Originally posted by yigit:
•The haven't said anything about shelf exams at my school, but I'm thinking that it is a good way to determine just how much I've learned. Our final exam isn't even cumulative. Where do I find them?•••
You actually cannot get a hold of copies of the actual exams, since the NBME has pretty strict rules regarding the exams. A school has to register with the NBME and tell them when they want to administer which exams and how many students will take them. The NBME will then send the number that the school needs about 2 days before the test date, and all exams are expeted to be returned back to be scored. The actual questions are confidential. We can't even find out which of our answers were right or wrong after we took the tests, since they never publish the questions or the answers.
As far as practice questions, you can try any good Boards practice question books. A good starting place is to check out First Aid for the USMLE Step 1. In the back it rates a whole lot of review books and practice question books in the major subject areas.
I personally found the Shelfs to be a relative waste of time, because you can't actually learn from them. Sure you get an overall score, but it's not broken down at all, and you can't even see what you got wrong. I'm glad that I had exams written by my professors throughout my preclinical years, because it was much more of a learning experience. We could at least *discuss* those exams, get our answers back, etc. Unfortunately, it's difficult to create good professor-written exams in the clinical years, so the shelfs are really the main option.