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
fldoctorgirl said:
Take it this week, imo. It seems like you're ready-- I'm not sure what your goal score is, but didn't you just get 249 on UWSA2? You're ready, and I think pushing further will only hurt you. I'm sorry that the situation isn't ideal considering how stressful dedicated is without extra BS, but you got this. Only you know your goals so I don't want to 100% tell you what to do, but based on your practice scores I think you're ready.
Click to expand...

I did. Thanks for being the voice of logic. The voice in my head is the voice of panic.

Would have been really nice to not have all of this crap going on while I’m trying to study. It’s just really throwing me off my game.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
calivianya said:
I did. Thanks for being the voice of logic. The voice in my head is the voice of panic.

Would have been really nice to not have all of this crap going on while I’m trying to study. It’s just really throwing me off my game.
Click to expand...
If the stress is really really really bad ask ur doctor for propanolol take one before ur exam and one midway through. Ive taken lowest dose like 10mg. Test it tho to see how u feel on it a week or two beforehand so you dont have any weird responses. Ive taken propanolol for performance anxiety and its a gamechanger. few of my classmates have used it for standardized patient encounters. Also I second @fldoctorgirl youre ready af for this exam. Go murder it
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
calivianya said:
Okay, so I bumped my step one day to Wednesday and I may be bumping to mid-July, but my rotation site just informed me today that they want us there in three weeks. But my school is now saying it’s impossible for us to be there in three weeks. So if I get to stay here I could take my exam in a few weeks and get through my school exams first, but if I have to move up there I either have to take it this week or push back super late because there are no dates near my rotation site until September-ish.

I might just cancel both exams for now and reschedule for September or something. I can’t handle all of this stress. :bang:
Click to expand...

If you're feeling ready go ahead and take it. I talked to a few of my classmates during our clinical orientation today and many of them have pushed back to July/August due to not feeling ready. I can say without a doubt that I do not envy them at all. The M1 me probably would have thought "man that's kind of unfair that they can have 1-2 months extra to study than me", but after 2 years of zanki and a month of dedicated, I was just so done and I'm glad I was able to take it when I took it. I'm not sure if the extra time would have helped much, but my mental health has benefited greatly from being done.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Buddy who works in a hospital says rona is spiking hard here in ohio. Idk how I am going to handle it if my exam gets cancelled this close to the end, or if Step is cancelled but comlex isnt. The idea of not taking step after all this work is nauseating. taking it during rotations would be rough, and depending on how far back it would be pushed, Idk if I would even be sure I would pass
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
ohmanwaddup said:
Buddy who works in a hospital says rona is spiking hard here in ohio. Idk how I am going to handle it if my exam gets cancelled this close to the end, or if Step is cancelled but comlex isnt. The idea of not taking step after all this work is nauseating. taking it during rotations would be rough, and depending on how far back it would be pushed, Idk if I would even be sure I would pass
Click to expand...
Personally, I would be surprised if Prometric ran and closed again after what happened last time. I would also be surprised if governments shut down again, because people are just over it. The virus was never going to disappear just because we all stayed home for a couple of months, so a spike shouldn't be surprising anybody, although the media loves to go crazy reporting the increase in number of cases. As far as I can tell so far, the # of deaths/hospitalizations hasn't increased a drastic amount, and a lot of these cases are in the younger population (I think in my county they said average age was like in the 30s). There are a lot of threads about 'rona elsewhere on here, but just try not to worry too much. Either way it's out of your hands so stressing about it is just going to affect your studying.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Is the free 120 timed, or is there an option to take it untimed? I usually do NBMEs "untimed" officially but just use a timer on my phone, because I'm at home with my pet and they sometimes need something from me lol.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
ohmanwaddup said:
Here is hoping. I had planned to finish the OMM deck last week but then just had too much burnout. Ill finish it by friday though and my exam is next thursday so it should be fine, especially since everyone says it usually is mostly VS and chapman with a little sacral and cranial thrown in.

Is getting "reported" serious? I'm a nervous bathroom person, especially during exams lol At this point Id rather wear a diaper then do something that makes me have to retake these exams lol 😆 😆
Click to expand...

I actually asked the people at my Prometric about what would happen if I had to take an emergency bathroom break midblock (my stomach was nervous). They basically said it was no big deal - it won’t invalidate your score or lead to an investigation or anything. I didn’t end up having to take the break though.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
catlady87 said:
I actually asked the people at my Prometric about what would happen if I had to take an emergency bathroom break midblock (my stomach was nervous). They basically said it was no big deal - it won’t invalidate your score or lead to an investigation or anything. I didn’t end up having to take the break though.
Click to expand...
That is good to hear. I tend to spazz the F out after hyping myself up for an exam. Im going to try to avoid it by showing up early and speed walking laps around the test center lol.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
fldoctorgirl said:
Just finished the Free 120, 80% overall. Agree with @ohmanwaddup , got absolutely wrecked by the 2nd block-- breakdown was 83/70/88, it felt hard while I was taking that block so I kinda expected it. Not sure how I feel.
Click to expand...

Yeah I think I was like 80/67/77 or something like that. Glad to know we all felt the same way about block 2. 80% overall is very solid!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
GoCards05 said:
Yeah I think I was like 80/67/77 or something like that. Glad to know we all felt the same way about block 2. 80% overall is very solid!
Click to expand...
Totally meant to tag you haha, my bad! But yeah, I didn't think it was as easy as people make it out to be. I thought some of the questions were pretty easy, but definitely a lot weren't. I guess that's how the real thing is though?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
fldoctorgirl said:
Totally meant to tag you haha, my bad! But yeah, I didn't think it was as easy as people make it out to be. I thought some of the questions were pretty easy, but definitely a lot weren't. I guess that's how the real thing is though?
Click to expand...

Haha no worries! And it definitely was harder than I was expecting and there were some tough questions that made you think. The real deal is very similar to Free 120, lots of gimmes if you’ve studied at all but the hard questions are pretty difficult. But I guess that’s how they separate 230/240 from 260/270.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I feel so weird because my scores are all over the place, but I guess that's why I need to just trust the overall prediction. Free 120 brought my prediction down from 246 to 245, date-adjusted down from 248 to 246. The formulas in the sidebar for NBME average, UWSA1/2 average, and the UWSA+NBME average are all in the 245-247 range, so at least that's consistent? It's just odd because I felt like I killed 18 at 89% correct and then didn't do as well on UWSA2 and Free 120. CI 234-255, tightens to 238-255 if I remove my baseline NBME 16 (but overall prediction doesn't really change). Just a vent on how much I hate this process lol
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
The wise one said:
Free 120 taken last week 88/70/84
Click to expand...
Well seems like block 2 sucks for everyone then.

The wise one said:
But how the heck am i doing 80th percentile on Uword and tanking my NBME???
Click to expand...
Not sure if you've kept up with this thread, but this has been the case for a lot of people on here. High first pass %, 250s+ on UWSAs, and can't crack 230s on the NBMEs. I think the question style is just so different, and also the curves on the old ones are pretty harsh. I would look at your percent correct instead of the 3-digit score.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
fldoctorgirl said:
Just finished the Free 120, 80% overall. Agree with @GoCards05 , got absolutely wrecked by the 2nd block-- breakdown was 83/70/88, it felt hard while I was taking that block so I kinda expected it. Not sure how I feel.
Click to expand...
Check this out.



It's from 2017 I think but the main point is that free120 isn't predictive by itself if you score lower than 90%. Trust the predictor! You'll do fine
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Alright I did a deep dive of my UWSA1.

Most obvious points are that I suck with genetic and micro terms. I got 6 genetics questions wrong and 5/6 of them had to do with terms. I knew the concepts pretty well in my own words but struggled when I had to choose the "Real words" on the exam, since they all can seem like they say the same thing, at least to me.

Micro was another weak spot with 7 wrong. two of these were pharm mistakes that should not have happened, its just what I get for not paying attention to to the antiviral pictures in zanki. Going though first aid and looking at the pictures should help with this

Most annoying part is that totally separate from the 13 wrong above, I got 9 questions wrong that were due to missing a word in the stem or not making a super easy connection/pigeonholing myself into a certain train of thought. Hopefully I can fix this cause I would have really appreciated an extra 5% on this exam lol.

My main question for the community since I only recently found out how much this assessment can apparently Overepredict, should I be concerned with a 232 on this if my goal is a 230? right now the predictor has me 232, 236 date adjusted, and a CI of 221-245 (barf at the range)

I'm just a little cautious because I've heard that most data points for the survey is from high scorers, and I am wondering if that is artificially elevating my predicted scores.

As always sorry for the long post. These days this page is basically my diary/the majority of my human contact.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
fldoctorgirl said:
I feel so weird because my scores are all over the place, but I guess that's why I need to just trust the overall prediction. Free 120 brought my prediction down from 246 to 245, date-adjusted down from 248 to 246. The formulas in the sidebar for NBME average, UWSA1/2 average, and the UWSA+NBME average are all in the 245-247 range, so at least that's consistent? It's just odd because I felt like I killed 18 at 89% correct and then didn't do as well on UWSA2 and Free 120. CI 234-255, tightens to 238-255 if I remove my baseline NBME 16 (but overall prediction doesn't really change). Just a vent on how much I hate this process lol
Click to expand...
Wow, our predictions are pretty much identical with the predicted score and each end of the confidence interval different by less than a full point. It’ll be fun to see if we match on the real thing. 🙂
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
ohmanwaddup said:
My main question for the community since I only recently found out how much this assessment can apparently under predict, should I be concerned with a 232 on this if my goal is a 230? right now the predictor has me 232, 236 date adjusted, and a CI of 221-245 (barf at the range)
Click to expand...
How many weeks till your test? Current UWorld percentage?

calivianya said:
Wow, our predictions are pretty much identical with the predicted score and each end of the confidence interval different by less than a full point. It’ll be fun to see if we match on the real thing. 🙂
Click to expand...
And we both test this week, right?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
ohmanwaddup said:
Alright I did a deep dive of my UWSA1.

Most obvious points are that I suck with genetic and micro terms. I got 6 genetics questions wrong and 5/6 of them had to do with terms. I knew the concepts pretty well in my own words but struggled when I had to choose the "Real words" on the exam, since they all can seem like they say the same thing, at least to me.

Micro was another weak spot with 7 wrong. two of these were pharm mistakes that should not have happened, its just what I get for not paying attention to to the antiviral pictures in zanki. Going though first aid and looking at the pictures should help with this

Most annoying part is that totally separate from the 13 wrong above, I got 9 questions wrong that were due to missing a word in the stem or not making a super easy connection/pigeonholing myself into a certain train of thought. Hopefully I can fix this cause I would have really appreciated an extra 5% on this exam lol.

My main question for the community since I only recently found out how much this assessment can apparently under predict, should I be concerned with a 232 on this if my goal is a 230? right now the predictor has me 232, 236 date adjusted, and a CI of 221-245 (barf at the range)

I'm just a little cautious because I've heard that most data points for the survey is from high scorers, and I am wondering if that is artificially elevating my predicted scores.

As always sorry for the long post. These days this page is basically my diary/the majority of my human contact.
Click to expand...

Big time LOLed at your last sentence because it’s so true, other than my class groupme where people are arguing and freaking out over everything.

I feel the exact same way about the genetics stuff, and anything with definitions like that. Just make straight up definition flashcards and keep doing them until you don’t just have the idea, you can repeat it word for word so you absolutely know what words to look for. I sometimes have the same problem with descriptions of histo without the pictures, because I could tell you exactly what X disease looks like under the microscope and draw it out myself if I have to, but I put it in my own words, so sometimes I misinterpret what they’re describing.

All histo should have pictures! I’ve missed stupid stuff because of that, and no bug or specimen is going to have words when you look at it under the microscope so it just annoys me in general when they just give us only words.

I can’t tell you too much about the correlation. It was only 5 points higher than my UWSA2 two weeks later, but I did learn a lot between the two.

fldoctorgirl said:
And we both test this week, right?
Click to expand...

Tomorrow. Makes me wanna puke. There has been serious cramming happening today, and serious cramming will continue until I go to bed.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
ohmanwaddup said:
Test is three weeks from Thursday. Uworld has not changed in the past month, its still at a low 67%
Click to expand...
Sounds like your predictor should be pretty close to accurate if you consider that the average UWorld is a 63%, and average Step 1 is like a 231 or whatever. Considering you're still 3 weeks out, I'm sure you can increase your score even more by the time you get to UWSA2. If you're noticing a lot of issues with actual test taking (like how you mentioned missing words and stuff like that), I would just keep going hard on practice questions. You need to figure out a system that works for you and a step-wise approach to looking at questions so that you can minimize these silly mistakes.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
calivianya said:
Tomorrow. Makes me wanna puke. There has been serious cramming happening today, and serious cramming will continue until I go to bed.
Click to expand...
Good luck!! Tomorrow is my last day of studying, then Thursday I promised myself I'm doing nothing lol. Will be super interesting to see where we both end up then considering we're so close.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
fldoctorgirl said:
Good luck!! Tomorrow is my last day of studying, then Thursday I promised myself I'm doing nothing lol. Will be super interesting to see where we both end up then considering we're so close.
Click to expand...

I tried to relax but my brain was screaming like the whole world was on fire, so that just didn’t happen. :laugh:
Good luck to you too!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
GoCards05 said:
That exam was so dumb and my brain is officially fried. Glad it’s all over.
Click to expand...
1) sorry if you already posted this, but when did you take step? saw your permit disappeared this week and trying to figure out a timeline!

2) are you talking about COMLEX? because I took it on Monday and it was ridiculous. The number of repeat questions was nice, but equally infuriating. if you're going to repeat questions, why make the exam 8 hours long?!?!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
hawksnestdoc said:
1) sorry if you already posted this, but when did you take step? saw your permit disappeared this week and trying to figure out a timeline!

2) are you talking about COMLEX? because I took it on Monday and it was ridiculous. The number of repeat questions was nice, but equally infuriating. if you're going to repeat questions, why make the exam 8 hours long?!?!
Click to expand...

I took Step on June 12! It seems like they've been releasing scores the second or third Wednesday after your exam depending on what day of the week you took it on. And yeah I took COMLEX yesterday and it was absolutely ridiculous. I must've had 5-6 questions asking me about Duchenne's and so much viscerosomatics. There is no reason that exam needs to be 400 questions.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
GoCards05 said:
I took Step on June 12! It seems like they've been releasing scores the second or third Wednesday after your exam depending on what day of the week you took it on. And yeah I took COMLEX yesterday and it was absolutely ridiculous. I must've had 5-6 questions asking me about Duchenne's and so much viscerosomatics. There is no reason that exam needs to be 400 questions.
Click to expand...
how was the OMM
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Woke up today, it's my last day of Zanki. I get to take the day off tomorrow. I'm done with this beast on Friday. I'm feeling oddly really good-- I know there are things I don't know, and things I will never know. I strangely feel at peace with the entire process at this point and have kind of gotten to a "whatever's meant to be will be" point? I have no idea how I am going to do on Friday, but I know I've given this test pretty much all I have. I am so ready to be done.

Pathoma 1-3, final UWorld block today (decided to save it for today because I feel like seeing questions keeps my brain fresh so I wanted to see them as close to test day as possible). A couple BnB chill ethics/stats videos I have left. And then I'm free.

Thanks for being on this ride with me fam, y'all have made the journey much more tolerable.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Well fam today is the day. I’m more anxious today than I was on test day but I will finally get closure after a long 2 years and can move on with life. I made some mistakes and there was stuff I didn’t know but I have no regrets no matter what my score is because there was truly nothing more I could’ve done to get ready. T-minus 100 minutes to go!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
GoCards05 said:
Well fam today is the day. I’m more anxious today than I was on test day but I will finally get closure after a long 2 years and can move on with life. I made some mistakes and there was stuff I didn’t know but I have no regrets no matter what my score is because there was truly nothing more I could’ve done to get ready. T-minus 100 minutes to go!
Click to expand...
I’m right there with you. Some people on reddit already have their scores back though?? Haven’t gotten an email
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
iforget2 said:
I’m right there with you. Some people on reddit already have their scores back though?? Haven’t gotten an email
Click to expand...

I’m pretty sure those people are IMGs as they usually get their scores earlier than we do. US grads should get theirs at 11.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
So I was taking a look at the NRMP and noticed something kind of odd. So for ENT for example, the average step 1 matched is 248 and average step 1 not-matched is 238. That would make me think me with a 228 basically is out of the running. But then you look closer and 276 matched and only 12 did not match, and then for those in the 221-230 range, it says 20 matched and 3 did not. That just seems odd to me given how competitive ENT is considered and yet nearly everyone who applies to it seems to match, even with scores well below the average matched. Just some food for thought
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
hebrewBAMmer said:
So I was taking a look at the NRMP and noticed something kind of odd. So for ENT for example, the average step 1 matched is 248 and average step 1 not-matched is 238. That would make me think me with a 228 basically is out of the running. But then you look closer and 276 matched and only 12 did not match, and then for those in the 221-230 range, it says 20 matched and 3 did not. That just seems odd to me given how competitive ENT is considered and yet nearly everyone who applies to it seems to match, even with scores well below the average matched. Just some food for thought
Click to expand...

I don't know everything about ENT, but I do remember reading a bunch of threads on here saying how variable it is from year to year for some reason. Like youre saying, some years its super competitive, then others its not crazy competitive. I have zero idea why, but if you look at previous years data you can see the variation
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
hebrewBAMmer said:
So I was taking a look at the NRMP and noticed something kind of odd. So for ENT for example, the average step 1 matched is 248 and average step 1 not-matched is 238. That would make me think me with a 228 basically is out of the running. But then you look closer and 276 matched and only 12 did not match, and then for those in the 221-230 range, it says 20 matched and 3 did not. That just seems odd to me given how competitive ENT is considered and yet nearly everyone who applies to it seems to match, even with scores well below the average matched. Just some food for thought
Click to expand...

This is a highly self-selected group of applicants with other strengths to make up for lower scores, such as research, connections, and aways/LORs.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
CyrusHabs7695 said:
I don't know everything about ENT, but I do remember reading a bunch of threads on here saying how variable it is from year to year for some reason. Like youre saying, some years its super competitive, then others its not crazy competitive. I have zero idea why, but if you look at previous years data you can see the variation
Click to expand...

Yeah, it was one of the toughest matches a few years ago, so people got afraid and stopped applying, decreasing competitiveness. Then last year, it swung back the other way because people thought it would be easier to match, bringing the match rate back down. It's a smaller field, so it's definitely more affected by year to year fluctuation than other fields.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
slowthai said:
This is a highly self-selected group of applicants with other strengths to make up for lower scores, such as research, connections, and aways/LORs.
Click to expand...

Oh for sure. I mean I doubt I would have any interest in ENT. It was just nice to see that even if you have a lower score, there are still ways to make up for it and still get into competitive specialties.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
hebrewBAMmer said:
Oh for sure. I mean I doubt I would have any interest in ENT. It was just nice to see that even if you have a lower score, there are still ways to make up for it and still get into competitive specialties.
Click to expand...

For sure. Step 1's not the entire game. Youre just going to have to worker even harder than someone who did well on it in order to get into a competitive field
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
So I thought I finished UWorld, was all excited.....nope, they added 1 question while I was doing my last block lol. So I'm just going to wait until the end of the day and do the last handful of questions they've added, and then be done.
 
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
976
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
478
genteel-mug-sting
G
Top