you have a good score. Please stop this bitterness. I can understand you feel bad because your last NBME predicted a 247 and you were a 13 points lower than that, but still you did well. (Lets me not even comment on uswa-1 cause i am tired of their false sense of performance evaluation.)
You have a good score for university program, a 235 with a 240 + on step 2, you will be a great catch, ofcourse with other factors put in prospective.
Thanks all.
It's a decent score but It's disappointing that it's way lower than my practice ones. I hope it's good enough to make me competitive for good university IM programs to get me into a competitive subspecialty.
I will post my experience anyway.
I studied for 3 months.
First 1.5 months I used the books listed in the TAUS method and went through FA once. I used Rx Qbank subject based after each subject I read in FA where I finished 75% of it. Listened to Goljan audio once and took notes.
Then I spend about 1 month going through FA again and did 70% of UWORLD while annotating everything into a separate notebook and read that notebook every night before bedtime. Would do 2 blocks everyday, each taking me 3-4 hours. Listened to goljan again.
Final 2 weeks I finished the last 30% of UWORLD and went through all of FA one last time. Then I did about 75% of Uworld again making sure I did all of the incorrect ones.
My advise is to take the last 2-3 days completely off, just do the HY section in FA.
I think I should have not read anything else besides Goljan pathology and FA. Also I found out about PATHOMA lectures (you can download online) which were amazing and a must do but I didn't have time to do them all (watched some of them on the times I didn't feel like studying). Watch them at 1.3 speed on VLC player and take notes.
I would have also done more questions (i.e more NBMEs, Kaplan Qbank...etc). Practicing Qs >>>> Studying books.
Day before: DON'T STUDY. Go for a long walk that day (don't run or do anything that will give you a headache like I had on test day).
Test day: Eat a good breakfast, bring a light sandwich with you. Wear something with no pockets (easier when they're searching you as you go in and out). Bring paracetamol just in case.
Test: It's very doable, but I felt like it was harder than UWORLD or anything else I did. My behavioural section was utter bullcrap, it was my lowest section even though I used to get 100% in my practice ones. I got 5 questions on hardy-weinberg equation. DO NOT change your answers unless you have a really good reason to do so. I believe there's a big luck factor in terms of what questions you can get. 30-40% of the exam was very straight forward, 40% was difficult, 10-20% was absolutely impossible (for me at least).
If you have any other questions please don't hesitate to ask!
thanx alot for writing ur experience.
can you plzzz answer few questions to me, what kind of behavior questions u found hard, the best response one's or doc-patient ones or the biostat ones??
and what kinda hardy wienberg things u had? i mean the ones in kaplan? or u think we should read any other book for that??
thats actually weird u know, some ppl get very few genetics question while others get more.. donno why is that so..
my exam is in a month and half, im actually scared after ur post, coz i have good score in nbme 7 too, worried what if it has overpredicted for me too
and what du u think , CAN 50% EXAM BE DONE FROM FA AND UW NOTES ??OR NOT???
thanx alot for writing ur experience.
can you plzzz answer few questions to me, what kind of behavior questions u found hard, the best response one's or doc-patient ones or the biostat ones??
and what kinda hardy wienberg things u had? i mean the ones in kaplan? or u think we should read any other book for that??
thats actually weird u know, some ppl get very few genetics question while others get more.. donno why is that so..
my exam is in a month and half, im actually scared after ur post, coz i have good score in nbme 7 too, worried what if it has overpredicted for me too
and what du u think , CAN 50% EXAM BE DONE FROM FA AND UW NOTES ??OR NOT???
The ones in behavioral that I found hard were the biostats, there was maybe on doc-patient question which I wasn't sure about because it integrated knowledge of other subjects into the answer, so it wasn't purely behavioral. No you don't need to do a book for that, I think I just got unlucky with the questions I got.
If you have kaplan Q bank do the genetics calculation questions and I think you should be fine with hardy weinberg, I just didn't practice that one because USMLEWorld didn't seem to get into it.
I'm sorry that my post scared you, most of the other people I talked to had scores close to their NBME's, I'm just one of the minority who had a significantly lower score. I think you should go in confident that you will do as well as your NBME. I did have 2-3 questions that were straight out of the NBME and one was from the free 150Q test on the usmle website!
I think 60-70% of the exam was from UWorld and FA, 10-20% from Goljan, and ~10% from general knowledge that you may or may not know (I got maybe 3-4 questions that I haven't really seen anywhere in those books).
Honestly though, most likely you will do very well if you are getting over 235 on your NBME.
congrats on your great score!
I have a similar question to the posts above
due to time constraints, and not havin enuff patience in the past to do so, do you feel if one uses, understands FA+UW+USMLEX+PATHOMA that would be enough to cross the 210-220 barrier.. or basically do well on the exam?
I am askin because I could not sit thru kaplan videos or read the lecture notes as I would zone out....I learn better with concise reading (such as fa + brs) and learn 10x more with questions....so basically im askin is doing kaplan detrimental for the exam?
thanks for your time and once again congrats on your great score
Absolutely, those are enough to get 220+ as long as you try to memorize everything in FA. I did not do kaplan videos at all nor the lecture notes. If you do FA 3 times and do UWorld twice (random and timed, try to get over 65% on your first run through and over 75% on your second) you should get over 220. Do Goljan once and in the last week try to finish it again by reading the blue notes on the sides. Pathoma is good too, watch the videos at least once, twice would be good (maybe set two to three long days to go over all the videos).
So no, you don't need kaplan, provided you have a good background understanding of the subjects in FA. If you don't fully understand the CONCEPTS in FA only then you can go and read that section in kaplan.
If anyone got any Q's please feel free to ask away, you can private message me too if you'd like.
hey guys, need help... plzz can anyone tell me what to do when someone freaks out, gets panic attack and tachycardia??? and esp if there is no one to talk , home alone and step 1 is too near...
ok..so beh. sci & biostats i never really like it much :/
do u think it is compulsory to do the whole kaplan bk for it?
or is FA enough?? along with uworld??
also dint u do kaplan LN ? if u did thn hw did u accommodate them along with everything else in 3 months !!
Didn't do Kaplan, I read the BRS Behavioral book which was really good and not too long (you could finish it all in 2 days).
But it's better to just keep doing Qs.
congratulations on your score. could you please tell me where i can find and download the pathoma lectures? thank you!
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