USMLE Step 1 - Last Minutes

[alapsi]

Hi,
I've been studying for the step 1 for a couple of months now. I'm taking my exams in about 2 weeks from now. I've gone thro' kaplan notes and the Qbank which i find to be very helpful. If any of you have taken the exam recently, i would like to know how the Qbank compares with the real test. also i want to know how the scoring works as in how many % of questions do i have to get right to make a 90 or so.
Also if you can give me a few last minute tips on what to stress on and 'do's and don'ts' that would be of great help.
Thank you so much!!!

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[turtleboard]

QBank questions follow the same general idea as the USMLE questions you'll encounter at Prometric. The big differences between what Kaplan does and what the USMLE will do are 1) the USMLE questions tend to have many, many more pictures/images for you to look at (whereas Kaplan QBank questions will often not have images to view) and 2) USMLE questions tend to be much, much longer. A typical USMLE question will be two to four paragraphs long while the Kaplan QBank questions tend to be two to six sentences long, or about one paragraph.

I found myself finishing 50 Kaplan QBank questions with 15 minutes or MORE to spare, but when it came time for the USMLE, I found myself finshing sections off with no more than 7 minutes.

It's definitely a test of time management on the USMLE, as well as how much information you can cram into your head.

And about your other question, if you mean to get to 90th percentile what percentage of the questions you would need to get correctly, I can't answer that. What I can tell you is that we were told that a passing grade on the USMLE (182 for US Med School students) was equivalent to a raw score of between 50 and 60%. Just so that you know, passing is considered 50th percentile.