USMLE Official 2021 Step 2 CK Experiences With Scores Thread

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All right y'all, let's get this party started. Here's to a smooth sailing third year, no Prometric drama with Step 2, in-person aways and interviews, and no CS/hopefully PE.

School: bone wizard

Step 1: mid 230s
Level 1: mid 570s

Step 2 goal: 250+
Level 2 goal: 600+

Interests: EM, OB/GYN (distant second)

Rotations (in order): Peds, IM, FM, Psych, Neuro, Surgery, EM, OB/GYN and then several electives mixed in

Resources: UWorld, Online MedEd, Tzanki deck since it's shorter and the Step 1 decks burned me out, might check out B&B for Step 2 when it comes out since Dr. Ryan saved my butt on Step 1

My rotations go until the end of June and unfortunately my schedule is pretty backloaded with my final 3 rotations being EM, OB and ICU so I guess that means I'll be taking Step 2 in early July. Obviously I'm not sure how auditions/aways will be playing out next summer and if PE will be a thing so a lot up in the air right now in terms of scheduling. My school does COMATs for our shelf exams but I don't plan on using any DO-specific resources for COMATs or Level 2 as I've heard UWorld is all you need.
 
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ohmanwaddup said:
idk it just feels weird to be downtrodden about a percentile I would've been overjoyed to start with last summer. it makes me want to take another practice exam tmr lol.
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This is what feels weird to me about studying for Step 2. Technically, I'm not doing "bad" on UWorld, but I'm not feeling confident? I don't know if it's because we set the bar higher this time around or what it is. I just have a...weird feeling and that's the best way I can explain it.
 
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Can someone remind me....can you take the UWSAs untimed? I've been doing UWorld technically untimed but just timing myself on my phone since occasionally my pet will need something from me lol.
 
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fldoctorgirl said:
Can someone remind me....can you take the UWSAs untimed? I've been doing UWorld technically untimed but just timing myself on my phone since occasionally my pet will need something from me lol.
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Even if the you surpass the 1h limit and the time ends, I think you can press the "play" button again and have another 1h...and so on.

ohmanwaddup said:
dk it just feels weird to be downtrodden about a percentile I would've been overjoyed to start with last summer. it makes me want to take another practice exam tmr lol.
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UWSA1 was very hard indeed , and those percentiles make no sense. You can take the old free 120 that has less vague questions and does test your knowledge base. It's gonna be a confidence booster for sure.
 
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fldoctorgirl said:
This is what feels weird to me about studying for Step 2. Technically, I'm not doing "bad" on UWorld, but I'm not feeling confident? I don't know if it's because we set the bar higher this time around or what it is. I just have a...weird feeling and that's the best way I can explain it.
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I think because for step 2 there’s more “next best step” and clinical reasoning questions, and less straightforward this enzyme does that.
 
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HopeImakeit said:
Even if the you surpass the 1h limit and the time ends, I think you can press the "play" button again and have another 1h...and so on.


UWSA1 was very hard indeed , and those percentiles make no sense. You can take the old free 120 that has less vague questions and does test your knowledge base. It's gonna be a confidence booster for sure.
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ohhh yeah I forgot there is an old and new 120. I'll check that out later! I feel good today. I found three areas where I got 20% or less of the questions right on UWSA1 (heme/onc, pregnancy/childbirth/, and one other I cant remember, Im talking like 2/10, 2/7 etc. Going to pound those and that should make the next exam a much better time.

I've got a plan on what to do next and it helps a lot
 
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Took COMSAE 107 for my school today and got a 531. I was way below average in OMM and average to above average in everything else but I didn't think overall it was that bad so I'm a little surprised at my score. Like everyone else, I don't care all that much about Level 2 but would like to score higher than Level 1 for appearance sake. What are you all doing for OMM prep?

I've been scoring 70-80% on UWorld but now I'm getting to the biostats questions and that's been sinking my scores. I'm starting the biostats deck in Dorian next week so hopefully that helps. Remembering all the equations is the toughest part, I had them all memorized before Step 1 last year and then had almost no biostats questions on my exam. Taking NBME 8 on Sunday for a baseline so hopefully that goes better than the COMSAE since there won't be any OMM on it.
 
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GoCards05 said:
Took COMSAE 107 for my school today and got a 531. I was way below average in OMM and average to above average in everything else but I didn't think overall it was that bad so I'm a little surprised at my score. Like everyone else, I don't care all that much about Level 2 but would like to score higher than Level 1 for appearance sake. What are you all doing for OMM prep?

I've been scoring 70-80% on UWorld but now I'm getting to the biostats questions and that's been sinking my scores. I'm starting the biostats deck in Dorian next week so hopefully that helps. Remembering all the equations is the toughest part, I had them all memorized before Step 1 last year and then had almost no biostats questions on my exam. Taking NBME 8 on Sunday for a baseline so hopefully that goes better than the COMSAE since there won't be any OMM on it.
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I haven’t done **** for OMM and it’s my weakest too. Planning to do ComQuest questions in the 10 days between step and level 2.
 
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What do y'all consider improvement for blocks of incorrects? They're so damn hard haha. Idk if I should just focus on being above the average? I guess technically any percent correct is an improvement since they're incorrects....but I don't know how to gauge how I'm doing.
 
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fldoctorgirl said:
What do y'all consider improvement for blocks of incorrects? They're so damn hard haha. Idk if I should just focus on being above the average? I guess technically any percent correct is an improvement since they're incorrects....but I don't know how to gauge how I'm doing.
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Scoring avg on your incorrects seems like a really good goal to me.
 
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My past 10 UWorld set score average is now sitting at 81%. Still get lots of questions where in not 100% certain but going with my “most likely” answer. Still don’t feel crazy confident.

Once Sunday hits though, I’m going to be splitting my step 2 study book into 4 parts and working my way through it over 4 days, then Thursday will be easy half day of Anki/reviewing personal notes from my final review, then step 2 Friday.

Does anyone know what time they normally start exams?
 
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Steve_Zissou said:
My past 10 UWorld set score average is now sitting at 81%. Still get lots of questions where in not 100% certain but going with my “most likely” answer. Still don’t feel crazy confident.

Once Sunday hits though, I’m going to be splitting my step 2 study book into 4 parts and working my way through it over 4 days, then Thursday will be easy half day of Anki/reviewing personal notes from my final review, then step 2 Friday.

Does anyone know what time they normally start exams?
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8am I think

so so I got an 85% on the block I did today. Really starting to worry Dorian is artificially inflating me. Going to take a COMQUEST practice exam tmr just so I can not stress about failing Comlex. still have like 700 Uworld questions to do
 
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ohmanwaddup said:
8am I think

so so I got an 85% on the block I did today. Really starting to worry Dorian is artificially inflating me. Going to take a COMQUEST practice exam tmr just so I can not stress about failing Comlex. still have like 700 Uworld questions to do
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I had a brown pants moment this morning. I thought to myself “I should check on my prometric reservation.” So I looked into it and could only find my COMLEX email. I started freaking out. I tried calling them and had to call three different numbers and wait for 20 minutes to eventually get in touch with someone. Fortunately, they were able to send me an email with my exam info. Still on for the 11th.
 
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Steve_Zissou said:
I had a brown pants moment this morning. I thought to myself “I should check on my prometric reservation.” So I looked into it and could only find my COMLEX email. I started freaking out. I tried calling them and had to call three different numbers and wait for 20 minutes to eventually get in touch with someone. Fortunately, they were able to send me an email with my exam info. Still on for the 11th.
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Yeah I think Im going to go triple check mine now lol
 
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Just took COMSAE 105 for Comlex 2. Felt way better than UWSA 1 lol. really light on the ethics and OMM questions though, so idk how representative it actually is of the exam.

I scored a 620, anyone know how predictive or what that correlates too? NBOME says anything higher than 649 is "higher performance"
 
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fldoctorgirl said:
252 (66th percentile) on UWSA1. I thought it was pretty tricky. Lots where I was between 2 and second-guessed myself a ton, had 4 changed from correct to incorrect.
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just for my own personal point of reference, mind saying what your percent correct was?
 
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so If I just go off the CBT NBOME converter thing, a 620 has been like 70th percentile for the last three years of Level 2. My COMSAE underpredicted me by about 60 points, so here's hoping that rings through again. A nice confidence boost from UWSA1, even if it is for an entirely different exam.

I've started to do a deeper pass, and honestly, some of these mistakes are just so embarrassingly simple. I was really able to catch things during the COMSAE today, and I think that was largely due to how much calmer I was. It would also explain while I am getting 75-80% consistently with my Uworld Blocks. Got to just push down that panic. I also think that doing it first thing as opposed to doing all my reviews first and then taking a practice exam helped a lot. My mind was way clearer.

On a different note I'm tired of the double edge sword of needing to do practice exams but being exhausted afterwards. All I want to do is sleep but I gotta get these reviews done smh
 
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fldoctorgirl said:
This is what feels weird to me about studying for Step 2. Technically, I'm not doing "bad" on UWorld, but I'm not feeling confident? I don't know if it's because we set the bar higher this time around or what it is. I just have a...weird feeling and that's the best way I can explain it.
Click to expand...

I feel like these questions are just insanely difficult. I feel like they’re only 30% testing knowledge and 70% testing critical reasoning skills. Because half of the time I feel like they don’t give me enough info to get the diagnosis right immediately, and it’s a process of elimination to reason through the answer choices to figure out what the actual answer is supposed to be, and I just have to pick the last answer I can’t eliminate even though I’m not confident about it. Or maybe I just feel that way because I’m terrifically underprepared because I’ve done my usual goofing off almost all year. I have 26 days and I’m currently going for the platinum trophy on RE8. To be fair, it’s more like I play in my study breaks... but I take a metric ton of study breaks lol


I did take UWSA 1 today: it’s got me at a 249. 74% correct (83/70/83/60), and my worst parts were peds, immunologic/blood, and general principles. Effing hate general principles - how exactly are we supposed to study for that? What exactly IS it anyway?

OB and surgery were my best, which makes sense because OB was my best COMAT at 119 and I’m currently in my surgery block right now. They’re putting me at the 93rd percentile for their surgery questions which hopefully is going to translate to a good surgery COMAT score in two weeks.
 
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calivianya said:
I feel like these questions are just insanely difficult. I feel like they’re only 30% testing knowledge and 70% testing critical reasoning skills. Because half of the time I feel like they don’t give me enough info to get the diagnosis right immediately, and it’s a process of elimination to reason through the answer choices to figure out what the actual answer is supposed to be, and I just have to pick the last answer I can’t eliminate even though I’m not confident about it.
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This! I had this exact conversation with my SO today when he asked me how it felt studying for this vs. Step 1. This is almost word for word what I said. For step 1 it felt very buzzwordy and I felt like I was very confident in my answer most of the time. I'm learning with step 2 it's mainly process of elimination and just picking the best answer. It's way less obvious. Feels more like I'm training myself on how to answer their questions than necessary learning medicine.
 
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fldoctorgirl said:
This! I had this exact conversation with my SO today when he asked me how it felt studying for this vs. Step 1. This is almost word for word what I said. For step 1 it felt very buzzwordy and I felt like I was very confident in my answer most of the time. I'm learning with step 2 it's mainly process of elimination and just picking the best answer. It's way less obvious. Feels more like I'm training myself on how to answer their questions than necessary learning medicine.
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That is absolutely what it is - because a lot of the questions are complete BS. “What would you do first?” Really? Half the time I’d plan to put orders for every single one of those multiple choice options in at the exact same time. If something really needs to get done, you can have multiple people working simultaneously on it. Obviously there are exceptions where something in particular has to come first, but still.

Or my second favorite - when the main first-line intervention isn’t there. If, in real life, for some reason my hospital couldn’t do the first line intervention, I got presented with options 1-5 that we could do, and the patient was stable, I wouldn’t do any of them. I’d transfer. I’m not gonna give someone second-best care if they are stable and we can send them out to a higher level in a reasonable time frame, unless it’s just as good an option (which it’s often not). /soapbox
 
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Steve_Zissou said:
Another 256 today but on NBME 6 this time. Honestly hoping these aren’t flukes, maybe I’m just doubting myself too much. Anyways, 92% correct correlated to the 256.
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92% equates to 60th percentile lol

What crack are these NBMEs smoking?

kicking butt though my dude, very impressive!

I was planning on doing NBME8 today, but I woke up exhausted. going to go to bed early tonight and push it off to tmr.

Good news is I should hit 71% correct on Uworld today, only like .2% away from it.
 
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just hit 71%!

But also UWORLD just gave me a question where the answer was necrotizing enterocolitis but with no bloody stools.

Swear to god they love to give you all but one buzzword and that's the reason it isn't the answer, or they give no buzzwords buts its still the answer because "occasionally it can present like this" :bang:

Also there was one where I chose the "0% of people also choose this" lol
 
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Thesimplelifeofamyloid said:
Is UWSA1 as much as of a overpredictor for step 1
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No Idea. Seems to be underpredicting people in this thread so far. I have a hard time believing the people who were scoring in the 90th percentile regularly for shelves are only going to be scoring in the 60th on Step 2.

UWSA seem to only over predict if you are scoring really high
 
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ohmanwaddup said:
just hit 71%!

But also UWORLD just gave me a question where the answer was necrotizing enterocolitis but with no bloody stools.

Swear to god they love to give you all but one buzzword and that's the reason it isn't the answer, or they give no buzzwords buts its still the answer because "occasionally it can present like this" :bang:

Also there was one where I chose the "0% of people also choose this" lol
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I had one with someone that had Turners, the only description was “short with scoliosis” and they were pregnant. The explanation went on to say “up to 5% of turners patients become pregnant.” I got it right on a 100% guess lol.
 
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The fact that many people in this thread are struggling with UWorld most of whom I know are top scorers on shelves and step 1 tells me A. UW CK bank is effing hard and B. that I think as a thread were not giving ourselves enough credit. Every year these threads have high af averages for Step 2 compared to real life/national avg. This also tells me these practice tests underpredict. We will all be fine fam!
 
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Deecee2DO said:
The fact that many people in this thread are struggling with UWorld most of whom I know are top scorers on shelves and step 1 tells me A. UW CK bank is effing hard and B. that I think as a thread were not giving ourselves enough credit. Every year these threads have high af averages for Step 2 compared to real life/national avg. This also tells me these practice tests underpredict. We will all be fine fam!
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Yup. I think the new questions they've added are really hard tbh. I finished most of UWorld for all the shelf subjects throughout the year so now I'm left with mostly the new added questions since then and they're really hard. I honestly was super stressed because I wasn't (and still aren't) doing too hot on UWorld but I did ok on UWSA1 so I think UW is just hard af like you said. I think everyone here seems on track to do > average.
 
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So I had only been planning on taking one NBME (8), but turns out if I keep up my current schedule I'll have some extra days once I'm finished with UWorld. Current plan was to also do UWSA2 and the free 120. Which one of those should I do last? I'm planning on my last one being the Friday before my Monday exam.

How many NBMEs even are there? Which ones are worth adding? If I add more, what order is best to take them in? I have ~3 extra days in my schedule now so in theory I can either add 3 NBMEs and do them + review on the same day or maybe add 1-2 and then do review the next day. Orrrr just keep doing UWorld incorrects because I likely won't finish those. Or a mix of maybe one extra NBME and then UWorld incorrects. Thoughts?
 
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