Back from exam

First of all, congratulations on taking the exam. As many say, it's an accomplishment in itself. My exam is 50 days away, and I still can't imagine what it's gonna be like on the day of the exam. Must be scary! :sorry:

Many people feel they didn't do well on the exam, and that they may even fail, but surprisingly, they pass with great scores (even 99ers sometimes come out of the exam feeling they'd fail!). So don't worry about this part now, and relax these 2 weeks.

About the length of the exam, you say you were out of time. Were the questions really long? Are they longer than any qbank questions you'd done? I heard longer questions have become the mainstay beginning from May. May be that's why.

Most of exam takers feel the same way as you (as was the case with myself).

Stay calm and try to have some kind of entertainment in these free days.

Good luck....

Wow, from what I hear this is the worst time - even worse than actually preparing for the exams

My friend though - who took it in late August was absolutely sure he messed it up and had like 5-7 q's per block that he just made silly mistakes on in addition to the crazy questions he'd never seen before.

He got his score on Wednesday - 235/99

He said by the way, for him, FA and UW were more than enough, but know absolutely everything in UW in case anyone is interested...

I know you've been super helpful already but could you please try and remember a few more details about how your exam went? Anything is useful - too much neuro? too much biochem? not enough path? too much path? many audio / slide questions? the style of the exam (UW like or Kaplan like or what)

Thanks again... we're praying with you....

Actually UWorld, NBME and FRED questions covered it all. There are some questions that are weird in some blocks but they are just few in number. with a good concept from the question banks I mentioned above one will be okay. for the questions, they are not as difficult as uworld but u have to use uworld concept to answer them.

The difficulty level is almost similar to NBME and FRED questions. My exam was more of microbiology, pharmacology and pathology few questions from other areas. Everything is tested so every subject is important . I had some slides ,ct scan images which one can easily answer with the stem questions . nothing was out of the blues except for some few questions. my only problem was not having enough time to review my marked questions and some silly mistakes here and there which is scaring the hail out of me.

well...is FA enough...during preparation of last month...along with Qbank??
or do we need to revise Kaplan n Goljan...??

many of the questions are long and some one liners. the longer the question the better bcos it will have a lot of clues . the problem was that i was just not as fast as i should have been bcos i was being too careful not to make silly mistakes which eventually was inevitable. FA is also a must read for this exam.

Honestly FA and the question banks is enough for the few weeks left and for the next 10days to the exam, FA ONLY is enough. I used u world so I don't know about Kaplan question bank

Fred is the interface that the USMLE uses rt? its not a separate q-bank is it?

don't worry, we're all sure you did well, and those weird questions could have been experimental also, I guess?

1 last question, how many total questions did you do for your prep, not counting revisions!

chillax now my friend, you've earned it!

Dr_Kal_El said:

Fred is the interface that the USMLE uses rt? its not a separate q-bank is it?

don't worry, we're all sure you did well, and those weird questions could have been experimental also, I guess?

1 last question, how many total questions did you do for your prep, not counting revisions!

chillax now my friend, you've earned it!

Click to expand...

I think he meant NBME - Fred 2.0 is the interface that the NBME uses I think - its supposed to be identical to the UW interface...

The point about the weird questions is very important too - I just remembered it when you mentioned it Dr. K... They emphasized this at Kaplan too actually that if you see a question that looks like it has no relationship to reality at all - then it might possibly be a experimental question. Definitely do not spend too much time on such a question and move on, is apparently the advice...

What he meant by FRED questions

Dr_Kal_El said:

Fred is the interface that the USMLE uses rt? its not a separate q-bank is it?

don't worry, we're all sure you did well, and those weird questions could have been experimental also, I guess?

1 last question, how many total questions did you do for your prep, not counting revisions!

chillax now my friend, you've earned it!

Click to expand...

I think he meant by FRED the free USMLE 150 questions for details see here
http://www.usmle-forums.com/general...ree-practice-questions-free-150-usmle-cd.html

For the poll that ask whether is bank is useful or not see this
http://www.usmle-forums.com/general-topics-forum/711-usmle-prometric-practice-test.html

The NBME's online have no calculator available, but on UWorld there is one available. We will have a calculator option for the real exam right??

dazzles said:

The NBME's online have no calculator available, but on UWorld there is one available. We will have a calculator option for the real exam right??

Click to expand...

YES. The real exam is exactly like UW: Fred 2.0

dazzles said:

The NBME's online have no calculator available, but on UWorld there is one available. We will have a calculator option for the real exam right??

Click to expand...

Obviously, NBME forms interface is nothing like the real exam....the questions themselves are pretty close though.

hmm...it might be silly Qs but is it possible to start from last Qs in a block??...i mean from Q no 46....

well m practicing by starting from last Qs...as its easier to gauge speed..like still 30 mins remained and 20 to go...

dazzles said:

The NBME's online have no calculator available, but on UWorld there is one available. We will have a calculator option for the real exam right??

Click to expand...

Yes, the exam has a calculator and it's exactly like the one you get here.
There's even a poll asking about it here
http://www.usmle-forums.com/general-topics-recommended-threads/35-fred-v2-comes-calculator.html

Good job finishing the exam.

I know when I took my exam, the wait was killing me. The more I thought about the exam, the more I thought I made stupid mistakes. I remember 1 q that was about the eyes and the brain and I made the stupid mistake of picking the wrong side of the brain, LOL, oh well.

Good luck, take 1 or 2 weeks off and don't think anything about the exam, it will drive you nuts.

yes the exam is framed almost exactly like u world . so u have ur calculator there. fred is the 150Qs online
its really not easy waiting for the exam result bcos everyday u remember silly mistakes and count them even when u know it wont change anything. am so afraid of seeing a low score on that day. maybe if i had reviewed all the blocks i would have felt better.
for starting with the last Qs that is qs no 46 ,well i don't think it will change ur speed. everything depends on how fast you are in reading the stem and extracting your ans. for me i was kind of slow bcos i was trying to avoid silly mistakes which i ended up making. Honestly the ones i rushed into without thinking twice where actually the ones i made those silly mistakes. its good to bit the time but rushing to ans questions will make u ans some cheap qs incorrectly.

i cant remember how many qs i went thru but i went thru the whole u world qs bank, fred 2010 and 2011, wiki prep and kaplan question bank book(not the online q bank) and qs in this forum . then i took u world self assessment 1 and 2 and also nbme online to assess myself.

That clears it up about FRED - thanks... I was actually curious as to the testing itself- were there any computer problems of any sort? Is the centre dead quiet or is there some background noise... I guess these things dont matter much but I'm getting to the point where I am freaking out more and more.