UWorld (1st pass - during 3rd year rotations) - 70%
UWorld (2nd pass - during board study) - 81%
NMBE 2 - 256 (6 days in)
NBME 4 - 262 (2 weeks in)
UWorld SA - 268 (3 weeks in)
I mainly used UWorld as my primary study tool. I also used Secrets and I read half of Step Up to Medicine. I really spent my first week reading different books trying to find the one I thought was best. I tried First Aid, Secrets, Step Up to Step 2, and Step Up to Medicine. I really, really did not like Step Up to Step 2. I thought it was way too short and riddled with mistakes. I think this might be a good book if used along with DIT, because he would add to it and correct the mistakes. However, I would steer clear of this unless I was doing DIT. Overall, I felt Secrets and Step Up to Medicine were the best. So I spent the 2nd week reading these 2. I only finished 1/2 of Step Up to Medicine. I had to set it aside the 3rd week in order to study OMM for the COMLEX. The final week I spent going over my notes from UWorld, Secrets again, and the questions I missed on UWorld.
Overall, I felt this test was tough. The first block, I think I marked around 12 and I was pretty shocked. It got a little easier on the 2nd block, and blocks 3-6 were pretty straight forward. 7 was a little tougher, and I felt like I got totally owned on the last block. I think I marked like 17! I think it was mostly fatigue, I was beat down. Afterward, I wanted to double check where they were sending my test results, and I needed to write down my address. I had to think really hard to remember my address, so needless to say I was pretty tired. I think the last block totally screwed me.
I have my own opinion on timing. I think when you are studying (Uworld, NMBEs, whatever) you are much more likely to pick an answer and go with it. However, on the real deal you agonize more over every answer and you double check more. I think this is what slows you down more and makes the timing worse. I never had problems with timing on UWorld or NBMEs, but I definitely had a couple of blocks where I barely finished in time and wasn't able to go back and check the ones I marked.
There were more gimmes on the actual test than on UWorld or the NBMEs, but there were also tougher questions than on either of these. I felt the tougher questions were tough either because of a lack of information or because of a flood of information. They would give you 5 or 6 problems and make it really complicated and you weren't sure which was causing the issue or which to address first. I felt like I had a large amount of OB. If I could do one thing different it would have been to study more OB. I felt like this was overly represented on my test, and much of it was very tough. A lot of it was kind of weird stuff, like the woman was home and had a baby last week, and then stuff starts hitting the fan. I had some wild questions that I wasn't sure about (ex: Who is more likely to get AIDs - the pitcher or the catcher? lol. I dunno). Overall, I thought the test was extremely tough. My goal going in was 260+, but I don't think there is any way I did that. I would be thrilled with anything over a 250, and I really, really hope it isn't lower than my Step 1 (mid 240s).
If I could do it again. I would stick with UWorld of course, and definitely Secrets. I wish I had more time to use Step Up to Medicine, and I would have added something for OB. I definitely could have studied harder. I was scoring well on my practice tests, and I think that may have given me a false sense of security. Good luck to everyone.
