uworld medicine vs shelf exam

[Newyawk]

I was wondering how similar uworld medicine is to the shelf exam. the questions seem awfully path/ophys based and not a lot of critical thinking in terms of management.

also anecdotally, whats the correlation of success in the qbank and on the shelf?

thanks in advance

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[Jesus1]

Don't know if this is still useful for you but here's my take. Shelf exams/Step 2CK have extremely strong correlations with how well a person does on Step 1. At the end of the day, the shelf/step 2 ck material are nothing more than a little extra on top of what you had to learn for Step 1. On Step 2/shelf exams, the big thing that matters is plastering knowledge of the "order/logic" in which things are done to your pre-existing pathophysiology knowledge. Do this and you're essentially good to go. I personally believe it's a huge fallacy for people to think that they'll do poorly on Step 1 and magically crush M3/shelf exams/2CK because it is more "clinical". A poor foundation remains poor regardless of the surrounding circumstances. As a just graduating M4, I can say from personal experience that recalling and understanding a lot of the Step 1 material I knew back in the day played one of the biggest roles in doing well on 2CK and my shelf exams. PM if you have any other Q's on this.

 

[Newyawk]

Don't know if this is still useful for you but here's my take. Shelf exams/Step 2CK have extremely strong correlations with how well a person does on Step 1. At the end of the day, the shelf/step 2 ck material are nothing more than a little extra on top of what you had to learn for Step 1. On Step 2/shelf exams, the big thing that matters is plastering knowledge of the "order/logic" in which things are done to your pre-existing pathophysiology knowledge. Do this and you're essentially good to go. I personally believe that is a huge fallacy for people to think that they'll do poorly on Step 1 and magically crush M3/shelf exams/2CK because it is more "clinical". A poor foundation remains poor regardless of the surrounding circumstances. As a just graduating M4, I can say from personal experience that recalling and understanding a lot of the Step 1 material I knew back in the day played one of the biggest roles in doing well on 2CK and my shelf exams. PM if you have any other Q's on this.

I definitely agree wih this. Ive been doing well on my shelves largely bc of my knowledge from step 1

 

[Redpancreas]

I was wondering how similar uworld medicine is to the shelf exam. the questions seem awfully path/ophys based and not a lot of critical thinking in terms of management.

also anecdotally, whats the correlation of success in the qbank and on the shelf?

thanks in advance

UWorld is UWorld. The shelf on the other hand has very detail-oriented questions from left field like what the mechanism of ecolizumab is for example. Biggest predictor on Medicine shelf are NBMEs and Step 1. I think the Shelf questions can be more random while most UWorld prompts cover HY Medicine points like PE, Lights Criteria, and Cirrhosis. Shelf exams test you’re understanding of these concepts too, but it’s less apparent than UWorld. The biggest lesson is that Clerkship observation is not enough, especially for medicine.

 

[chromuffin]

FWIW.. I scored a 73 on the shelf (relatively average? I think average is 75) with only using UWorld medicine without neuro questions. I finished probably 75% of the questions. My step 1 was a 218.

 

[MitralRegurge]

I was wondering how similar uworld medicine is to the shelf exam. the questions seem awfully path/ophys based and not a lot of critical thinking in terms of management.

also anecdotally, whats the correlation of success in the qbank and on the shelf?

thanks in advance

I used uworld for shelves and found that there were topics that were similar. Uworld was way more helpful for step than shelves, but it's still valuable for shelves. It may not be the best source, but still a good to run through

 

[APA 32]

I feel like the shelf was a little easier than uworld. My uworld average for IM was about 75% and I scored a 90 on the shelf. I went through all IM questions then did my incorrects prior to the shelf.

 

[takeurmeds02]

I agree with @APA 32 . The shelf was a touch easier than UWorld but still challenging. My UWorld was slightly below the average (only did about ~1300/1400 questions; did not do incorrects). My shelf was slightly above the average.

 

[Jesus1]

Doing well on shelf exams IMO works pretty well when you combine a good text resource with questions (from UWorld or pretest)