Scores pre and post intensive study period

[vikrom]

Hey Guys,

What would you say your score increase was from the beginning of your study period until the real thing? Is it unreasonable to see an increase of say 40 points once you've gone through the intensive period?

I know it's variable from person to person - some people start off getting 250's on their NBME's 5 weeks out - but I just wanted to get an idea of what kind of starting points some people were at.

Thanks

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[shan564]

40 points is definitely not unreasonable, depending on where you're starting. I haven't taken the real thing yet, but before I started my intensive study period, I got a 192 on UWSA1 (which supposedly overestimates your real score). After about a month of intense study, I got 230 on UWSA2 (which is probably also an overestimate). A couple of weeks after that, I got 228 on NBME 11. That was before I started the DIT course, which claims an average 3-digit score increase of 15%... which sounds a bit overly optimistic, but even if I go up by half that number, I'd be 50 points higher than UWSA1.

 

[johndoe3344]

In our school, we take a school administered CBSSA right before the intensive period. Our school gives us about 6 weeks to study. The class average of the CBSSA for this year was about 185. Statistically, our school performs slightly above the national average for the Step 1... so the average student from our school would have a score increase of ~40 points over the course of the 6 weeks of intensive studying. However, from my experience (people I've talked to, etc.) people that start at a higher score tend to see a lower score increase. So if you started at a 230, I highly doubt you'll be seeing a 270 after 6 weeks of studying.

 

[mdeast]

As others have stated, I think it definitely is possible but depends on the situation. I know people who started at 190 and got in the 250s. If you're starting higher, it's obviously going to be harder.

If your reason for a lower score at the beginning is a general lack of conceptual understanding, those detriments are going to be harder to overcome in say 6 weeks. If your score is low because you haven't properly memorized things (i.e you haven't memorized drug interactions, microbes, formulas, specific gene mutations, etc.) these are the things that can be easily remedied in 6 weeks and produce huge improvements in your score.