UWSA1 scores 230. How does it look? Advice Please!

[PhoenixAZ]

M2 here scheduled to take Step 1 the first week of March. I have been using First Aid and Pathoma to follow along with my classes during the year. I won’t start dedicated until first week of Feb (unfortunately our school only gives us 5 weeks of dedicated time to study for Step). I have started UW Qbank, hoping to be able to do 2 passes. I did the UWSA1 a week ago and got a score of 230. My goal is 240+. Since I heard that UWSA overpredicts, am I in trouble of meeting my goal? Any thoughts, suggestions, advice would be greatly appreciated. What else should I do?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[PhoenixAZ]

Anyone had any advice/thoughts? Please help!!!!

 

[s5260205]

Have you been doing UWorld for a few weeks now? What really worked for me is 20 questions of UWorld per day with reviewing Pathoma/First Aid/Sketchy Micro/Sketchy Pharm initially and gradually increasing the number of questions as most questions begin to repeat and I don't have to annotate them as much. Since you have less than 2 months left, you should aim to do at least one more pass of Pathoma/First Aid (e.g., 1-2 day on each system), finish UWorld, and start NBME (aim to do at least the most recent 3 exams). UWSA 1 did overpredict by a few points for me while UWSA 2 underpredicts by a few points. My average NBME scores also underpredict. You still have almost 2 months so I would not worry about what the score means yet since you could still improve during this time.

 

[PhoenixAZ]

Thanks for the response. I just started doing UW questions this week after I finished UWSA1 last week. It has been taking me a long time to go through and review the questions. And school started back this week, so it is a challenge to keep up. I haven’t done much on Sketchy as I didn’t find it very useful. Thanks for the advice. Do you think it is too late for me to start on Sketchy now? Also, when did you do your UWSA1 from real test day? 1 month before? A few weeks before? What do you think I can realistically expect my score to improve after dedicated?

 

[disappointeddreamer]

Have you been doing UWorld for a few weeks now? What really worked for me is 20 questions of UWorld per day with reviewing Pathoma/First Aid/Sketchy Micro/Sketchy Pharm initially and gradually increasing the number of questions as most questions begin to repeat and I don't have to annotate them as much. Since you have less than 2 months left, you should aim to do at least one more pass of Pathoma/First Aid (e.g., 1-2 day on each system), finish UWorld, and start NBME (aim to do at least the most recent 3 exams). UWSA 1 did overpredict by a few points for me while UWSA 2 underpredicts by a few points. My average NBME scores also underpredict. You still have almost 2 months so I would not worry about what the score means yet since you could still improve during this time.

Hey I just have a question about UWSAs. Are you sure that UWSA 1 overpredicts & 2 underpredicts?

I ask this because I took both of them within a 3 day span and scored a pretty similarly. 220 on 1 & 224 on 2. I couldn't really find any info on what those scores mean.

 

[s5260205]

Thanks for the response. I just started doing UW questions this week after I finished UWSA1 last week. It has been taking me a long time to go through and review the questions. And school started back this week, so it is a challenge to keep up. I haven’t done much on Sketchy as I didn’t find it very useful. Thanks for the advice. Do you think it is too late for me to start on Sketchy now? Also, when did you do your UWSA1 from real test day? 1 month before? A few weeks before? What do you think I can realistically expect my score to improve after dedicated?

Can't really recall when I did my UWSA 1 but it was definitely less than 1 month before my exam.

As for Sketchy, I found them to be very helpful so did both micro and pharm. However, it is too late to start sketchy now with only 2 months left. You are better off using the same resources you had for pharm and micro at this point.

Annotating every UW question into First Aid in my opinion was what helped me the most. However, given that you only recently started UW, it would be unwise to annotate every single question with only 2 months left until exam. I would keep doing the questions and not neglecting review of both first aid and pathoma everyday. I do believe people improve during dedicated but I wouldn't really think too much about score right now.

 

[s5260205]

Hey I just have a question about UWSAs. Are you sure that UWSA 1 overpredicts & 2 underpredicts?

I ask this because I took both of them within a 3 day span and scored a pretty similarly. 220 on 1 & 224 on 2. I couldn't really find any info on what those scores mean.

People have varied experience with mock exams. Based on what I read online when I was studying for step 1, some people do report UWSA 1 overpredicting their score. I personally found UWSA 2 harder than UWSA 1 and the scores reflect that. I would do more NBME exams to more accurately predict where you stand right now.