Step 3 Scoring Question

[wacko0500]

I had a question about step 3 scoring. The test is broken down into two components. Foundations for independent practice (day 1) and advanced clinical medicine (day 2). In my practice tests I'm scoring 20 percentile for foundations for independent practice and 80 percentile for advanced clinical medicine. Will my overall score be an average of these two components or if you fail one test, do you fail all of step 3?

Thank you,

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[Unty]

I had a question about step 3 scoring. The test is broken down into two components. Foundations for independent practice (day 1) and advanced clinical medicine (day 2). In my practice tests I'm scoring 20 percentile for foundations for independent practice and 80 percentile for advanced clinical medicine. Will my overall score be an average of these two components or if you fail one test, do you fail all of step 3?

Thank you,

It will all be taken into account. The FIP, ACM and CCS. CCS is 25% of your score, so you should aim to rock it hard.

 

[steveme]

FIP, ACM and CCS all will be counted together and average is taken. However, please try to improve a bit more on basic sciences correlates which is truly the FIP portion.
In addition, doing really well on CCS will minimize your risk of failing. Basically, avery good performance on CCS will reduce the burden on MCQs.
I have read this analysis of score reports of USMLE Step 3 at this site and it does make perfect sense to strategically prepare and do very well on the CCS

 

[Unty]

Steveme

Thanks for that web link. For all future test takers or current takers what they wrote is very true and it will save a lot of headache and heartache if you are trying to pass this test.

But be careful and do not neglect MCQs. You need to get at least a borderline performance of MCQs and excellent performance on CCS to at least pass and maybe get a decent score. You may even get a less than borderline performance on the MCQs but in that case you have to do very well on the CCS. It is like a seesaw. If you do worse on the MCQs you better do very well on MCQs. If you do borderline on CCS you better do very well on the MCQs. The MCQs are harder to study for, so thats why im saying focus more on CCS.

All it takes is a few cases for you to not be able to manage and screw up to keep you from performing extremely well (stars in the far right area) on the CCS. You can practice a lot but if you get cases which you forgot how to treat or workup for some reason, it will affect your chances of performing in the excellent range (stars to the far right in the highest performance area). So if you bank on doing extremely well on CCS but you get cases you forgot how to manage, then you better hope that you can counter with a good performance on the MCQ.

Most of the cases will be from uworld with a few cases 3-4 that arent so you have to know how to workup different symptoms and presentations so you dont screw up these cases. Also, a good general knowledge of basic treatment will help you in cases that arent on uworld in that it will help you treat the patient so that the patient will get better. You also have to be ready to order the relevant tests to workup any cases that may not show on CCS. This is where your knowledge comes in handy.

In summary, Put most of your effort into CCS but dont neglect the MCQs is what im saying.

Good luck to all.

 

[steveme]

Thanks Unty. Yes, that is one of the reasons I am spending a lot of time on CCS. I am following ********** and UW CCS. ********** is great to know the approaches, new cases and strategies to make the most out of CCS software and UW CCS software is good for practice. I have compiled a list of CCS strategies here ( these are mostly taken from ********** workshop), please feel free to use the list. Good luck.