I have benefited greatly from all of these posts on SDN, and I am happy that I can finally return the favor by making my own. I took only the COMLEX, so I can't compare it to the USMLE. By the sound of it I may never find out my score (8 weeks, really?) but nevertheless, here is how my test went…
Prep:
Gunner training starting halfway through first year, which I did not keep up with nearly well enough (sadly). I love their program, I just didn't have enough/make enough time for it in 2nd year.
First Aid and Pathoma were my primary resources during my 5-week dedicated study period, which I annotated with info from GT
UWorld, Kaplan USMLE Qbank and Kaplan COMLEX Qbank for questions
Savarese, of course, for OMM
I went through FA with a few questions sprinkled in for about 3 weeks, then did questions for the last 2 weeks. I think that was a good decision, because many of the cases on my exam felt familiar because of the number of questions I did (about 3600 by my estimate).
Practice Tests:
NBME 7, prestudy: 190
UWSA2, 3 weeks out: 214
COMSAE C, 3 weeks out: 478
"Free 150" from the USMLE website, 2 weeks out: 75%
NBME 13, 1 week out: 200
COMSAE B, 1 week out: 520
Kaplan Full-Length COMLEX, 4 days out: 70%
Kaplan USMLE Qbank: 70%
Kaplan COMLEX Qbank: 75%
UWorld Qbank: 61%
Impression of the exam: It was an odd test which seemed to cover a strangely small amount of material. I had several identical or nearly-identical questions on the exam, which was somewhat surprising (and annoying). There were some weirdly worded questions, like everyone said. Overall I feel pretty good about my performance. As far as difficulty and question type goes, I felt like the Kaplan full length COMLEX was a pretty good representation of the exam I took today. Naturally everyone's exam will vary. The following is what I remember about the makeup of my exam.
Repro: Probably the heaviest system tested for me. Very very very specific birth control questions, lots of pregnancy situations, many of which I had to draw on information from my classes to answer rather than my review materials.
Endo: Very light on the endo, all of it very basic.
Renal: Light on Renal, with basically no renal phys questions. I'm okay with that. The kidneys are no friends of mine.
Cardio: Some WEIRD EKG's on my exam. Only a couple, but I don't know if I answered them correctly. I expected harder cardio pharm questions, but only got a couple of those. Zero heart murmurs, which is sad, because I studied the hell out of those. I recall a couple pages back someone had a million murmurs though, so at least I was prepared.
Respiratory: Pneumonia. Yeah, that's it.
GI: Fair amount of GI, but not that terribly complicated as I remember it. The hepatobiliary tract was a favorite.
Psych: I was so happy to see lots of psych on my test. Very little on the drugs, though. Some very strange cases here.
Anatomy: Brachial Plexus!!! Also several very strange anatomy questions I would never have gotten anyway. I wish I had studied the plexus more. Anatomy was pretty heavy on my exam.
Neuro: Not as much neuro on my exam. Most of it was fairly straightforward.
Biochem: I felt like I wasted my time studying so much biochem. Maybe 5 questions? Easy, obvious questions.
Biostats: 2 questions. Sadness. At least with math you know for sure if you're right or not.
Pharm: Lots of P450-related questions, NOT a lot of "how do you treat this" questions.
Micro: Some of it was obvious, while some of it left me staring at the screen trying to figure out what they were talking about. More than one obscure question about something that 1) I've never seen while in class or studying and 2) I almost certainly will never see in real life. I expected this, though.
Behavioral: No child development for me, but there were several HMO/PPO questions and weird ethical situations. I think I handled those alright. I don't think I could have done much to prep for this. More common sense than anything.
OMM: Savarese plus the chapman's points posted in this thread (THANK YOU FOR THOSE!) were enough. So glad I didn't have much cranial. Levels were the key here - easy points. The OMM felt very reasonable as far as difficulty. The Savarese questions were much harder and great for preparation.
