Step I DONE

[moo]

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OK, so I just got done with Step I. I got to the testing center a little past 8, although my test wasn't scheduled till 9. I was the first one there, and the lady told me to just sign in. After putting my stuff away and reading the blue sheet, she said that I could start.

So basically I thought the exam was pretty fair, although if there's one thing I wish I coulda studied more was mol bio! There wasn't too much hard core biochem on there but I think I shoulda studied something like HY Mol Bio or something. As for the breakdown, I'd say most of the exam was path, followed by micro/immuno, pharm, physio, mol bio, BS, very few embryo, some anat. Micro/immuno was fair for the most part--couple q's on fungi, NO PARASITES, pharm was OK, there weren't a lot of times where I was like I'd never heard of that drug before (and I used only FA and knowledge from class). Physio was fine, loved the graphs. Mol bio as I said was tough, although there were a few questions which required absolutely no knowledge of cell bio and was more of an "IQ" type of question. Anat was mostly pictures, although I got a lot of upperlimb stuff. BS I thought was tough... the quote questions weren't the obvious ones I was expecting like out of qbank.

Sources:

Path: used BRS
Pharm: used FA exclusively... you don't need to know anything beyond this... REALLY
Micro: MRS, with FA for parasites, Lange for fungi
Immuno: Lange, great book
Anat: FA and select sections out of HY
Embryo: FA and select sections out of HY
Physio: BRS
Biochem: FA and HY
BS: HY
Question sources: Qbank and BSS. I actually quite liked BSS... thought it was challenging and taught me a lot. Hated qbank though. If I had to do it all over, I'd just do q's out of BSS and not qbank.

Good luck to all still takign it. I'm outta here!

 

[Stinger86]

Congratulations, moo! 🙂

 

[MedPuck]

Rock on Moo! I agree about Molecular Bio, should have remembered it was a subject 😀 Congratulations and go out and celebrate!!

 

[JohnnyVegas]

How many pages on Immuno in the Lange book? I need to get something for Immunology. Thanks.

 

[sunmoon]

pages 350-430 around 80pages in 7th edition. It is a quick read if you have good basics.

 

[Willamette]

Congrats MOO!!!! You're obviously not the only one who got surprised by mol. bio...I'm hoping they make up a large chunk of the experimental questions! Now if we could just get our scores...


Willamette

 

[mountaindew2006]

just curious...by Mol Bio do you all mean DNA, transcri, translation stuff?

Because it seems mol bio can range from mitosis up ? 😎

 

[lindyloohoo]

ya'll keep talking about mol bio. what did they have on the test? from kaplan it looks like mol bio is dna transcription, translation, cell cycle, gene expression/regulation, and genetic engineering. For me, some of this stuff is a review from a horrendous molecular genetics class in undergrad that killed my social life for the entire semester (stupid for sr, year I know.) is that what you all are considering mol bio? the genetic engineering is still a bit of a mystery to me though (and i did research in it...why didn't i pay attention to WHY i was running those PCRs and gels?!?!?) just checking in so i can feel ok about one subject on this crazy test other than path. thanks for the help!!

 

[rxfudd]

I'm wondering the same thing - do you mean more along the lines of genetics, cell signaling, cell bio (like SER, RER, things like that)? Can anyone be a bit more specific than simply molecular bio?

BTW, congrats on being done moo and thanks for the great info.

just curious...by Mol Bio do you all mean DNA, transcri, translation stuff?

Because it seems mol bio can range from mitosis up ? 😎

 

[PACtoDOC]

I too took step One today and it was not too bad. But, if i had to have studied something more in depth it would have been Immuno and Mol Bio. You simply have to know transcription, translation, and protein sorting COLD. You also better know everything about T-cell and B-cell activation and function. I would seriously consider using a source other that First Aid for these 2 topics.

Pharm was really easy
Anatomy was pretty simple
Embryo was non-existent for the most part
Micro was high yield but fair
Patho was not typical "Buzzword" Path, but doable
BS was iffy, meaning not horrible but still unpleasant
Behavioral was absolutely the easiest. Just use common sense.
Physio was not too bad.

MAKE SURE YOU DO THE RELEASED ITEMS AND READ ALL THE CHOICES. THAT WILL GET YOU ABOUT 10 FREE QUESTIONS DIFFERENTLY WORDED BUT SAME CONCEPT.

Best of luck to everyone and keep praying we all get 182!!!! I'll answer any specific questions and I will also reply with my score and more on my history of studying when I get my results.

 

[Stinger86]

just curious...by Mol Bio do you all mean DNA, transcri, translation stuff?

Because it seems mol bio can range from mitosis up ? 😎

Mainly everything that has to do with DNA, RNA, proteins (i.e. molecular genetics). FA gives you a general overview of the kind of important things you need to know, but I'm glad I didn't just study FA for that stuff, because my questions required a more detailed source

 

[moo]

Yes I echo the above posters on mol bio. Read HY Mol bio. HY biochem is NOT enough. Neither is FA. I regret not having bought HY mol bio. In my mind it's more High yield than the biochem stuff.

Like I said though, there are some mol bio questions that were very doable even if you knew absolutely nothing about the subject. You can peruse the answers and it becomes really obvious which is the correct answer choice, so don't be too stressed if you get a question where you're like WTF are they talking about.

 

[mountaindew2006]

I'm wondering, if the Kaplan Biochem book is sufficient? It's rather hi yield I think and it's very greatly written ( I loved Dr. Hansen, she was awesome). Do you guys think that's enough? i really dont want to go and buy another book (HY mol bio) at this point. I mean if its just transption, tanslation, DNA ('just' as in I still have to study it all) i'm assuming the kaplan biochem is good enough???

 

[MissMedicine]

whats bss?

 

[Med4ever]

board series simulator. Has 3850 questions. Having done q bank and some bss stuff. BSS is alot better personally, i found the explanations alot more detaield and in depth, that being said I would use the questions to learn concepts not memorize details, they ask some stuff I cant eevn look up LOL.

 

[Jalby]

Wow. All this talk about molecular bio is making me glad that I did two years in grad school of biochem. Hooray. Back to studying. Congrats moo, another loooooooooooooong time poster.

 

[nuclearrabbit77]

i wonder if the mol bio questions are constitute a big portion of the experimentals.

 

[nuclearrabbit77]

\ BS I thought was tough... the quote questions weren't the obvious ones I was expecting like out of qbank.

i hate BS quote questions.

 

[m3shocker]

With the new slant towards mol. bio/genetics, Are you guys saying there are more application type questions regarding genetic techniques like PCR, polymorphisms, FISH?

I cant see how undergrad mol bio (replication, transcription, translation) and bacterial genetics is tripping people up.

Thanks

 

[12R34Y]

okay...........this is not meant to further confuse future step 1 testers, but...

I had very very little mol. bio on my exam. i did have some very hard genetics (mol. bio) questions, but only a very very few. we're talking less than 10 or so. they weren't all over the top either.

just reminding everyone that EVERYBODy's tests is different. many have lots of one thing and nothing of something else.

stinger had way more anat, neuro and embryo than i did.

however, it obviously wouldn't hurt to cover all of your bases anyway. just remember not to freak out. you never know what you'll be asked.

I memorized all of those biostats equations and had maybe 5 calculations and that is including a couple of physio equations. so as you can see i could have gotten away with NOT studying stats at all, but you never can tell.

later

 

[phllystyl]

My question is... is BRS biochem's chapter on mol bio sufficient? Stinger, you used BRS right?

I had a pretty strong undergrad courseload in bio/molbio/biochem, but its also been 4 yrs since ive graduated 😉

 

[Stinger86]

My question is... is BRS biochem's chapter on mol bio sufficient? Stinger, you used BRS right?

I had a pretty strong undergrad courseload in bio/molbio/biochem, but its also been 4 yrs since ive graduated 😉

I think I may have been the only person to have used BRS Biochem 😀 , but I liked it. The molecular genetics section was perfect for the kind of questions I had on my exam. The carbohydrate metabolism chapter is very complete as well. Given that you have a sound background in the material, you might really like BRS Biochem because it's pretty in-depth, but it's probably all stuff you've seen before.

 

[moo]

I didn't mean to cause mass panic, but I've been thinking (and hoping) that the mol bio stuff may be experimental. I mean, if the majority of us were thrown off by that, it could be the NBME will toss it out or use our scores as the curve for future exams. Just a thought.

 

[phllystyl]

I think I may have been the only person to have used BRS Biochem 😀 , but I liked it. The molecular genetics section was perfect for the kind of questions I had on my exam. The carbohydrate metabolism chapter is very complete as well. Given that you have a sound background in the material, you might really like BRS Biochem because it's pretty in-depth, but it's probably all stuff you've seen before.

Oh I did use it for my review. I used it for my course and liked it then, too. I cant learn biochem without seeing where the carbons/electrons/hydrogens are going 😉

Glad to hear its kinda sufficient, dont know if Ill have time to get to HY MolBio,...

Though the theory that all of this being experimental seems like it might be true, what with almost everyone getting this kind of skew, it sounds.

 

[CANES2006]

I didn't mean to cause mass panic, but I've been thinking (and hoping) that the mol bio stuff may be experimental. I mean, if the majority of us were thrown off by that, it could be the NBME will toss it out or use our scores as the curve for future exams. Just a thought.

I hope it is experimental too! I thought some of those molecular bio. questions were right off of left field. 😱

 

[Jalopycat]

I took step 1 today too. I'll just say that I think I got the genius edition because my test was really hard! The path was really hard, there was TONS of biochem that First Aid didn't touch, and I had quite a bit of anatomy that I don't think First Aid covered either(review the carpal bones if you forgot them!). I'm glad I supplemented First Aid with the Kaplan lecture notes, but now I wish I had looked at the lecture notes one more time.

I did 70% of qbank and then did one of the NMBE self assessments 2 days ago to make sure I would at least pass. I scored a little bit below the mean, but I was okay with that. After today, I'm really afraid I'll be the first person to pass the practice test and fail the real thing. My test was much more difficult than qbank or the NMBE practice test. The questions were a lot longer and I barely had any time left at the end to look again at the ones I wasn't sure of.

At least the pharm and the behavioral science was easy. I never thought I'd find myself praying for more pharm questions!

I hope I'm not scaring anyone. Maybe I just got an extra hard test and it will be scaled, but if you have time to review something other than First Aid, do it!!!

 

[PACtoDOC]

Although I did not believe it before I took the exam, I do honestly now believe that there are various percentages of different subjects on each exam. Because I know I did not have that exam with the hard biochem. I think we just have to trust that the harder exams get scaled differently. Who knows how the USMLE Oz determines our grades for real. That is as busy a mystery as anything in life right now!! I am just trusting in my past performance and not allowing myself to stress over it too much. Of course a few prayers don't hurt either!!!

 

[NebelDO]

the Usmle grading system has become the 8th wonder of the world... 🙄

 

[Stinger86]

I didn't mean to cause mass panic, but I've been thinking (and hoping) that the mol bio stuff may be experimental. I mean, if the majority of us were thrown off by that, it could be the NBME will toss it out or use our scores as the curve for future exams. Just a thought.

I'm sure there might be a few mol. bio questions that are experimental, but I doubt most of them are. Remember that just because a question or topic is difficult doesn't make it experimental. You could get 50 or so REALLY easy questions on your exam that are all experimental, and therefore don't help you at all. This is what I'm kinda worried about. 🙁