USMLE hard versions, easy versions?

[J-whoa]

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I just took the boards yesterday and I felt like my test wasn't that much harder than say the nbme practice tests whereas a couple of friends thought that their tests were much harder.

Just curious, does anybody know how the tests? I heard somewhere that they have around 15 different tests and I assume they standardize scores within those tests? And I guess some tests could be more or less hard than other tests?

 

[Whats_up_doc]

I just took the boards yesterday and I felt like my test wasn't that much harder than say the nbme practice tests whereas a couple of friends thought that their tests were much harder.

Just curious, does anybody know how the tests? I heard somewhere that they have around 15 different tests and I assume they standardize scores within those tests? And I guess some tests could be more or less hard than other tests?

Could you please share your experience? Appreciate that.👍

 

[J-whoa]

right sorry should have done that to begin with.

I started out with a ton of resources but really ended up using:
FA 2009
UW (56% completed, avg 75%)
BRS Phys
Goljan Path
HY Neuroanatomy
HY Behavioral Science
RR Micro - mainly for the immuno

NBME4 five weeks before test: 215
Practice Free questions 3 weeks before: 84%
NBME5 two weeks before test: 247

I think what ppl say about using world and FA as your main study sources is really true. World questions were actually so similar to the boards that while i was taking them i almost forgot I wasn't doing world.

My advice on boards studying, most of which has already been said:
1) do tons of questions! - If I had to do it again, I would actually set aside time for world. Their explanations are actually really good and a good way to learn material. It takes a while to actually go through their answer explanations, like for a one hour question set it would take me like two hours to get through all the answer explanations if I wanted to do it thoroughly.

2) totally focus on memorizing FA but also do read outside FA if the material isnt fresh. It just helps to gain a little background on the facts in FA so it makes more sense to you and you retain it better. Its pretty hard at least for me to review a subject that I havent seen in a while with straight FA.

 

[Cliff Huxtable]

Great tips. When you say UWorld questions are similar do you mean in terms of concepts, question style, content ?

Btw, I don't think you will be able to get a definitive answer to your question since no one really knows.

 

[Cliff Huxtable]

Lastly, do you think FA2009 + UWorld would be enough or should I read RR Path again (I'm in the home stretch and I read RR Path a few weeks ago but don't remember anything)?

Sorry for double post.

 

[J-whoa]

Hmm I would say world does cover some material that seemed a little beyond that scope of first and second year/ boards centric. I heard that they actually try to include a little bit of more advanced clinical details just so you're extra prepared or something. So i wouldnt stress out too much if some of the world material is totally unfamiliar.

But the question style, question stem/ prompts, and format of world is totally similar to usmle. They did such a good job i wonder if they're literally like stealing board question writers or something.

Also i wanted to emphasize that it actually is good advice to memorize FA. And by memorize I mean like literally like you can recite certain important pieces from FA if somebody asks you --> like cell markers, the IL factors, drug side effects, G protein crap. For some reason usmle actually cares about these little details.

 

[SeminoleFan3]

I just took the boards yesterday and I felt like my test wasn't that much harder than say the nbme practice tests whereas a couple of friends thought that their tests were much harder.

Just curious, does anybody know how the tests? I heard somewhere that they have around 15 different tests and I assume they standardize scores within those tests? And I guess some tests could be more or less hard than other tests?

While I'm sure that there are many different versions of tests (or at least loads of different questions), I think one's feeling of how they did on the test depends on some of the material they saw. For example, maybe your test had subjects in which you were stronger in vs your friends' tests that had material they might have been weaker in.

 

[Cliff Huxtable]

Basically memorize all the tables full of tidbits?

 

[J-whoa]

Yeah they do actually ask questions about cancer markers, cyclic adenylate inducers, so I would memorize those tables cold. Also drugs cold. For path I would definitely memorize FA to get a sense of the important points of each disease / condition but I wouldn't necessary be super anal about memorizing every single symptom of each of those diseases -- just the high yield associations. I think understanding the pathology is more important.

I personally wouldnt go through goljan again if i were limited on time - the way i planned my studying i wanted to review through FA completely and thoroughly right before i took the test. It actually to me about 5 days to do it because i hadnt previously done the best job of completely memorizing things.

 

[Cliff Huxtable]

Cool so there wasn't stuff in RR that wasn't in FA on the test?

 

[J-whoa]

I think there were some points that i picked up from RR but it dont think it would be high enough yield to read through all of RR again in the last couple of days