Sorry to bring this back up to the top, but I got some updates. Some good some bad. Mostly bad.
I just finished NBME 13 and I got a 180 on it. The only subjects that were in the center were: Micro and Immuno, System blood and lymph, System skin, system general principles. Followed by: Genetics, Renal resp were the next "bigger" sections that were near the center. Literally every other subject was on the left. What's weird is that I hadn't even reviewed blood, skin or renal in FA yet.
The only good news is that before I had taken it, I pushed back my step to July 19th. And then with comlex, a bunch of my classmates spoke to the dean and the last day to take it now, is June 28th. So I moved my comlex to that.
To improve, I'm not really sure? I know the answer is UFAP. But, I'm at 56% done with uworld, 400 something pages into FA. Then that's about it. I have boards and beyond that I've started watching again and I feel that it is helping in explaining things but I have no idea what other supplemental study material I need.
If anyone has any additional thoughts, I'd appreciate it. I know I'll probably have to cancel step 1 but I might as well still keep it open as an option till the new date gets closer.
Update 5/18/17
Instead of making a new post, I'll just add a few things to this last post. My class and I had to take comsae D today; the cut off was 375. Anything under that and they'd compare your score to your class rank to see if you would be an at risk student. I ended up with a 400. So, I passed the cut off. Still no where near a good enough score but with my Comlex now set for June 28th and usmle on July 19th, I think I'll be able to pass or get an "okay" score on both.
I didn't really like the comsae D today, it felt like the questions were too easy even though I got a good amount wrong (I don't know how many, the report doesn't say). Another flag against it - we caught our favorite pharm professor hanging out and we asked her a few questions from the comsae. Every drug that we brought up as ones we never heard of "Oh, they don't even sell that drug anymore
" was her response and then she explained things as best she could. She got annoyed with the exam when she would say what the 1st line drug would be and we would respond - "Yah, that wasn't a choice" then the second DoC, "Yah, that wasn't on there either".
Update 5/31/17
Been studying hard like I'm supposed to. Down to 34% of uworld left but I do have some harder topics remaining, gi, heme, renal, resp. I was really banking on taking one of the comsae's around this point in time, but the company removed 1 of the 3 leaving only 2. I'm still underprepared and I didn't want to waste A or C, so I grabbed one of the -old- nbme and did that just to see if I knew content. Yes, I know don't trust the score and the exams are 100% different now. For me atleast, it still covers the same "topics" and if I don't know something, I'm not going to know it. And that proved to be true. I went up a lot compared to my first nbme, my first comment about the 180 was the converted step score, that was the nbme score. I think my usmle converted score was a 160ish? Anyway, using the formulas internet people suggested, my score went up to a usmle converted 197 this time. Or, another way to word it is I got right 120/200 questions on the first nmbe and this time I got 143/200. That's still really bad, I know. I know it's no where near passing.
But, it at least shows improvement on my part and I still have a full month until comlex and usmle is in july. So I still have a while to prepare. If I looked at the topics for this old nbme, I missed 11 renal, 7 heme, 7 immune, 5 neuro basic anatomy, 6 ish biochem types. And I hadn't even studied renal or heme yet so that's not the most awfulist thing ever. I was able to reason out and get some of the renal questions right. But, it looks like that's going to be a tough subject. I think I'll take comsae C some time around June 10th and see what I improved on or got worse on. Then around the 20th or so, I'll take comsae A.
It'll be rough studying at that point because mandatory classes last for a week 8-5, and then I have to move to a new state for rotations and live in a hotel for about a week because the landlord messed around and let the current tenant stay longer than they were supposed to.
6/12/17
Little late on my update, but I took Comsae C 2 days ago and bumped my score up to a 500. I thought I had done better since I knew a good amount. When I took it, I still hadn't covered GI or Heme (the last 2 sections of FA that I hadn't covered). And there was an odd amount of GI so that was strange. All my categories went up except for 3 went down (?) - physiology (I think that was because of all the GI), asymptomatic, and health care delivery issues. I can't even really figure out what questions would fit into those last two categories. A good amount of people on the comlex thread are saying not to bother with the score and to just focus on learning the material that was tested on. Which is a good idea, except for the fact that a lot of the comlex takers are saying how the comsaes couldn't be farther from being decent prep. So, I'm probably not going to take comsae A and instead focus on the topics that people are saying are high yield.
Just gotta keep studying and hope that I can at least pass. Because after that, I have almost 3 weeks of pure studying for usmle. And even as a DO student, I have to take it. I literally don't have a desire for what residency I want to do into, all I want is to get back to Texas. That's it. Problem is, the AOA has only 19 residencies, 3 are derm, and none of them are near the major city which is near my home. Compare to ACGME, there are hundreds of Texas residencies and a ridiculous amount that are in or near my major city. Thankfully, there are peds, IM, neuro, PM&R that are nearby. So as long as I get a 200. I might be able to go home.
6/27/17 @ 7:15 pm
Only a few more hours until I take COMLEX! Man it has been such a scary, rough ride. I am glad that after tomorrow - one test will finally be over with. I've been told that comlex has a high first time pass rate, so that helps. Then, from reading the comlex specific threads, it seems like this years batch of exams are falling under most of my strengths. So fingers crossed that tomorrow goes well and that even if I know the info, I don't fall for any trick questions. Like the question is giving all the info for Corynebacterium Diphtheria until one little thing says nope and the answer is C Diff.
