the official COMAT shelf thread

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IM >110. Truelearn and COMQUEST were the only qbanks along with Zanki. Covered most of it, but there were some really off the wall questions that are characteristic of the NBOME. Looked a few up and even Sanford guide was riding the fence on a two of the antibiotic qs I remembered.
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I've heard EM is a crapshoot like the FM one. Anyone with advice for the EM COMAT?

ETA: Did fairly well on this COMAT (115) and found it to be far less ridiculous in content compared to the FM one. Did combank the morning of and thought it was pretty representative of the categories of things to pay attention to. Very little OMT on my form.
 
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Holy crap, that FM shelf doe....
 
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Did anyone take the IM comat recently? The average and SD was so high (104, 11) I'm wondering how people are hitting honors on it. Have been doing uworld exclusively but probably won't get through all the questions before the test :(. Any super high yield topics I should read from Step Up To Medicine prior to the exam (yeah, I'm a slacker, I know, but there's just not been enough time on the rotation to do questions booooo)?

Thanks!
 
Philotic said:
Did anyone take the IM comat recently? The average and SD was so high (104, 11) I'm wondering how people are hitting honors on it. Have been doing uworld exclusively but probably won't get through all the questions before the test :(. Any super high yield topics I should read from Step Up To Medicine prior to the exam (yeah, I'm a slacker, I know, but there's just not been enough time on the rotation to do questions booooo)?

Thanks!
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National average and SD for every COMAT is 100 and 10, respectively. I took it the first week of January, and I did Zanki, COMBANK and COMQUEST, exclusively. Didn’t quite finish comquest but still did great. I thought it was difficult and there are some questions that get down to the nitty gritty. It’s all over the place it seemed like, so a single high yield subject is hard to pin down
 
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Philotic said:
Did anyone take the IM comat recently? The average and SD was so high (104, 11) I'm wondering how people are hitting honors on it. Have been doing uworld exclusively but probably won't get through all the questions before the test :(. Any super high yield topics I should read from Step Up To Medicine prior to the exam (yeah, I'm a slacker, I know, but there's just not been enough time on the rotation to do questions booooo)?

Thanks!
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Haven’t taken it yet but am taking step 2 next week. Took me awhile to get my medicine scores up to over 65-75% on that section.
What’s helped me is figuring out which part of medicine is my weak areas and then do blocks of 30-40 of only that subject at a time in another qbank. Make your incorrects into anki. And watch those averages rise.
Maybe take an nbme subject exam on IM to see what you’re weak in too. Those are actually helpful.
 
NecFasc92 said:
Um... where in the world did you get that average and SD? The average is a 100 and SD of 10, per my report..

Honestly, I’d just keep doing Uworld, especially if you only have a couple weeks left. The comats are literally so random your best bang for time is uworld
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Our school goes by our school cohorts averages (they are usually a little higher than the national average), but usually they are not this high with such a high SD. To honors we have to get above 1 SD above the mean (usually 2-3 ppl in a cohort of 25 or so get honors for the comat).

Thanks, I'll keep working through uworld. Have a ton of Neuro questions left, and biostats lol.
 
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IntheClouds4ever said:
National average and SD for every COMAT is 100 and 10, respectively. I took it the first week of January, and I did Zanki, COMBANK and COMQUEST, exclusively. Didn’t quite finish comquest but still did great. I thought it was difficult and there are some questions that get down to the nitty gritty. It’s all over the place it seemed like, so a single high yield subject is hard to pin down
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Thanks for the info! Our school grades us based on the school cohorts averages, they must have had rockstars last cohort bc indeed the avg was 104 and the SD 11. Did you get a good combo of Level 1 and Level 2 stuff? I thought a lot of my renal questions in uworld were more like Step1 questions (ie identifying nephropathies rather than how to manage them), and I haven't done any comquest so was wondering if it was similar. Thank you!
 
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PathoTurnUp1865 said:
Haven’t taken it yet but am taking step 2 next week. Took me awhile to get my medicine scores up to over 65-75% on that section.
What’s helped me is figuring out which part of medicine is my weak areas and then do blocks of 30-40 of only that subject at a time in another qbank. Make your incorrects into anki. And watch those averages rise.
Maybe take an nbme subject exam on IM to see what you’re weak in too. Those are actually helpful.
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Good luck on Step 2! Sounds like you have prepared well! I am definitely making my anki cards (sooo many lol). I've been doing the questions by subject block just to get used to the topics that like to test for each. I might do an nbme, sounds like that could be productive, thanks!
 
Philotic said:
Good luck on Step 2! Sounds like you have prepared well! I am definitely making my anki cards (sooo many lol). I've been doing the questions by subject block just to get used to the topics that like to test for each. I might do an nbme, sounds like that could be productive, thanks!
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They are. They just don’t give you the explanations so you have to dig around in your favorite resource book. But thankfully the gods gave us control + F, so it’s not too bad.
Good luck!
 
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Philotic said:
Did anyone take the IM comat recently? The average and SD was so high (104, 11) I'm wondering how people are hitting honors on it. Have been doing uworld exclusively but probably won't get through all the questions before the test :(. Any super high yield topics I should read from Step Up To Medicine prior to the exam (yeah, I'm a slacker, I know, but there's just not been enough time on the rotation to do questions booooo)?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Took it in december. Only used comquest comat qbank and onlinemeded quicktables book (no videos). Got 127. However, I did use uptodate pretty consistently because our preceptor had us present on 3 topics daily.
 
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Philotic said:
Thanks for the info! Our school grades us based on the school cohorts averages, they must have had rockstars last cohort bc indeed the avg was 104 and the SD 11. Did you get a good combo of Level 1 and Level 2 stuff? I thought a lot of my renal questions in uworld were more like Step1 questions (ie identifying nephropathies rather than how to manage them), and I haven't done any comquest so was wondering if it was similar. Thank you!
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No. It was much more like Level 2 as far as management. Really have to pay attention to next best step and best confirmation test type questions. There are also some nitty gritty medicine questions that were definitely difficult. Looked up one question in Sanford antibiotics and even they were riding the line on my 50/50 guess.
 
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what's the usual turnaround for comat score release?
took one last friday and i still don't see anything on nbome website...does it sometimes take more than a week to get scores back? it's weird because it's been about a week of turnaround until now...
 
zarerocunu said:
what's the usual turnaround for comat score release?
took one last friday and i still don't see anything on nbome website...does it sometimes take more than a week to get scores back? it's weird because it's been about a week of turnaround until now...
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Mine have almost always been out that next Thursday or Friday. So idk.
 
Who’s glad to be almost done w these poop fests
 
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alprazoslam said:
Who’s glad to be almost done w these poop fests
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I have been fortunate enough to limit my exposure to poop during GenSurg and nasty vaginal stuff stuff during OBGYN. At this point, I'm so ready to be done with this crap and apply for residency next year. 4th yr is going to be awesome!
 
Bang out 110+ on that OMM COMAT, while having a 4 day weekend every week.

@PathoTurnUp1865 Muchas gracias to this stud for making this rotation a chill one for me with that OMM deck.

Did extremely well on the treatment aspect of the COMAT by making my own additional flashcards for ME, CS, and Stretch treatments.
 
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110 on psych COMAT with reading FA for Psych (on boring afternoons when I was done with work, but not allowed to leave), watching Emma Holliday on double speed once, and doing the Combank psych questions the morning of the test. This seemed to be one of the more straightforward COMATs. Uworld would be probably be the ticket to scoring higher.
 
TTPpentad said:
110 on psych COMAT with reading FA for Psych (on boring afternoons when I was done with work, but not allowed to leave), watching Emma Holliday on double speed once, and doing the Combank psych questions the morning of the test. This seemed to be one of the more straightforward COMATs. Uworld would be probably be the ticket to scoring higher.
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Not UW. UW was super easy for this section. comquest is ticket
 
NecFasc92 said:
I’ve seen you post a few times and you got some crazy scores !

Mind if I ask how you did on level 2/ step 2? My scores aren’t too far off from yours and I’m curious if the stats lined up with boards (since not every DO school takes the comats).

Thanks a bunch :).
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I got >680 on level 2 and >245 on step 2. I thought level 2 felt like all the COMATs combined. They had some strange questions on there.
 
Still a couple weeks away from the family comat. Finished the combank comat q's with an 80%. Going to read case files and do the comquest comat q's. Any other suggestions for this comat?
 
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C O M 2014 said:
I'm at the hospital like 11-12 hours every day. When do you people study? How do you have the time to go through Blueprints, Case Files, Uworld, all in 4 weeks while doing rotations? Crazy.
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Don't forget micro
 
Stephanopolous said:
Any advice or tips for the omm COMAT ?
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Pray you have an easier test. Mine was half okay and half wtf?? I felt like it was the worst COMAT I’ve taken and the most random. They had questions on treatment set ups I wasn’t familiar with and several exercising prescription questions.

sunshinefl said:
Ditto. Mine is on Monday, and it’s my 1st COMAT ever. Do they really not allow scratch paper with COMATs? That’s what our school said in an email.
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I guess it’s school dependent because we were allowed scratch paper on ours.
 
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moyamoya6 said:
Pray you have an easier test. Mine was half okay and half wtf?? I felt like it was the worst COMAT I’ve taken and the most random. They had questions on treatment set ups I wasn’t familiar with and several exercising prescription questions.



I guess it’s school dependent because we were allowed scratch paper on ours.
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Yikes - hopefully mine isn’t that bad but who knows.

We are allowed scratch paper for all of our comats
 
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I'm sure this has been asked a lot on here, but what is considered a "good" score for comquest? I've been scoring 70-80% on it but it feels harder than truelearn which I score in the 80s on. Didn't use comquest for level 1 so I don't know what to compare it to. Feels like an intermediate of truelearn and uworld.
 
PathoTurnUp1865 said:
I'm sure this has been asked a lot on here, but what is considered a "good" score for comquest? I've been scoring 70-80% on it but it feels harder than truelearn which I score in the 80s on. Didn't use comquest for level 1 so I don't know what to compare it to. Feels like an intermediate of truelearn and uworld.
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Bolded is very correct. I would just trust your percentile score. It was pretty accurate for me on Level 1
 
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sunshinefl said:
Yupp... just took mine today. First COMAT ever, at the end of M2. I had exactly 44 seconds to review all my marked questions lmaoo
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I’d like to say they get better but I’d be lyin. I barely finish every time and I finish blocks with 10 minutes left on Uworld lol comats are a joke
 
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finally finished with the comats and all I can say is that it never gets better..
 
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Is there any correlation with comats and COMLEX level 2? I've scored 110+ on all of them except peds and surg (103). Just wondering how much time i should give myself to study for both step and level 2
 
blah2468 said:
Is there any correlation with comats and COMLEX level 2? I've scored 110+ on all of them except peds and surg (103). Just wondering how much time i should give myself to study for both step and level 2
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No idea. I scored 120+ on all my COMATs except 3 and managed to get 680+ on level 2. I studied for step 2 for about 2.5 months while on light rotations, and I didn’t bother with studying for level 2 during that time period.
 
Lol failed omm comat a few years back still got 800+ level 2

Comats are complete junk I have heard residents write half the questions in their downtime for free

Tbh comlex is junk too just not quite as bad as the comats. The omm on level two/comat are ridiculous as we actually use omm in real life right ?
 
For any future students taking the surgery COMAT...know your GI and when to take people for an ex lap! Got a 118 using Combank and Emma Holliday the day before, but my gen surg service all month was already heavy GI and vascular surgery. I’d say it was one of the more straightforward COMATs.

For pimping questions, De Virgilio is golden. I ended up getting it from a friend towards the end of my rotation and only read two sections (hernia and vascular), but it got me all the pimping questions right for those surgeries I was in on, even seemingly obscure %’s I would have never known to look up or pay attention to otherwise.
 
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Anki friends, how did you approach your EM rotation? Any anki decks for it?

Also: advice for OPP comat? Our school has us take it on the last day of orientation. Unsure how to study for it. Will combank + green book be enough?
 
EspressoDrip42 said:
Anki friends, how did you approach your EM rotation? Any anki decks for it?

Also: advice for OPP comat? Our school has us take it on the last day of orientation. Unsure how to study for it. Will combank + green book be enough?
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For the opp comat I used the combank comat exam and OME videos and did really well on it. I know a couple of classmates who took the same approach and they all did really well too.
 
Anyone have any advice for the IM comat? Looking to just use Qbanks and one of the anki decks like Doc deck for the IM COMAT but I have no idea if that is a good idea or not. I'm at the hospital most of the day and don't really have a lot of time to study at nights and it's kind of freaking me out.
 
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AnatomyGrey12 said:
Anyone have any advice for the IM comat? Looking to just use Qbanks and one of the anki decks like Doc deck for the IM COMAT but I have no idea if that is a good idea or not. I'm at the hospital most of the day and don't really have a lot of time to study at nights and it's kind of freaking me out.
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Just used comquest comat qbank and ome. Got 127
 
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AnatomyGrey12 said:
Anyone have any advice for the IM comat? Looking to just use Qbanks and one of the anki decks like Doc deck for the IM COMAT but I have no idea if that is a good idea or not. I'm at the hospital most of the day and don't really have a lot of time to study at nights and it's kind of freaking me out.
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Combank and comquest, Zanki, and some ome was enough for honors..
 
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AnatomyGrey12 said:
Anyone have any advice for the IM comat? Looking to just use Qbanks and one of the anki decks like Doc deck for the IM COMAT but I have no idea if that is a good idea or not. I'm at the hospital most of the day and don't really have a lot of time to study at nights and it's kind of freaking me out.
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Same, but general surgery. Just finished 8 12s in a row, I have this weekend off, and then I have 12 12s in a row. Trying to study, practice surgical hand tying, suturing, 200 different surgical instruments by name and use, anatomy to answer my pimp questions, learn the procedures, learn the 5 different hospitals, 3 outpatient offices, and 2 surgical centers my surgeon uses, learn the surgeon’s role (cause that’s what the rotation is for), learn the assistant’s role (cause that’s what I’m physically doing), etc. I’m simultaneously assigned to the attending if he leaves my home hospital AND the residents at my home hospital. Its been grueling.
 
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