Took USMLE step II CK today

[berkeleyboy]

Sooo...just took the exam and I just wanted to give a little break down of my preparation of how I thought the test went.

The format, font, program, length of questions, and difficutly of the exam is almost exactly like UsmleWorld. IF I had to say which one was easier I would say the actual exam is slightly a bit easier than UW but than again...there have been many times on UW I had thought the set of Qs was really easy and I ended up getting around a 50%.

Overall, I probably guessed (or checked off and marked anywhere from 9-14 per block) so on average I guessed on about 11-12 per block out of 46 and was fairly confident in my answer for the rest of them.

I had problems with peds, CHF, and neuro on my exam. Almost half the peds questions I got were super tough, although it was one of my weaker subjects thru out my preparation.

CHF and cardio in general was tough for me, I had a lot of it too, as was neuro which I probably had like 10-15 Qs of where is the lesion type if the pt comes in with Right sided 3/5 weakness, upper extremity, 2/5 Left lower extremity ect....those Qs I was basically taking a random guess.

Overall I thought that cardio and neuro were heavily tested on my particular exam and it was mostly medicine. psych, peds, and OB were lightly tested. Surgery had only a few Qs I remember but they were really tough. Stuff I had no clue about.

Materials I used mainly UW and 2005 Kaplan lecture notes. I also have Crush but I didn't really use it.

Total prep time 5 weeks hard core. I guess I studied about 2 months+ in total if you include time I studied during my clinical rotations.

Read the kaplan books at least 3X overall while on rotations and during these last 5 weeks.

UW finished 2000Qs. I did it untimed, unused, and mainly by discipline...Medicine, peds, OB, psych, and surg...in blocks of 25 with overall score of 68%. I didn't do NBME or any practice tests...didn't have time. I only had 5 weeks off from my clinical duties so I took advantage of as much reading and Qs as I could in that time span.

If I could have studied over now after taking the exam. the exam is really really really similar to UW. I would just keep doing UW over and over again with maybe like 2-3 reads of kaplan untill I had UW down cold. That would have probably been the best preparation possible.

Anyways hope this helps,

Berk

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[Shane2150]

I took Step 2 CK yesterday, and I must agree with the OP... USMLE World was AWESOME preparation! Now, a disclaimer, I am the type of person who has great difficulty with the usual methods of study (reading texts, even review texts, make my mind go a-wandering), so I may not be the typical student. However, for what it's worth, I was struck again and again by how similar many of the Qs on Step 2 were to UW. I even wondered if UW was written on the sly by someone on the USMLE committee who wanted to make more money on the side...some of the questions were THAT similar. (Of course, the grammar would be better on UW if that was really the case)

Anyway, if I had to do it over again, I'd skim FA and do ALL the UW questions (only finished about half). I think spending time to read and understand the entire explanation for each UW question (even the ones you get right) are key. There's quite a bit of physiology/pathophysiology on Step 2, and UW does a decent job of going through that as well. I think that just about anyone preparing for Step 2 CK would be well-served to go through UW.

Just my opinion based on my experience!

 

[anamarylee]

Thank you both for your experiences. I take it tomorrow. I've done UW like you both described (reading the explinations of all the questions) and it really does help solidify concepts. I feel a little better now; I'm at the point where I wanna get it over with but the nerves are starting to act up at this hour.

 

[blackbird03]

When I took Kaplan Qbank for Step 1, I was not able to redo the questions already answered right or the ones I had created within a test.
How does UsmleWorld works?
Can you redo all the questions once you've done them all, as if erasing all your past answers?

thanx!

 

[anamarylee]

You can do blocks of questions from 4 areas: All questions, unused, incorrect and marked. You can't erase your past answers once you've done them. If you choose All questions after you've finished all the unused ones, the questions will be from the correct/incorrect ones. If you do Incorrects only, it'll create a test with questions you got wrong previously, but it won't eliminate the previous wrong answer, it'll add the new correct answer to your total of correct questions.

 

[Medical123]

I just finished Step 2 today. I didn't do USMLEWORLD, but I did Kaplan Q-Bank. I thought that the Kaplan questions were harder than the actual exam, and that the Kaplan topics did mirror the actual content of the exam. The vignettes on the USMLE were long and though I didn't run out of time, I was finishing each section with just enough time to spare.

However, I am not sure how I did on the real thing. There were several super-easy questions that anyone should have been able to get regardless of how much they had studied for the test. But, for each easy question there was a super-hard one to make up for it. On one block, I guessed at probably three questions. On another, I probably guessed at close to 20. However, I could narrow my answers down to 1 or 2 answers for the most part.

My exam seemed to be heavily Peds, Trauma, and OB/Gyn based. I had very few Psych questions. I had maybe one stats question per block---thank goodness! It didn't seem as if I had that many straight medicine questions on my test when compared with the other subjects.

There weren't that many off the wall questions. I thought that I had seen everything at some point. Major modes of study for me were First Aid, Kaplan Q-Bank, and the Kaplan notes. Good luck to all.

 

[Gumshoe]

The test was long but I felt I had perfectly strategized breaks, coffee drinking, and maintaining energy. My hardest block was the 2nd to last one. Mercy.

Anyway, I think the test covered everything fairly. What stands out is trauma (specifically people getting thrown from cars). It seemed like something always had to do with tamponade or pericarditis or contusion. Some questions were tricky/stupid. For example, a clear case of hypertension with K and Na out of wack that said and then asking where the lesion is (they had kidney and some other sites but not spec. adrenal) ... basically these were questions where the it was truly the most likely or "best" but it wasn't really what the disease process was. I could be wrong.

I did step 2 secrets, q book, q bank ~700 questions and usmleworld ~150

I had a few that were straight from those. Funnily, my first question was one I had just done the night before (it was as if in fact some espionage occurs with these question banks and the usmle). It was uncanny. I highly recommend secrets, q book is solid, and of the banks i'd go with usmleworld because of format, style, and slightly better educational tips.

In summary, it was straight forward, not so chicken $@# like step 1, with on avg. much shorter stems. If you study with questions you should be fine.

good luck

 

[Caffeinated]

My hardest block was the 2nd to last one. Mercy.

My toughest block was second to last also. I wonder if that's the block where they really figure out what we are made of.

I agree with what everyone else has said about USMLEWorld. Except for the "English as a second language" grammar, it looks and feels like the real thing.

 

[manning18]

Thanks for your informative post. Could you please elaborate a bit on what you thought of Q-Book? I am just starting to use it, while I review FA in more detail. How did the Q-Book questions compare to those on the actual exam? What would you consider a good percentage on Q-Book? I'm just trying to pass, so what percentage on Q-Book would you say puts one in the "safe zone" with regards to passing? Thanks!

The test was long but I felt I had perfectly strategized breaks, coffee drinking, and maintaining energy. My hardest block was the 2nd to last one. Mercy.

Anyway, I think the test covered everything fairly. What stands out is trauma (specifically people getting thrown from cars). It seemed like something always had to do with tamponade or pericarditis or contusion. Some questions were tricky/stupid. For example, a clear case of hypertension with K and Na out of wack that said and then asking where the lesion is (they had kidney and some other sites but not spec. adrenal) ... basically these were questions where the it was truly the most likely or "best" but it wasn't really what the disease process was. I could be wrong.

I did step 2 secrets, q book, q bank ~700 questions and usmleworld ~150

I had a few that were straight from those. Funnily, my first question was one I had just done the night before (it was as if in fact some espionage occurs with these question banks and the usmle). It was uncanny. I highly recommend secrets, q book is solid, and of the banks i'd go with usmleworld because of format, style, and slightly better educational tips.

In summary, it was straight forward, not so chicken $@# like step 1, with on avg. much shorter stems. If you study with questions you should be fine.

good luck

 

[Gumshoe]

if you do q book twice (second time not necessarily as slow a run-through as the first) you should pass that test, I think

It's hard to say about the book, because it isn't a screen and that's the style you remember on the test. Nevertheless, I learned a ton from clerkships even (shelf) with qbook, which are by and large harder than step 2. There're just more topics covered at a time in step 2s exam, obviously.

 

[trkd]

I take the beast on Friday. Thanks for the input from all! I am trying to figure out my study strategy for the next few days. I finished USMLEworld last night. Now, I am thinking I should just go through the ones I got wrong (or as many as I can) in tutor mode. Any of you do this? Helpful? This is instead of doing the last NBME (the first 2 were 228 and 229). I don't see much point in the 3rd besides bring me down if it doesn't go so well. Thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

 

[4424]

I take the beast on Friday. Thanks for the input from all! I am trying to figure out my study strategy for the next few days. I finished USMLEworld last night. Now, I am thinking I should just go through the ones I got wrong (or as many as I can) in tutor mode. Any of you do this? Helpful? This is instead of doing the last NBME (the first 2 were 228 and 229). I don't see much point in the 3rd besides bring me down if it doesn't go so well. Thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

i dont do the questions a second time only because i usually just remember the answer rather than actually know the answer. try doing qbook or nms for some extra questions, it can't hurt.

 

[trkd]

i dont do the questions a second time only because i usually just remember the answer rather than actually know the answer. try doing qbook or nms for some extra questions, it can't hurt.

yeah, i remember a lot of it as well. I have Mock Exam. Maybe I will crack that for the 1st time. Thanks.

 

[anamarylee]

I took my exam on Saturday. Only problems I had were:
1. I was told as soon as I signed in a Prometrics to take off my analog watch. New policy at Prometrics (he didn't specify if it's just my center or all the centers). This threw me for a loop for a second cause I had no way to track how much time I was spending on breaks away from the computer.
2. The electricity went out half way through block 6. All the computers and lights went out in the center. An employee came into the room and told us not to move from our stations. Another employee came by each station, turning each computer on one by one, then again one by one to put in the Windows password, then again a third time to unlock the computers and re-activate the exam software. It restarted right where I'd left off. Not the worse thing that can happen, but unnerving to say the least.

I took my test on a Saturday so parking was not an issue. However, they have this big sign at the door that if there's no parking available, you have to go to an office building outside the office park where Prometrics is to park your car. They fail to mention you have to pay for it by the hour.

I still can't believe a place dedicated to giving computerized tests doesn't have battery back ups for their computers.

Besides all this drama, I think I did fine. I did tons of UW (over 4,000 questions total) and found myself with plenty of time at the end of each block to review. It really helped me develop the stamina you need for this marathon of a test.

 

[anamarylee]

a

 

[j802002]

I took it today. Found it very similar to UW, a lot of blatant repeats. WTF is up with the MVA questions. My exam had so many more MVA questions than anything else. Other than that it was a pretty even mix of mostly Medicine. There were hardly any biostats and there was more psych than I thought there would be. Overall, there were only about 5 questions in the entire exam that I had absolutely no clue and had to guess. I marked 8-10 questions in each block but found I had plenty of time to spare. I have no idea how I did. We'll see what happens.

The power also went out in the middle of my exam. We left the room and waited for about half an hour for it to come back.

Good luck to everyone taking in the next little while.

 

[pillowhead]

power went out at the center where I took step I. it's pathetic that we pay so much for these exams and they can't even have back up batteries. it took them almost three hours to get the exams back which was more than just a little unnerving. it was traumatic.