Long time lurker, thought I would post my experiences from my exam and how I studied. Will update once I have my scores.
Study time: 6 weeks total
UWorld:
I did all of Uworld during my rotations during third year, my average was 69%. I made a document of 300 pages-ish with notes from each question.
Reset the bank during my specific study time, ended up with a 78% this time around; last 10 blocks 80s mostly, some 90s and 70s scattered in there. I didn't care too much about %, as I thought I would much rather get something wrong and learn from it then obsess over my score! During this time, I would do two blocks a day (sometimes 3 if I was feeling ambitious, sometimes 1 if I was burned out) and every day I would read 10 pages of my document with my notes, and every time I would get to a concept I wasn't 100% sure on or didn't remember all of the details to I would search it in Step up to medicine (or uptodate), just read over the section quickly, jot down anything I felt like was very helpful or important by the question and then keep going. Rinse and repeat every single day. What a grind. As I was doing my blocks of uworld, I would also go back to my document and search the question and jot down any notes I thought I needed added from the answer I got from world. Ended up making it through my document 2 times (maybe 3, I wasn't keeping track) and that final time through I started writing down the "things I still can't seem to remember". I reviewed this set of notes the two days leading to my exam. Tedious tedious tedious, but I am not one of those people that reads things and just gets it! Also read through some of MTB2/3 but honesty I think I just made it through the IM section, maybe the surgery section and peds but didn't have time to finish the whole thing. Meh, there's only so much you can do.
NBME:
School administered nbme 6 week from my test/ start of prep: 216
NBME 4 (3 weeks out): 248
NBME6 (2 weeks out): 260
Free "150" (120...) two days out: 88%
Test day:
I know this is what everyone says, but man... I do not feel good about this test at all. The night after my exam I could barely sleep, I kept remembering questions I got wrong (10-12, just completely wrong answers... and they were not hard questions... these were the gimmes, so imagine how that hard ones actually went... who knows). I just felt steam-rolled. On all the Uworld and NBME practice I took I would always have 10-15 min left over to review marked questions. Here, I was barely finishing in time-- at most I would have 3-4 minutes to go back to some of the marked questions, but not all and even then I would read the question again and still think "wtf, no I have no idea, just leave what you have"
😡. Also, if I have to scroll to read the question... I think it's a tad long. A lot of questions had multiple sets of labs, I remember getting to one and mentally being like "oh dear god, what is this"
. I tried to stay calm, keep trucking. I took a break between every single section, ate some chocolate and took a few sips of my coffee. I left the center, got into my car and cried all the way home. Perhaps from the exhaustion, but mostly from the awful nauseating feeling I had after this test. I had hoped for a huge surge of relief after so many weeks of studying. Anyways, I went into this exam thinking I think I can dominate, I think I can get a 240, Ive worked so hard, maybe maybe I can pull this off. Left the exam hoping to be above a 220 honestly.
The wait is brutal, and honestly I don't know what more I could've done. I think I could've studied for another month and still walked out of that exam feeling about the same. Hope you guys had better experiences. Fingers crossed, lots of prayers, and will update when I get my score.
🤔
