Step II time pressure and difficulty

[ChocolateKiss]

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For anyone who has taken Step 2, is the timing and level of difficulty more similar to shelf exams or to USMLE world?

I have found USMLE world to be not at all time pressured (vs the shelves which were quite time pressured). I also think that USMLE is much easier than the shelf exams.

 

[FreakofMeds]

From my experience in Step 1, I noticed that USMLE world is less "time pressured" simply because it's a practice test and your life does not depend on it. My step 1 had a higher ratio of straight forward questions than USMLE world, yet I always had a tighter time constraint on the real step 1 than on USMLE world, because I spent more time even on the easy question for double checking purposes. So I would suppose given the fact that you would take your Shelf exams more seriously than USMLE world, it is expected that you would spend more time per question.

 

[tfom08]

Step 2 CK is easier than the shelf exams and UW is a close approximation to the difficulty level. I agree with you, the shelf exams contain more difficult questions and also have more time pressure than either UW or the real CK.

 

[AFDuck]

I was fairly time-constrained on both the shelves and step 2 ck, more so than on 46q blocks of UW when I was studying. I think step 2 ck has very few very short questions, whereas UW does have a few super quick q's each block.