Hey all, I took my exam a couple of days ago, but i've been too scared to write about it. here it goes:
first off, thanks to all who have helped out in this forum ..and to those i annoyed with my relentless q's!
I thought the exam was A LOT like usmle world.there were some q's that were straight out of there, and i mean A LOT!!! i thought the level of difficulty was very comparable to UWORLD, and not too much like the esoteric q's of the nbme. for the most part, the exam was very straightforward. the difficulty of the exam lies in the answer choices: i've seen this posted before by other test takers, and i have to agree that it is very difficult to eliminate choices on the real exam. that is, you REALLY have to know your stuff, b/c unlike UW where you definitely can rule out the wrong answer choices, it's not really possible on the real exam. i had a lot of bread and butter questions, and hardly any "out there" q's. i think the nbme exams tended to ask about rare diseases and in a way that no one could decipher what they're trying to ask. "i.e. a kid has a rash + fever + purple feet,,,what is the worst possible complication of this disease in the next 2 months?"...what the hell is that? as for the real thing, it gave you a CLEAR CUT description of what they wanted you to know, and then proceeded to ask you questions with MULTIPLE correct answers, but you had to pick the best choice. i also had a lot of psych, cardio, pulm on my exam, and a lot of step 1/pathophys crap...(what is the mechanism of disease process). NEURO!! neuro was big on this exam/where is the lesion crap.
overall, i'd say it went ok. there was a lot of guessing involved, b/c after all, many answer choices could have been correct, and it was hard to pick the best one. i've read here that having a more difficult exam can be in your favor in terms of the "curve" that people talk about...i hope that's not true b/c i walked out of that exam thinking it was do-able (vs my step 1 expeerience = walked out of there with my ass handed to me/no idea what just hit me). so, with that all said, here are my stats:
STEP 1: 246/99 (i'm not smart, i just studied very hard during the Basic Sc courses)
nbme for step 2CK (exam number 3/picked it by accident): 192 predicted !!
UsmleWorld: first 30% ALL tutor mode (avg around 56%), and then did 70% strictly in timed, random 46q mode. The last 450 or so q's were b/z 70 and 85%. Final UW avg: 64%, no repeats.
Step 2Ck predictor: according to my last 6 UW random, 46q sets which avg'd to 72%, i got a predicted 239.
Step 2ck: TBA! i'll let you know. i don't think i broke any records on this exam, nor do i honestly think I even broke my step 1 score (esp since i didn't study nearly as diligently during my 3rd yr). it's been a few days and i really don't know what to think anymore, but i keep telling myself that it's over and will not have to deal with another exam for a long, long, long time...
best of luck to all test takers, and all those on the interview trail.
I will keep you posted,
foodcoma