Psychiatry Residents: How much did you prepare for Step 3?

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MiddleRoad

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Is the statement about just needing "a number 2 pencil" true? Assuming of course that Steps 1 & 2 weren't a problem.

I'm planning on leisurely studying for a few days. Am I underestimating what a psych resident, who's only had a few months of Medicine, needs to pass?
 
i'm studying for it as well - 9 days to go. Is that true splik or u just brilliant?
 
Maybe a few days is enough. I did all peds so the lack of internal pushed me to study a little harder. I studied during downtime at the clinic over a month. Nothing strenuous. I ended up scoring the same as Step 2, so I'm sure I could have done less.
 
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I started a thread about this last year that you might check out. Opinions are varied, but I think some studying is a good idea, but you don't need to kill yourself. I'd definitely look at the clinical vignettes part because that's stuff you can really learn in a relatively short period of time. The multiple choice part, imo, is more difficult and full of lots of stuff I hadn't touched on since my 3rd year of medical school. Taking it closer to your IM experience is a good idea. It also helps to be a decent test taker and to remember that most people pass.

Personally I spent about a month doing usmleworld questions for 1 to 2 hours a few nights a week. I attempted to read that kaplan book but found it entirely too detailed for me to digest in the limited time I had to study. I passed with an average score, which was significantly below my step 1 and step 2 performances. I guess what I'm saying here is that I might be more nervous if I had been closer to failing the previous exams.
 
I did USMLE World 2 times...read few chapters from CMDT...Psych from Kaplan CK...Played slot machine at local casino two consecutive night prior the exam..scored 80...Total time 3 months..average 1 hr daily.
 
digitlnoize said:
Any tips for psych residents taking COMLEX 3?
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COMBANK, Savarese, and First Aid for Step 2 were sufficient.

Make sure you know both the COMBANK and Savarese material well. There's a lot of overlap betwen Step 2 and 3, and some of the COMBANK questions were repeats from Step 2's q-bank.
 
I take COMLEX III in 11 days, nervous. Have just been doing COMQUEST questions, which I heard were a bit more like the real comlex than COMBANK, but both qbanks should be good. Then will go thru green Saverese OMM book. ANd will flip thru my Step 2 kaplan book to fill in gaps. Hope that's enough to get average.
 
I studied maybe 2 to 4 hrs most nights over a month. I think if you added up all my study hrs, it would come out to about 2 weeks worth of effective studying. I don't agree with the "number 2 pencil" line. I know 2 ppl both US grads who just failed and were kicking themselves for not studying a little bit harder. It is definitely not the level of studying I did for the Step 1's or even Step 2's, but I would not underestimate it. USMLE World was great for becoming comfortable with the program for the vignettes. I also read certain topics that for the life of me I could not remember anything about from Master the Boards. Hope this helps!
 
Day 1 done !! It was challenging for sure, but I feel I did well enough on the multiple choice part to pass. Let's see how tomorrow goes. At least the big stress is behind me. Whew....
 
Day 2 over. It's not an easy test, but maybe very passable? I believe so. Be sure to study though.
 
Hopefully we can get some updates on whether or not people have passed. Best of luck. I just finished some Kaplan question, but I think they were kinda old. I am going to start UWorld this weekend.
 
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Just took it. Feels a lot more like Step 2 than Step 1, except I only studied for a week. The cases were way better, more fun and straightforward than the multiple choice questions. We'll see if I passed, but I had a similar uneasy feeling taking it as with the prior steps, both of which turned out just fine when the scores came back. I'll be very happy if I never have to go through 2 8-hour days of USMLE again.

i think Uworld was excellent for learning the clinical cases (probably didn't get through enough of the multiple choice questions to make a huge difference there.
 
Bumping for those who have recent COMLEX experience. I'm assuming it's still Combank, Savarese, and MTB/FA? Taking mid June and don't want to geek it.
 
My place in the world did not change from Step 1 to Step 3. Got different scores but basically the same percentile.

I felt that Step 2 was harder than Step 1 as far as questions go because wards do not prepare you for a lot of stuff. You just don't have the exposure. Step 3 felt even more so. There were lots of soft-ball questions and Step 1 buzzwords, but there were also lots of "no freaking clue" questions. The MCQ part felt tough but the score showed that my one time through UW was enough to get the same percentile as the other steps.

As for the computer cases. What. The. Heck. Do the UW cases, find youtube vids of people doing them. Familiarize yourself with the style. If only so you don't go home for weeks thinking you've failed, only to realize you did average. The bar is low on them, so don't feel bad after. (even though you will...)
 
I scored 215ish and 230ish on Steps 1 and Step 2 CK. Not great, I know. I took Step 3 during my reapplication year and passed (score < 210) with maybe 2 months of good studying while working 3 days per week. I think if you're not good at these tests, you should give yourself some time. The cases are tough and there is a lot more biostats than I would've liked. I know many people who did great on Steps 1 and 2, but slightly below average on Step 3 because they didn't take it as seriously. I know of people who didn't pass. Good luck!!
 
Just took step 3 last week so I can chime in.

I have TONSSS of anxiety about "real medicine" because I'm not comfortable with a single organ system so I started studying 3 months ago, while being on internal medicine. I ended up doing 1200 of the uworld questions while on the wards and all the simulated cases. I feel like the actual test went okay (aiming for a 3rd percentile PASS lol), but by no means did I knock it out of the park.

Fingers crossed that I won't have to retake it/and I am done with internal medicine for the rest of my life!!
 
Monocles said:
Just took step 3 last week so I can chime in.

I have TONSSS of anxiety about "real medicine" because I'm not comfortable with a single organ system so I started studying 3 months ago, while being on internal medicine. I ended up doing 1200 of the uworld questions while on the wards and all the simulated cases. I feel like the actual test went okay (aiming for a 3rd percentile PASS lol), but by no means did I knock it out of the park.

Fingers crossed that I won't have to retake it/and I am done with internal medicine for the rest of my life!!
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Can i ask how it went? I'm in the same boat except I studied for 6 weeks. I took day 1 which felt not good (vague questions, biochemistry/step1 feeling questions), really felt I made some uneducated guesses. Now i've been trying these cases between the two test days (4 days to prepare total) and feel like the computer program is giving me more anxiety than I had anticipated. Any advice? I take it on tuesday and reading about all the medicine folks who have 40 letter long mneumonics to remember every case are scaring the heck out of me.

Thanks!
 
I did 50 questions / day and more on the weekends while on my 8-week neuro rotation and managed to finish the UWORLD question bank once and did most of the simulated cases. I felt pretty awful on the testing days but did ok (slightly above average). Those were the only materials I used.

I would advise spending more time on the simulated cases. Apparently there were also non-interactive ones (I think they came in PDFs) that I probably should have done, but that's about it. If you manage to get through the question bank which you can do with my above strategy, you'll comfortably pass. Good luck. 🙂
 
ExcaliburPrime1 said:
I did 50 questions / day and more on the weekends while on my 8-week neuro rotation and managed to finish the UWORLD question bank once and did most of the simulated cases. I felt pretty awful on the testing days but did ok (slightly above average). Those were the only materials I used.

I would advise spending more time on the simulated cases. Apparently there were also non-interactive ones (I think they came in PDFs) that I probably should have done, but that's about it. If you manage to get through the question bank which you can do with my above strategy, you'll comfortably pass. Good luck. 🙂
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I did pretty much the same thing. Way too anxiety provoking of an experience. Hoping for pretty much the same result. I'd even take just a squeak above passing, although it would mean a drop of 40 points or more.
 
DisorderedDoc417 said:
I did pretty much the same thing. Way too anxiety provoking of an experience. Hoping for pretty much the same result. I'd even take just a squeak above passing, although it would mean a drop of 40 points or more.
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I essentially got the same percentile score for all the USMLE exams, so if you did well before you have nothing to fear. I will say that I felt far more anxious about the results for Step 3 than anything else, but the outcome was the same. If you're like me, this reassurance will be ineffective until you actually see your scores, but let me assure you that you passed. 🙂
 
I did 1000 questions over two months and maintained my percentile score. I skimmed the interactive questions (forgot what they're called) and found them to be harder than the actual exam.
 
DisorderedDoc417 said:
Can i ask how it went? I'm in the same boat except I studied for 6 weeks. I took day 1 which felt not good (vague questions, biochemistry/step1 feeling questions), really felt I made some uneducated guesses. Now i've been trying these cases between the two test days (4 days to prepare total) and feel like the computer program is giving me more anxiety than I had anticipated. Any advice? I take it on tuesday and reading about all the medicine folks who have 40 letter long mneumonics to remember every case are scaring the heck out of me.

Thanks!
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204 pass! Didn't do as well as I felt but dm;sp (doesn't matter, still passed :soexcited:)
 
digitlnoize said:
Any tips for psych residents taking COMLEX 3?
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I barely passed, but I didn't study. I will say I have SEVERE performance anxiety, tried CBT when it worsened after I took the MCAT, it didn't extinguish throughout med school. I would get anxious just studying. I didn't study for step 1 or 2 and barely passed either. Our PD had us take them early in PGY 1 . I was done in about half the time, answered what I knew and guessed on everything else.
 
Did like 75% of qbank over the course of a month. Scored slightly better than step 2, slightly worse than step 1. Def could have cut studying down by 80% and been fine.
 
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Thought I'd complete one of the online question banks over 1-2 months. Maybe did 10-15% of the questions a few days before the test. Passed.

We should all be advocating for the end of step III / level III and pushing for states to realign independent medical licensure to coincide with passage of step/level 1-2 and graduation. No post graduate intern/residency year requirements.

With what ARNPs and soon PAs will have for full independent license, we have to no reason to hasten our demise by sticking to this antiquated test. Greater fluidity in practice for new graduates as GPs to pseudo support PA like positions is needed.
 
I worked through about half of the UWorld Qbank before I got fed up with it. I scored about 1 SD above the mean on step 1/2 and did very well on step 3.

Yes, there's a lot of step 2 CS-like questions from a variety fields that, without studying, you'll almost certainly forget, but there's a fairly large proportion of professionalism/ethics questions that are extremely easy and basically require no studying. Frankly, the most difficult thing about step 3 was, for me, the stupid interface of the mock cases. I don't know who designed that, but it was extremely dumb.
 
does anyone still have unused questions and time left on their subscription? I would like to buy uworld step 3 from you! pls let me know, i can pay via cashapp, venmo and paypal
 
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