
 
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fldoctorgirl said:
You guys. It happened: I finished the Zanki Step Deck today, after 1.5 years of grinding. I am 3 days away from completing Zanki Pharmacology and Lolnotacop, putting me at Zanki Step, Zanki Pharm, Lolnotacop, and TurnUp2OMT all completed. There were days when I didn't think this day would come lol. It is so awesome to see 0 suspended, 0 unseen....

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Damn that’s impressive. I’ve only matured 40% and seen 50% and I’m a little under 3 months away
 
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fldoctorgirl said:
You guys. It happened: I finished the Zanki Step Deck today, after 1.5 years of grinding. I am 3 days away from completing Zanki Pharmacology and Lolnotacop, putting me at Zanki Step, Zanki Pharm, Lolnotacop, and TurnUp2OMT all completed. There were days when I didn't think this day would come lol. It is so awesome to see 0 suspended, 0 unseen....

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Yessss all that hard work has paid off!! Super pumped for you! I have maybe 800 left in Zanki and 300 left in Zanki Pharm and should be on track to finish near the end of April, but can finally taste it. Did you feel it was worth it to finish all of TurnUp2OMT?
 

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I know this is the Step thread but quick COMLEX question for my fellow bone wizards: does your school make you take a COMSAE? If so, when is yours and what is their cutoff? I know the COMSAEs were brutal last year and the trend seemed to be that they vastly under predicted most people on the real thing.
 
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GoCards05 said:
I know this is the Step thread but quick COMLEX question for my fellow bone wizards: does your school make you take a COMSAE? If so, when is yours and what is their cutoff? I know the COMSAEs were brutal last year and the trend seemed to be that they vastly under predicted most people on the real thing.
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Ours was supposed to be on May 12. Pass is 450. I have no idea how they gonna do it now with covid-19. It's probably gonna be online.
 
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GoCards05 said:
I know this is the Step thread but quick COMLEX question for my fellow bone wizards: does your school make you take a COMSAE? If so, when is yours and what is their cutoff? I know the COMSAEs were brutal last year and the trend seemed to be that they vastly under predicted most people on the real thing.
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So basically my buddy whos a third year was so underpredicted he freaked the heck out lol. To put it simply he got a 400 something on our school administered COMSAE 5 weeks out and got like 600 something on the real deal and 242 Step 1. Another one of my buddies also same thing happened to him. Way underpredicts
 
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DrStephenStrange said:
Ours was supposed to be on May 12. Pass is 450. I have no idea how they gonna do it now with covid-19. It's probably gonna be online.
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Gotcha. Our cutoff is 450 as well and we were supposed to take it March 20th but they had us take ours online at home this past week instead. I ended up getting in the 530s on 102 which surprised me since I know how awful they were last year and I was just hoping to get above the cutoff so I wouldn't have to take another one in May during dedicated. OMM was by far my lowest subject though LOL.
 
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Deecee2DO said:
So basically my buddy whos a third year was so underpredicted he freaked the heck out lol. To put it simply he got a 400 something on our school administered COMSAE 5 weeks out and got like 600 something on the real deal and 242 Step 1. Another one of my buddies also same thing happened to him. Way underpredicts
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That's good to know! It definitely seems like that was the trend on the COMLEX thread from last year and most ended up scoring 50-100 points higher on the real thing if not more. I'm not trying for anything crazy here, I'll be content just passing COMLEX as long as I'm happy with my Step score.
 
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GoCards05 said:
That's good to know! It definitely seems like that was the trend on the COMLEX thread from last year and most ended up scoring 50-100 points higher on the real thing if not more. I'm not trying for anything crazy here, I'll be content just passing COMLEX as long as I'm happy with my Step score.
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Lol same Im completely content with just passing comlex but realistically if youre shooting for a high Step score which it seems most are in here considering the absurd work ethic oozing from this thread we should all statistically do well on comlex
 
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Deecee2DO said:
Lol same Im completely content with just passing comlex but realistically if youre shooting for a high Step score which it seems most are in here considering the absurd work ethic oozing from this thread we should all statistically do well on comlex
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That's what I'm hoping for and it seems like that's what tends to happen. Sounds like the blueprint is go hard for Step with UFAPS + Zanki/B&B/insert other question banks here and then cram OMM for a few days. The nightmare scenario is doing well on Step but then failing COMLEX which I guess has happened before so I am definitely trying to not be that person haha
 
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GoCards05 said:
That's what I'm hoping for and it seems like that's what tends to happen. Sounds like the blueprint is go hard for Step with UFAPS + Zanki/B&B/insert other question banks here and then cram OMM for a few days. The nightmare scenario is doing well on Step but then failing COMLEX which I guess has happened before so I am definitely trying to not be that person haha
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Lol oh yeah me neither. We got this bro!
 
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Deecee2DO said:
Lol same Im completely content with just passing comlex but realistically if youre shooting for a high Step score which it seems most are in here considering the absurd work ethic oozing from this thread we should all statistically do well on comlex
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I think all of us in here will be fine. I’ve got a 10 day average on U world of 67% or so and I’m fairly consistently scoring 10-15 and up to 25% above average on COMBANK. I remember seeing some of you guys having very similar Uworld percentages, so I’m sure we’re sitting in similar spots.

The school is making us take another 3 or so practice COMLEX exams and asked us to take an extra nbome practice that’s optional. I’m gonna take the exams they want me to take, give it what I got, and not worry. Some of my classmates have just recently started studying. One of them told me he hasn’t started yet and he knows he’ll start when the time is right. Another hasn’t done a single practice question yet. It’s scary how some people are putting it off.
 
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Steve_Zissou said:
I think all of us in here will be fine. I’ve got a 10 day average on U world of 67% or so and I’m fairly consistently scoring 10-15 and up to 25% above average on COMBANK. I remember seeing some of you guys having very similar Uworld percentages, so I’m sure we’re sitting in similar spots.

The school is making us take another 3 or so practice COMLEX exams and asked us to take an extra nbome practice that’s optional. I’m gonna take the exams they want me to take, give it what I got, and not worry. Some of my classmates have just recently started studying. One of them told me he hasn’t started yet and he knows he’ll start when the time is right. Another hasn’t done a single practice question yet. It’s scary how some people are putting it off.
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Yeah we gooodd. Those are solid percentages. Yeah Idk how some people do that, if I just started studying now I'd be buggin. There are some people that aren't human like my roommates cousin who studied for like 3 weeks (apparently) did half of UW scored a 260 and matched EM at USC in CA lmao
 
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iforget2 said:
Yessss all that hard work has paid off!! Super pumped for you! I have maybe 800 left in Zanki and 300 left in Zanki Pharm and should be on track to finish near the end of April, but can finally taste it. Did you feel it was worth it to finish all of TurnUp2OMT?
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Honestly? I did it because it's only like a little over 1,000 cards and I knew I could knock it out quickly by doing only 20 news/day. OMM is a weaker point for me as I'm not a good visual person-- one of the reasons I know I'm not meant for a surgical field lol-- so I figured it couldn't hurt. I have not done any specific OMM questions or anything like that so I have no idea how it will pay off. I would say do it if you have some extra time but probably not a high priority, especially if you don't really care how well you do on COMLEX.

GoCards05 said:
I know this is the Step thread but quick COMLEX question for my fellow bone wizards: does your school make you take a COMSAE? If so, when is yours and what is their cutoff? I know the COMSAEs were brutal last year and the trend seemed to be that they vastly under predicted most people on the real thing.
Click to expand...
We were supposed to have a required "mock COMLEX" at the end of May, which I'm assuming is a COMSAE? They didn't really give us any info except for putting it on our calendars. I'm assuming it'll be moved to online at home now....not exactly looking forward to taking an 8 hour exam at home lol.
 
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fldoctorgirl said:
We were supposed to have a required "mock COMLEX" at the end of May, which I'm assuming is a COMSAE? They didn't really give us any info except for putting it on our calendars. I'm assuming it'll be moved to online at home now....not exactly looking forward to taking an 8 hour exam at home lol.
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Yeah the COMSAEs are the NBME equivalents for COMLEX. Our school had us take one this past week and we had to get at least a 450 to sit for the real thing or take it again in a couple months. The COMSAEs are only 200 questions like the NBMEs.
 
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Low 180s to Mid 220s in 1 month (avg. med. student, no Anki)

Hello Everyone.
Long time Lurker US MD student here; Just wanted to share my experience after getting my result back last Wed. mA

Took AMBOSS self assessment last month, about 1.5 weeks before my actual Step 1 exam, to gauge my preparation status during dedicated. I've used AMBOSS through most of my M1 and M2 years, before most people paid any serious attention to it as a resource, mostly because of the hard Qbank.

Got my actual Step 1 exam back (mid 220s) and it was 2 points lower, which I was very happy with, Alhm. It was also ~9 points above my latest NBME 21.

To be frank, I completely failed the UWSA2 couple weeks before my exam (got low 180s), which was heartbreaking. But I reassessed my study plan and reviewed all my notes again. Hope this helps other average medical students like myself, which is probably the bulk of most test takers.
 
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HopeImakeit said:
What is/was your guys approach towards behavioral sciences + biostats? Do you believe FA Uw & BnB are enough?
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I did all of B&B for behavioral sciences and annotated FA as I went through. That’s gotten me the majority of the questions right.

For bio stats, I did the zanki cards with FA open in front of me so I could reference formulas and try to conceptualize them. I watched B&B videos if I felt I needed them. This has worked out less well as I’m still having a hard time memorizing odds ratio, risk ratio, relative risk, etc and applying them to the long-ass stems.
 
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Steve_Zissou said:
I did all of B&B for behavioral sciences and annotated FA as I went through. That’s gotten me the majority of the questions right.

For bio stats, I did the zanki cards with FA open in front of me so I could reference formulas and try to conceptualize them. I watched B&B videos if I felt I needed them. This has worked out less well as I’m still having a hard time memorizing odds ratio, risk ratio, relative risk, etc and applying them to the long-ass stems.
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Dude amen. I am getting wrecked by OR and RR and all those terms (that one page on FA is a nightmare you know which one I'm talking about lmao)
 
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Deecee2DO said:
Dude amen. I am getting wrecked by OR and RR and all those terms (that one page on FA is a nightmare you know which one I'm talking about lmao)
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I feel like that section is explained poorly in FA, yet B&B explains it really thoroughly but takes forever. I’m just gonna keep doing the Anki cards and looking at that 2x2 chart and hope it sinks in. If not, I’ll worry about it later.
 
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Hey everyone, I've been doing Anki cards for about 4 months now and recently I'm having an issue. I know everyone on here are pros so I'm hoping someone has an answer. 4-5 times now I've woken up to do my Anki cards and there aren't any 'learn' cards available (almost like I didn't do any new cards the day before). Is this part of the algorithm? I'm used to having cards in the learn category every day. Is it possible that this occurs when I'm unsuspending cards? Additionally, I think I'm seeing some of the cards I went through the day before show up as new cards.

I just downloaded load balancer 2 days ago and it happened today; however, it's happened 3-4 times prior to using load balancer.
 
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Does anyone else feels like alot of UWORLD questions are on purpose misleading. i did a question on Legionella, where patient came from a cruise ship. Pissed me off
 
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spdental said:
Hey everyone, I've been doing Anki cards for about 4 months now and recently I'm having an issue. I know everyone on here are pros so I'm hoping someone has an answer. 4-5 times now I've woken up to do my Anki cards and there aren't any 'learn' cards available (almost like I didn't do any new cards the day before). Is this part of the algorithm? I'm used to having cards in the learn category every day. Is it possible that this occurs when I'm unsuspending cards? Additionally, I think I'm seeing some of the cards I went through the day before show up as new cards.

I just downloaded load balancer 2 days ago and it happened today; however, it's happened 3-4 times prior to using load balancer.
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I'm confused. Why would you wake up to cards marked as learn? Those are cards that you are currently seeing for the first time or cards you are re-learning as you go. I wake up, having nothing in learn. Start new cards, they move to learn until I graduate them to the next day. Any cards I re-learn move to learn until they also graduate.
 
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For biostats, this video series came highly recommended. I haven't watched yet but would recommend based on others' feedback:

The biostats section is actually the one section I think Zanki doesn't do too well, as the equations are presented differently than you're supposed to apply them for questions in my experience so far.
 
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fldoctorgirl said:
I'm confused. Why would you wake up to cards marked as learn? Those are cards that you are currently seeing for the first time or cards you are re-learning as you go. I wake up, having nothing in learn. Start new cards, they move to learn until I graduate them to the next day. Any cards I re-learn move to learn until they also graduate.
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Maybe I'm not explaining properly. So I have my LolNotacop deck and my Zanki deck both under a larger 'Anking' deck (see below). I have my 'Anking' deck set at 100 new cards per day, with 50 new coming form Lolnotacop and 50 new from Zanki. When I start my cards for the day they will go through the reviews first, then my 'learning' cards, and then my new cards (below is what I'm referencing based on one of my decks I haven't gone through yet today). My issue comes up because today when I went to go through my Lolnotacop and Zanki decks, the 'Learning' section didn't have any cards in it, despite doing new cards yesterday. Based on what you just said, it seems as if I didn't have any cards to 'graduate' today despite doing new cards in both Lolnotacop deck and Zanki deck yesterday.

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spdental said:
Maybe I'm not explaining properly. So I have my LolNotacop deck and my Zanki deck both under a larger 'Anking' deck (see below). I have my 'Anking' deck set at 100 new cards per day, with 50 new coming form Lolnotacop and 50 new from Zanki. When I start my cards for the day they will go through the reviews first, then my 'learning' cards, and then my new cards (below is what I'm referencing based on one of my decks I haven't gone through yet today). My issue comes up because today when I went to go through my Lolnotacop and Zanki decks, the 'Learning' section didn't have any cards in it, despite doing new cards yesterday. Based on what you just said, it seems as if I didn't have any cards to 'graduate' today despite doing new cards in both Lolnotacop deck and Zanki deck yesterday.

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You shouldn't have any cards in the learning section the day after you finish new cards, though. They become part of the review section.
 
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@spdental for example, here is a deck I haven't done yet for today. I did 50 new cards yesterday, but those aren't part of my 'learn' because I learned them yesterday. They are now part of the 'review' deck. When I do the 50 news for today, they'll move to 'learn' along with any cards I hit 'again' on, and then I'll work through all of those until there are 0 cards to learn and they all become 'review'. Repeat tomorrow. Unless your settings are different, this is what I've always seen for everyone.
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fldoctorgirl said:
@spdental for example, here is a deck I haven't done yet for today. I did 50 new cards yesterday, but those aren't part of my 'learn' because I learned them yesterday. They are now part of the 'review' deck. When I do the 50 news for today, they'll move to 'learn' along with any cards I hit 'again' on, and then I'll work through all of those until there are 0 cards to learn and they all become 'review'. Repeat tomorrow. Unless your settings are different, this is what I've always seen for everyone.
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Weird. Any ideas why I might have some in the learning section before I even start my Anki cards for the day?
 
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spdental said:
Weird. Any ideas why I might have some in the learning section before I even start my Anki cards for the day?
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I would guess it has something to do with your settings for graduating the cards. When you see new cards, do you only see them once?
 
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spdental said:
Yes, unless I mark them for review. This is what my settings look like.

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So I suspect that it's the fact that you're only seeing the new cards once. You're not graduating them, and that's why they're staying in the learn category. For me, when I do news, I see them all and then I go through them all again until I get them all right. That graduates them all and I get the "Congratulations, you've finished this deck for now" message. I think it has to do with your steps, because I think that's the setting that determines when you see the card next. So, since mine are 3 15, it means that when I hit "good" on a new card it moves to the learn pile and then I see it again in 15 minutes. If I see it again in the 15 minutes and I've forgotten it and hit the "again" button, I'll see it in 3 minutes. So on and so forth until I've graduated it to the next interval. Yours is set to 1440, so you're not graduating the cards. I don't think that's an efficient way to use Anki but if it works for you then keep doing it! I doubt there's one perfect way to use the system.
 
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~ 500 questions through Uworld - the yield is incredible. Actually really enjoy this instead of dealing with school stuff. In terms of other Qbanks relative to this, imo Kaplan is the best

beyond that, I think either Rx or Amboss would be ok - I did ~1000 Rx and ~200 Amboss throughout M2 and thought they were both good but I definitely like Kaplan the most
 
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Type2Fiber said:
~ 500 questions through Uworld - the yield is incredible. Actually really enjoy this instead of dealing with school stuff. In terms of other Qbanks relative to this, imo Kaplan is the best

beyond that, I think either Rx or Amboss would be ok - I did ~1000 Rx and ~200 Amboss throughout M2 and thought they were both good but I definitely like Kaplan the most
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Im 500 in as well man and I love it. I was doing so well on these 40 blocks past few days and just got rocked today. Its crazy how one day you can get back to back 80% and then one day boom 45%. such a rollercoaster
 
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Deecee2DO said:
Im 500 in as well man and I love it. I was doing so well on these 40 blocks past few days and just got rocked today. Its crazy how one day you can get back to back 80% and then one day boom 45%. such a rollercoaster
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Same, got a 50% today after a wave of high scores. Feels bad, man.
 
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Sounds like we're all in that UWorld slump together lol. I was riding high after better than expected practice test scores and consecutive 80%+ UWorld blocks and the past two days have been consecutive 50-55% blocks. I feel like I'm getting dumber.
 
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