USMLE Official 2020 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

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87, 85, and 80 today. Happy to be making progress and score more consistently in the 80's, but disappointed that it didn't translate too much on NBME 24 this weekend. 2 weeks remaining and needing to finish my cards every day is getting reallyyyy old.
I don’t know how NBME gets their 3 digit score. 80% barely got in the 220s on form 18, so am I supposed to understand you need to get 90%+ of questions right to score a 240+? Ridiculous. I dont understand why everyone touts “trust your NBMEs”
 
I don’t know how NBME gets their 3 digit score. 80% barely got in the 220s on form 18, so am I supposed to understand you need to get 90%+ of questions right to score a 240+? Ridiculous. I dont understand why everyone touts “trust your NBMEs”

Damn the curve is that hard for 18? Kind of scary its the most reliable one then if an 80 doesn't get you a decent score
 
I don’t know how NBME gets their 3 digit score. 80% barely got in the 220s on form 18, so am I supposed to understand you need to get 90%+ of questions right to score a 240+? Ridiculous. I dont understand why everyone touts “trust your NBMEs”
Its 100% completely ridiculous. ll never trust NBMEs lol they suck. Honestly they all underpredict especially the new ones. Trust UWorld % and UWSA 2 is my motto lol
 
School's making us take one COMBANK assessment + a COMSAE. Just finished the COMBANK, not surprisingly "osteopathic principles, practice, and manipulative treatment" was my worst category 😛

Says my score was 94th percentile, but I feel like it's inflated? It felt pretty easy for the most part and it only took me like 2 hours and 15 minutes instead of 4. COMSAE tomorrow.
 
School's making us take one COMBANK assessment + a COMSAE. Just finished the COMBANK, not surprisingly "osteopathic principles, practice, and manipulative treatment" was my worst category 😛

Says my score was 94th percentile, but I feel like it's inflated? It felt pretty easy for the most part and it only took me like 2 hours and 15 minutes instead of 4. COMSAE tomorrow.
Yeah our schools combank felt like just 100% first order recall questions. I had like a 170 point difference between our schools combank test and the comsae haha good luck!
 
I don’t know how NBME gets their 3 digit score. 80% barely got in the 220s on form 18, so am I supposed to understand you need to get 90%+ of questions right to score a 240+? Ridiculous. I dont understand why everyone touts “trust your NBMEs”

91% (I think) correct was 252. I've seen scores go as high as ~280, so you're really differentiating yourself based on about 20-30 questions. I don't know if the real thing is like that but if it is, the ridiculousness of how few questions separates a 220 from a 250 is hard to justify
 
I see what yall mean about the NBME harsh curves..... Went through my worst sections on NBME 15 today and I was scoring 60-70% on them, but on the performance report the bars were as low as possible.........

I get that its a standardized test but still lol, kinda crazy
 
The way they score the real thing is honestly a mystery. I find it hard to believe people getting in the 240s are getting 85 or 90% of the questions correct. I dunno.

On NBME 23/24 I got like a 240/242 and on both was hovering around 82-83% (don't remember exact numbers). Ended up mid-240s on the real thing and my gut feeling afterwards was that I got around that percent correct on it, give or take a few percent.

The other NBME's have curves that are pretty insane and not really accurate IMO.

There are definitely people that the NBME's under predict like 15+ points, but for most people, from my anecdotal observations anyway, people are usually only 3-5ish points above their more recent NBME's. That's why people say trust your scores
 
On NBME 23/24 I got like a 240/242 and on both was hovering around 82-83% (don't remember exact numbers). Ended up mid-240s on the real thing and my gut feeling afterwards was that I got around that percent correct on it, give or take a few percent.

The other NBME's have curves that are pretty insane and not really accurate IMO.

There are definitely people that the NBME's under predict like 15+ points, but for most people, from my anecdotal observations anyway, people are usually only 3-5ish points above their more recent NBME's. That's why people say trust your scores
Interesting thoughts, I haven't taken those 2 yet but I got a 215 on NBME 16 and had 80% correct lol

I've also seen the other hand, though, where people were consistently getting in the low 220s on the NBMEs and then were 240+ on the real thing. I'm trusting the predictor overall for now, which seems to put very little weight to the NBMEs
 
On NBME 23/24 I got like a 240/242 and on both was hovering around 82-83% (don't remember exact numbers). Ended up mid-240s on the real thing and my gut feeling afterwards was that I got around that percent correct on it, give or take a few percent.

The other NBME's have curves that are pretty insane and not really accurate IMO.

There are definitely people that the NBME's under predict like 15+ points, but for most people, from my anecdotal observations anyway, people are usually only 3-5ish points above their more recent NBME's. That's why people say trust your scores

in your experience if you had to pick, would you say to trust your uworld % & uw test 2 scores OR the nbme scores
 
in your experience if you had to pick, would you say to trust your uworld % & uw test 2 scores OR the nbme scores

For me personally based on how my scores went I would say to trust all of it together. Now, this may not be applicable to everyone (and likely isn't), but my real score was almost right in the middle of the average of my new NBME scores and my average of UWSA1/2.

For me the UWSA's over predicted a tad, and the NBME's under predicted a tad. To be fair I still remember the 7 gimme questions (and I mean real gimme questions, like 85%+ on UW type) that I missed. If I would have gotten those I likely would have been right in line with my UWSA predictions.

If you have a drastic difference between your NBME and UWSA performances then I would go with the UWSA numbers, because the real test is almost exactly like a UWSA for the most part.
 
Interesting thoughts, I haven't taken those 2 yet but I got a 215 on NBME 16 and had 80% correct lol

I've also seen the other hand, though, where people were consistently getting in the low 220s on the NBMEs and then were 240+ on the real thing. I'm trusting the predictor overall for now, which seems to put very little weight to the NBMEs
Where are you seeing the percent correct? I've tried to go through 15 but all the questions are divided up by categories with a decent amount of overlap, it would be super tedious to go through count them all, dont really have time for it
 
For me personally based on how my scores went I would say to trust all of it together. Now, this may not be applicable to everyone (and likely isn't), but my real score was almost right in the middle of the average of my new NBME scores and my average of UWSA1/2.

For me the UWSA's over predicted a tad, and the NBME's under predicted a tad. To be fair I still remember the 7 gimme questions (and I mean real gimme questions, like 85%+ on UW type) that I missed. If I would have gotten those I likely would have been right in line with my UWSA predictions.

If you have a drastic difference between your NBME and UWSA performances then I would go with the UWSA numbers, because the real test is almost exactly like a UWSA for the most part.
A few things:
1) Did you do zanki?
2) Do you recommend taking 22 or 23?
 
Where are you seeing the percent correct? I've tried to go through 15 but all the questions are divided up by categories with a decent amount of overlap, it would be super tedious to go through count them all, dont really have time for it
I counted them all lol, it was a bit tedious but I really wanted to know because the score seemed really low to me and I know the curves are dumb.
 
Took step 1 this past Saturday, so my score's pending obviously.
A couple of thoughts though:
1) Don't wear a mask that loops behind your ears....it will be very uncomfortable after 4-5 hours.
2) Due to the limited number of seats secondary to social distancing, the check-in at Prometric was uber fast compared to past standardized exams I've taken at Prometric
3) I didn't think the test was quite as hard as Uworld tends to be. But then again, I haven't gotten my results yet.

Good luck guys
 
Took step 1 this past Saturday, so my score's pending obviously.
A couple of thoughts though:
1) Don't wear a mask that loops behind your ears....it will be very uncomfortable after 4-5 hours.
2) Due to the limited number of seats secondary to social distancing, the check-in at Prometric was uber fast compared to past standardized exams I've taken at Prometric
3) I didn't think the test was quite as hard as Uworld tends to be. But then again, I haven't gotten my results yet.

Good luck guys

How did you spread out your break time throughout the exam? And do you just bring lunch and leave it in your locker?
 
How did you spread out your break time throughout the exam? And do you just bring lunch and leave it in your locker?

I didn't take any breaks at all.....I just powered through it. Had Panera for breakfast like 20 minutes prior to starting it and was done at 14:02 exactly. I considered taking a break but 1) didn't need to use restroom and 2) wasn't hungry or tired.
 
I didn't take any breaks at all.....I just powered through it. Had Panera for breakfast like 20 minutes prior to starting it and was done at 14:02 exactly. I considered taking a break but 1) didn't need to use restroom and 2) wasn't hungry or tired.

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Yeah, it's putting me at 672-687 right now which I feel is not at all accurate lol

Yeah the truelearn self assessment is wild, i took the first one weeks ago and it had me scoring in the high 500s (I think like 580?). These in the past have notoriously over predicted. They have included a new score scaling that supposedly is more harsh and accurate which is what the current scores are based off of. I emailed my schools boards advisor about this and she said that the new scaling has over predicted by about 50/60 points or so compared to about 100 points using the old scaling. So, its not ideal, but better I guess. If you are already at ~680 youre gonna be fine haha
 
Also, has anyone taken COMLEX yet? I just took COMSAE 104b and am very happy with my score so I am hoping a real COMLEX is similar to that.
 
Yeah, it was an 18 point jump for me and opp finally went from being absolute trash to low end of average.

549 is a damn solid score, especially if it underpredicts (as I’ve heard).
Yeah I was pumped, It was like a ~100 point jump for me. Granted, I feel like I got many questions I just happened to be very comfortable with so I hope it isnt a huge fluke, I would be very ok with this score on the real deal.
 
72% on the block today. about 5 where I got it down between 2 and picked the wrong one. Realizing that there is a lot of micro not in the Pepper decks so I downloaded the lolnotacop deck. probably cant do the whole think but his BnB section is only 500 cards, can easily do that in a week or two. Maybe that will help.

Mostly I'm just happy that I finally finished my last preclinical class. Gives me an extra few hours every night to do sorely needed content review and additional practice questions.
 
72% on the block today. about 5 where I got it down between 2 and picked the wrong one. Realizing that there is a lot of micro not in the Pepper decks so I downloaded the lolnotacop deck. probably cant do the whole think but his BnB section is only 500 cards, can easily do that in a week or two. Maybe that will help.

Mostly I'm just happy that I finally finished my last preclinical class. Gives me an extra few hours every night to do sorely needed content review and additional practice questions.

the lolnotacop deck is solid af
 
Just got a level 9000 hard af question on bacterial genetics. I really can't name a topic worse than that lmao also didn't even know it was in FA the 2 pages on it are fresh af with zero annotation after a full year of cracking this book. Sounds HY
 
Just got a level 9000 hard af question on bacterial genetics. I really can't name a topic worse than that lmao also didn't even know it was in FA the 2 pages on it are fresh af with zero annotation after a full year of cracking this book. Sounds HY

The one about which antibiotic resistance will be transferred?
 
The HY anatomy deck is like 90% stuff already in zanki. Im confused because it seem like it was all new stuff not in zanki. Is the musculoskeletal/physio deck work doing then?
 
Really? I feel like if most people don’t start UWorld until close to dedicated their foundation should be solid enough for 63%
Personally I just find it hard to believe that since the 63% includes all passes that it would still be 63% if it only included first pass timed random. Many people use UWorld throughout second year and do systems on tutor mode first time through. Realistically i still think if it was only first pass timed random it would be in the 50s
 
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