USMLE Official 2020 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
Sort by date Sort by votes
Cath Up said:
Page is undated but per page edits it looks like maybe it is from Feb of 2020. They don't list what their "extensive research" consisted of or what years their data is from. But it matches up reasonably well with the reddit score predictor.

I don't know how to interpret "NBME Q". Did the old NBMEs give you a score report out of 800? I forget.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure about the NBME part. I mostly just looked at UWorld lol.

ohmanwaddup said:
I've seen this be considered both ways. Either its way to old to useful, or it predicted people accurately.

It has me at 10 points above the average for the Reddit predictor
Click to expand...
That's why I asked, I saw some people on Reddit say it was spot on and some people say it's old when averages were lower. It is a nice confidence boost though I guess haha.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
fldoctorgirl said:
I'm not sure about the NBME part. I mostly just looked at UWorld lol.


That's why I asked, I saw some people on Reddit say it was spot on and some people say it's old when averages were lower. It is a nice confidence boost though I guess haha.
Click to expand...
Huge confidence boost lol what I have been doing is looking for things that underpredict me so I overcompensate (NBMEs for instance). I honestly think the most accurate predictor of scoring high is high NBMEs. However, I think lower NBMEs aren't really predictive at all. I'm saying like mid 240s or higher on new NBMEs means you can almost guarantee you are 240+ on real deal which I think should be the goal of someone who wants to make sure he/she scores high
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Wanna guess my nbme score this week? Took 23 today. ANDDDDD it's the same as last week which is pretty much the same as the week before, and probably will be the same the week after. 238. Really starting to worry 🙁
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thesimplelifeofamyloid said:
Wanna guess my nbme score this week? Took 23 today. ANDDDDD it's the same as last week which is pretty much the same as the week before, and probably will be the same the week after. 238. Really starting to worry 🙁
Click to expand...
238 on New nbmes is damn good. Most likely you are 245-255 range
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Deecee2DO said:
Huge confidence boost lol what I have been doing is looking for things that underpredict me so I overcompensate (NBMEs for instance). I honestly think the most accurate predictor of scoring high is high NBMEs. However, I think lower NBMEs aren't really predictive at all. I'm saying like mid 240s or higher on new NBMEs means you can almost guarantee you are 240+ on real deal which I think should be the goal of someone who wants to make sure he/she scores high
Click to expand...
Agreed, I think they're only predictive if you do really well on them.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Deecee2DO said:
Huge confidence boost lol what I have been doing is looking for things that underpredict me so I overcompensate (NBMEs for instance). I honestly think the most accurate predictor of scoring high is high NBMEs. However, I think lower NBMEs aren't really predictive at all. I'm saying like mid 240s or higher on new NBMEs means you can almost guarantee you are 240+ on real deal which I think should be the goal of someone who wants to make sure he/she scores high
Click to expand...

Yeah I think the NBMEs are more predictive on the very low and very high end and anything in the middle is less predictive.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Upvote 0 Downvote
docmcstuffins3 said:
I do wish they had a 1 time retake for everyone instead of pass fail. That would be kinda nice but based on statistics most people do not do better on retakes so maybe not....
Click to expand...
Yeah idk if I would be able to sit through an exam like Step again TBH, once I'm done I'm doneeeee.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
docmcstuffins3 said:
I do wish they had a 1 time retake for everyone instead of pass fail. That would be kinda nice but based on statistics most people do not do better on retakes so maybe not....
Click to expand...

I could see this being a complete nightmare. Anyone under 220 that had the family money to sit on their hands for a year and not worry about the debt maybe taking a research year and studying with a dedicated tutor and coming back with something that would be a 250s equivalent... except a ton of people would be getting that kind of score then, so we’d have to put in the effort to get a 250 just to end up with a 230.

I’m only two weeks out at this point, and I’d love the opportunity to do better LOL, but not if it meant I had to do 15x better instead of just a little better.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
would absolutely never study for this thing again if I had the choice. If my score comes back lower than expected, there's always a good route you can take. Thats what I think is cool about medicine, there's a million different paths and just because one door might get shut, there's probably 4 or 5 others that are just as cool
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
calivianya said:
I could see this being a complete nightmare. Anyone under 220 that had the family money to sit on their hands for a year and not worry about the debt maybe taking a research year and studying with a dedicated tutor and coming back with something that would be a 250s equivalent... except a ton of people would be getting that kind of score then, so we’d have to put in the effort to get a 250 just to end up with a 230.

I’m only two weeks out at this point, and I’d love the opportunity to do better LOL, but not if it meant I had to do 15x better instead of just a little better.
Click to expand...
People with money still have that same opportunity now so I don’t think that would make a difference. Statistically I think only like 20% of people actually do better on a retakes.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
always blows my mind how it only takes 2 questions wrong to drop 5% in a block. had two questions on topics I hadn't covered yet today, and then 2 I changed from right to wrong, and then 2 I narrowed down to two choices and chose the wrong one. result? 15% lower score.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I was late catching up on the thread but I had to put my 2c in as an African American.

I think p/f would be worse for African American students honestly. Due to other systemic issues we have difficulty getting the connections it would require to match competitively without a high step score. I don’t have any doctors in my family and it can be difficult to connect and build a relationship with older white attending because they probably don’t have any or very few colleague that look like me and share my culture. My best bet is to do well on this test and know my stuff to earn their respect that way.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Im posting this here in case anyone hates wearing a standard mask/whatever mask they do have will become less than ideal for 6-8 hours. I found this one on amazon, its light weight, breathable, relatively cheap, and doesn't irritate my ears.

Amazon product ASIN B086VXR497
Disclaimer: I do not profit from people purchasing this mask in any way, just tryin to help. Also spoke to someone at a prometric center and they said this mask is acceptable.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
bluelamin said:
exam in 6 days. and i am freaking the eff out. scores have been good but can't shake off the feeling that im forgetting stuff. just thinking of doing FA RR deck in a day to reassure confidence.
Click to expand...

I'm in 3 days and I have this exact same feeling. It's the strangest feeling when your practice scores have been perfectly fine yet you still feel like you know absolutely nothing and then that mild panic begins to set in. I don't really have time to review the RR deck so I'm likely just going to go old-fashioned and cover up the diseases in the book and review that way. I also need to reread Pathoma CH 1-3 and skim over the HY anatomy concepts but other than that, I'm not doing much else so I don't freak myself out even more.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
docmcstuffins3 said:
I was late catching up on the thread but I had to put my 2c in as an African American.

I think p/f would be worse for African American students honestly. Due to other systemic issues we have difficulty getting the connections it would require to match competitively without a high step score. I don’t have any doctors in my family and it can be difficult to connect and build a relationship with older white attending because they probably don’t have any or very few colleague that look like me and share my culture. My best bet is to do well on this test and know my stuff to earn their respect that way.
Click to expand...
My understanding is African Americans, on average, do slightly worse on standardized exams. Is that untrue? Unless there is affirmative action in GME (I don't know if there is) I always thought going P/F would be a step in the right direction for minorities.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Cath Up said:
My understanding is African Americans, on average, do slightly worse on standardized exams. Is that untrue? Unless there is affirmative action in GME (I don't know if there is) I always thought going P/F would be a step in the right direction for minorities.
Click to expand...

Woah woah does this look like reddit
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Cath Up said:
My understanding is African Americans, on average, do slightly worse on standardized exams. Is that untrue? Unless there is affirmative action in GME (I don't know if there is) I always thought going P/F would be a step in the right direction for minorities.
Click to expand...
I think the social hurdles we would have to overcome to match in a competitive residency with a pass fail step would be much more difficult than step 1.
If they’re not looking at scores they will focus on connections/research.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
docmcstuffins3 said:
I think the social hurdles we would have to overcome to match in a competitive residency with a pass fail step would be much more difficult than step 1.
If they’re not looking at scores they will focus on connections/research.
Click to expand...

Maybe I’m being a little tinfoil hat-ish here, but I sort of wonder if this isn’t the whole point of all of the changes we’ve seen recently - more for DO students than minorities, but still. Sometimes I think the powers that be planned a pass/fail step 1 before pushing for single accreditation.

It’s a no brainer (at least to me) that if they’d put step 1 pass/fail before single accreditation, DOs with higher COMLEX scores would have worked harder on pursuing competitive residencies within the AOA match if they weren’t planning on it already, where their scores would have meant something. There’s an orthopedic surgery residency near my school that was AOA and looking through their resident list, there are some years they only have people from my school - and now they have MDs also. Going single accreditation first was a very smooth way to stop high scoring DO students from having an escape hatch when step went pass/fail. It’s just the icing on the cake that it hits the MD students who also have fewer connections and abilities to find research, too.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
What’s the verdict on how much comlex matters if you have a decent step score? Just bombed comsae 105b yesterday haha. OMM is not my friend
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
GoCards05 said:
I'm in 3 days and I have this exact same feeling. It's the strangest feeling when your practice scores have been perfectly fine yet you still feel like you know absolutely nothing and then that mild panic begins to set in. I don't really have time to review the RR deck so I'm likely just going to go old-fashioned and cover up the diseases in the book and review that way. I also need to reread Pathoma CH 1-3 and skim over the HY anatomy concepts but other than that, I'm not doing much else so I don't freak myself out even more.
Click to expand...
Trust your knowledge! I've been rewatching all of Pathoma and I'm honestly not sure if I've gotten anything extra out of it so far, I already know it all from Zanki. If you've Zankied, I don't think you need to worry about what you know.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
fldoctorgirl said:
Trust your knowledge! I've been rewatching all of Pathoma and I'm honestly not sure if I've gotten anything extra out of it so far, I already know it all from Zanki. If you've Zankied, I don't think you need to worry about what you know.
Click to expand...

This proved true to me many times throughout dedicated. Even if there was a question I had no idea what it was talking about, my mind would go "I think i've seen x paired with y in a card somewhere... so I'll pick that answer" and get it right
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
calivianya said:
Maybe I’m being a little tinfoil hat-ish here, but I sort of wonder if this isn’t the whole point of all of the changes we’ve seen recently - more for DO students than minorities, but still. Sometimes I think the powers that be planned a pass/fail step 1 before pushing for single accreditation.

It’s a no brainer (at least to me) that if they’d put step 1 pass/fail before single accreditation, DOs with higher COMLEX scores would have worked harder on pursuing competitive residencies within the AOA match if they weren’t planning on it already, where their scores would have meant something. There’s an orthopedic surgery residency near my school that was AOA and looking through their resident list, there are some years they only have people from my school - and now they have MDs also. Going single accreditation first was a very smooth way to stop high scoring DO students from having an escape hatch when step went pass/fail. It’s just the icing on the cake that it hits the MD students who also have fewer connections and abilities to find research, too.
Click to expand...

But the NBME is completely separate from the ACGME and the AOA. The NBME has their reasons for making it p/f. It's not for student wellne$$, I can tell you that for free. But it has nothing to do with what the GME accreditation boards are doing. I believe the ACGME strong armed the AOA into joining up so that they could have more spots overall, but no one was specifically looking to block the success of DOs in the match.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
Planning on taking NBME 19 between today and Friday, and then take the first Uworld assessment next week. Anyone have a reason I should skip 19 and buy one of the 20s exams?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
ohmanwaddup said:
Planning on taking NBME 19 between today and Friday, and then take the first Uworld assessment next week. Anyone have a reason I should skip 19 and buy one of the 20s exams?
Click to expand...
Only reason I can think of is the curve on 19 is supposed to be really tough? I haven't done it so can't comment on the quality of the exam. If you're not planning on taking all of the new ones, I would say prioritize 20s over 19.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
fldoctorgirl said:
Only reason I can think of is the curve on 19 is supposed to be really tough? I haven't done it so can't comment on the quality of the exam. If you're not planning on taking all of the new ones, I would say prioritize 20s over 19.
Click to expand...
Sounds good. Mostly have just been working on the free ones because they are free, idk how much more of tough curves I can take though lol
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
ohmanwaddup said:
Planning on taking NBME 19 between today and Friday, and then take the first Uworld assessment next week. Anyone have a reason I should skip 19 and buy one of the 20s exams?
Click to expand...

Having taken 4/5 of the new NBMEs, I’d say 21 and 24 are the best. 20 is really hard, I heard 22 has a lot of anatomy and 23 has a lot of random minutiae. Those would be the two I would do if you don’t want to do all of them.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Terrible idea because I'm going to be absolutely exhausted when I try and get through my reviews the rest of the day, but I'm just going to take 21 now. Practices scores are just gnawing at me, I cant focus on zanki right now
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Soooo...so far after rescheduling my COMLEX, when I put the confirmation # into Prometric it says "thank you for scheduling your exam with Prometric" whatever and it's listed on the NBOME page. So I'm assuming that means the date was legit and I'm good?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
fldoctorgirl said:
Soooo...so far after rescheduling my COMLEX, when I put the confirmation # into Prometric it says "thank you for scheduling your exam with Prometric" whatever and it's listed on the NBOME page. So I'm assuming that means the date was legit and I'm good?
Click to expand...

Yep! That’s what mine says when I type it in and my COMLEX has survived all the Thanos snapping.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Transposony
Official 2024 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread
Replies
0
Views
2K
Transposony
Transposony
D
Step 1 and Level 1
Replies
1
Views
3K
DOcSto
D
C
Step 1 tutor available!
Replies
0
Views
1K
chauhanjugalkishor
C
A
USMLE Step 1 resources for sale
Replies
0
Views
2K
accurate_branch20
A
G
  • Question Question
USMLE Out of time and not ready for Step 1. Have I screwed up?
Replies
0
Views
536
genteel-mug-sting
G
Top