Step 1 Practice Exams

[bostonguy911]

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[bostonguy911]

anyone?

 

[kypdurron5]

Crap, I was hoping to see some responses to this! Most of the "guides" I've found for step 1 include mention of taking shelf exams 1-3, with 2 or 3 being the most like the exam. I just went to do it today and realized they now have 7(!) available....

 

[bluntdissector]

Crap, I was hoping to see some responses to this! Most of the "guides" I've found for step 1 include mention of taking shelf exams 1-3, with 2 or 3 being the most like the exam. I just went to do it today and realized they now have 7(!) available....

I'd forget about NBME 1 and 2.
I did 4,5,6 I think. All pretty damn good. I won't do one in the last week - try and build up your confidence, regardless of whether it is justified! 🙂
UWSA was pretty good too.
Free 144 done 2 days out and checked the wikitestprep table to predict.
Used Clinical Review predictor (got my score 100% correct)

 

[kypdurron5]

I'd forget about NBME 1 and 2.
I did 4,5,6 I think. All pretty damn good. I won't do one in the last week - try and build up your confidence, regardless of whether it is justified! 🙂
UWSA was pretty good too.
Free 144 done 2 days out and checked the wikitestprep table to predict.
Used Clinical Review predictor (got my score 100% correct)

Where is the "clinical review predictor" you're talking about from?

 

[bluntdissector]

Where is the "clinical review predictor" you're talking about from?

SDN won't let me post the link, so just google it!
🙂

 

[kypdurron5]

SDN won't let me post the link, so just google it!
🙂

Thanks, I'll check it out!

 

[illixir]

I'd forget about NBME 1 and 2.
I did 4,5,6 I think. All pretty damn good. I won't do one in the last week - try and build up your confidence, regardless of whether it is justified! 🙂
UWSA was pretty good too.
Free 144 done 2 days out and checked the wikitestprep table to predict.
Used Clinical Review predictor (got my score 100% correct)

What is specifically wrong with NBME 1/2? Is it not a good predictor, is it too easy, or are the questions not good? I'm curious since I'm gonna do them regardless but want to know why they should be treated differently than the other ones I do.

 

[kypdurron5]

What is specifically wrong with NBME 1/2? Is it not a good predictor, is it too easy, or are the questions not good? I'm curious since I'm gonna do them regardless but want to know why they should be treated differently than the other ones I do.

I believe the going logic is that they're the oldest and therefore are least likely to reflect the test as it is today.

Just took #7....I did soooo bad! 🙁

 

[bluntdissector]

Honestly I can't give you a nice short reason why I personally left out 1 & 2, but since I was never going to do all of them, I ran a few SDN searches and tried to see what most people say about the NBME's. If I remember correctly (and it's been a while) the fact that the NBME's consist of retired USMLE Q's means that the first forms are the 'oldest of the old', and could POSSIBLY be less accurate in assessing one's progress. However, it could be that they change the Q's if, for example, a drug get's taken off the market, etc. Another thing -> I think that few people do form 1 (at least on SDN) and as such it is difficult to know much about it, whilst forms 4-6 get done quite a lot, which means you can see that person X got a 241 on Form 4 and a 240 on his test, which is reassuring...

🙂

If you are going to do ALL the NBMEs and both the UWSAs, then sure, I'll do 1 & 2. But if I had to start leaving forms out, those are the one's I'll leave out first!

 

[kryptik]

There have been stories of some of the nbmes showing up on the real thing verbatim. That alone makes them all worth doing.

 

[kypdurron5]

There have been stories of some of the nbmes showing up on the real thing verbatim. That alone makes them all worth doing.

I'm sure that's true of almost every question bank though- I mean, seriously, there are only so many ways you can ask one question- and there are many questions that are just so fundamental that they're going to be asked every time in one form or another. Personally, I didn't find the NBME that helpful- it took forever looking up the questions I wasn't sure about, and for several of them I've found conflicting information with both answers being choices. So in the end I spent a lot of time without learning that much... At least with question banks you get explanations to not only the question, but sometimes clues to what the question would look like for the other answer choices as well. So in the end it's $45 a pop to see questions that were thrown out and get an estimate of how you're going to do... Neither one of those things is that helpful for test-prep IMO (at least not over question banks that have explanations).

 

[DoctorCR]

I sound like a broken record around this forum, but everyone keeps asking about which qbank to use. There are better options than Kaplan qbank or usmleworld.