IMG, 2008 grad, working at a primary health center
prep time- almost 1 year on and off since i had to apply 4 times to ECFMG due to some problem with our dean's signature, finally got accepted in dec '09, was actually hoping to give exams in july '09... oh well...
study material- kaplan notes, qbook and videos(cardio, heme, endo, neuro, inf) UW - so important for prep FA(during the last 3 months of prep, v helpful for review) my own notes made from kaplan & UW (also v v helpful for review)
Score - 239/99 was so not expecting this score, my prep had been very haphazard and exam day was a complete disaster what with computer not working, not being able to sleep the night before and all that...
just want to thank the forum, you have been very helpful... thank you so much.... now step 1
Edited by drd1 on 02/25/10 - 02:00 AM
DVT Forum Senior
Topics: 12 Posts: 135
03/17/10 - 06:45 AM
#565
Exam date 26th Feb Score reported 17th March NBME. 3.......406/207/86( 2 weeks before CK) NBME2.........520/222/93(1 week before CK) UW first time unused timed random mode..58% cumulative UW second time subject wise timed mode...85%cumulative /95th percentile!
Real test...202/83
My advice is don't sit for this freaky exam unless ur scoring above 550 consistently..only then can you expect a score of 90 or higher.i was aiming for a 95 but this is what i got so learn from my mistake ii'm stuck with this score for 7 years now i wish i had repayed exam fee and extended my eligibility till i got a 550 to 600 on NBME. BIG MISTAKE.
And lastly LUCK does matter ...more than hard work im afraid!
Edited by DVT on 03/17/10 - 04:22 PM
morsy83 Forum Newbie
Topics: 0 Posts: 1
05/01/10 - 06:09 AM
#566
Step 2 CK score: 99/254 exam date 19/1/2010 kaplan notes for 2 months USMLE World: 70% for 2 months 2wks for revision
step 1 score : 99/252 exam date 26/5/2009
maharaj Forum Newbie
Topics: 1 Posts: 10
05/05/10 - 05:23 PM
#567
Hi..step 2 ck score-259 step 1-256
Nbme step 2-263....I wish that was my score..still no regrets.
maharaj Forum Newbie
Topics: 1 Posts: 10
05/05/10 - 05:24 PM
#568
maharaj wrote: Hi..step 2 ck score-259 step 1-256
Nbme 6-263....I wish that was my score..still no regrets.
SuperPancreas Forum Newbie
Topics: 5 Posts: 27
05/25/10 - 07:31 AM
#569
Hello All! I received my score May 19th, Wednesday, around 9 AM. I was somewhat timid to post my score because I scored so low, but I know that my post will help others and help the average test takers.
Step 2 CK Score: 184/75 Pass!!!
(Step 1 Score: 196/80) (Step 2 CS Passed first time)
UW: Completed 100% of questions. First time through: 62% (half completed in tutor mode and half completed in timed with all subjects/mixed) After completing UW I went through a couple hundred of the questions that I got wrong. As I was studying UW I kept a couple of notecards with the question ID number of certain questions that were high yield (you know the ones that say this his high yield for the USMLE at the bottom of the question stem) and I also kept a list of 100 questions or so that also seemed high yield, like EKG questions and those with CT's, MRI's, and major tables and outlines and I reviewed them at the end. I also took about 300 pages of notes based solely on UW that I reviewed in the days before the exam.
NBME: NBME 2: 2 weeks before the exam 420/196 NBME 3: 2 days before the exam 490/215
UWSA: This is the UW Self Assessment exam. I did this about 1 month before the exam. 390/188
Let me also say that 2 days before the exam when I used the medfriends step 2 score estimator that it predicted a score of 223 based on UW results and a score of 221 based on NBME results.
I also had the Kaplan Q book that I went through early on but the questions are pretty straight forward and very easy. This is a good book to use to get your mind going in the right direction and to refresh your knowledge.
Including the 2400 UW questions and the NBME, UWSA, and Kaplan Q book, I did a total of 3400 questions. Crazy thing is for Step 1 I only did 200 ?'s or less.
My Impression: I studied for about 6 months for this exam. Before I even started medical school, I always heard interns and 4th year med students say that when you're studying for the boards, "2 months, 2 weeks, 2 pencils," meaning that for Step 1 you should study for 2 months and for Step 2 you should study for just 2 weeks and for Step 3 that you only need 2 pencils and that your intern year of experience is about all you need for Step 3. Well, for Step 1 I studied for 3 weeks only and couldn't sleep the night before, maybe got 1 hour of sleep and I got a 196. I had some colleagues that studied 3 months. I always felt that if I would've studied longer and with a good night's rest that I could have easily broken 200. The crazy thing is that for Step 1 I only used Kaplan Q bank for questions and maybe did 200 questions. And I only used FA for a review source for Step 1.
But for Step 2 I studied about 30 hours a week for 2 months and then for 4 months before the exam I studied 40+ hours per week and I did over 3,000 questions.
That is about 6 months of solid studying. Here's what I used: Kaplan Lecture Notes for IM, Ob GYN and Psy. FA, Boards and Wards, Crush for Peds and Surgery and I also read the IM, Psy, and Ob GYN sections in those too.
I also had some other good materials that I used for supplemental like FA Cases and Q&A and Step up 2 USMLE. I didn't use these as a primary source and I didn't let the amount of materials that I had overwhelm me. I used Kaplan LN and videos, FA, and UW as my primary sources.
I am happy that I passed but I did really expect to score over 200 for sure. But after taking the exam I am just happy with passing and moving on with my career and I will tell you why. This exam is an exam that we don't really know much about. When statisticians write about common myths in their world and debunking them, the scoring of the USMLE is often a popular topic. The reason is because we have no idea of how it is scored. We don't get our exam back and don't get to see what we got wrong and we don't get the opportunity to build upon how we performed the first time. Even the practice exams we take before the exam like UW are written by 3rd party individuals and although they do cover the subject matter those questions are not written by the people that write the questions for the real USMLE, and the reason I say this is because no matter how hard you prepare and how many questions you do it is impossible to replicate or duplicate your exam experience. Check out this article: http://mydominanthemisphere.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/usmle-scores-debunking-common-myths/
And out of the 352 questions it is assumed that a large number of them are thrown out because they are experimental...exactly how many is it? Is it 20, 40, 60? And how does that affect your score.
The point I'm making is that for an exam that we will only see once, hopefully, and where we get no feedback on the questions we missed and why we missed them, I am glad I passed. Because without knowing what percentage of questions you even need to get right in order to pass and not knowing exactly how the exam is scored then we really don't know exactly what that 3 digit score represents.
And we never really get practice questions covering all the material that are written by the actual writers of the exam so the feedback we get from 3rd party question writers are exactly that, from writers that don't write for the exam. Remember, just recently this exam has been changed many times. The minimum passing score has been increased, the number of questions have been reduced by 16, and audio visual questions have been added. I think that because they removed 16 questions it seems as though they have made the others longer to make up for it, just my opinion.
The exam was long and definitely difficult. The questions were slightly longer than UW questions. I would say that on average if you had to spread it out that each question on the actual exam was 3 lines longer. I did have some questions that were 20 lines long and had choices A-V. That's 22 answer choices. I would say that I had probably 10 of those. I know that a lot of people contest that it doesn't matter how many answer choices you have because you should recognize the answer when you see it, but it is also good to be able to eliminate the other answers because every answer choice is there for a reason, because it closely resembles the right answer. And it takes a lot of time to elminate 21 answers for one question. I finished every block on time except one block I only had about 30 second for the last 2 questions.
But honestly, the length of the questions weren't really an obstacle for me. If you have done plenty of timed tests with UW, then you should be prepared time wise. Actually, the UWSA is perfect for working on your time. I really didn't like the UWSA, even though it closely predicted my score, but it didn't closely predict my score because of the content, meaning that the UWSA had me doing amazing and excellent in Psychiatry but I did poorly in Psy on the actual exam and it was the same for other subjects, it poorly predicted my strengths. I think the UWSA questions are kind of out there and are confusing and are worded in a way that you won't see on the actual exam, but for working on your time and having explanations for questions it is great.
I really did expect with an average of 62% on UW and getting a 215 on NBME just days before the exam that I would have a better score but while taking the exam and after the exam I realized that just passing would make me very happy. Here's why:
As many people have said in many other posts: UW hammers the details and makes sure that you know everything. UW really makes sure that you know every enzyme disorder in Peds and every major EKG and every single disease. The actual exam is not like that. The actual exam is more of a mix of Step 1 material and application of your clinical knowledge. I would say that roughly 15% of my questions, maybe more, wanted to know the pathophysiology of the disease, without telling you the disease. For example, UW makes sure that you can recognize Wiskott Aldrich and CGD while the actual exam will give you a patient that has a disease and you have to be able to recognize the disease but they will rarely just ask you what the disease is, they will ask some weird variation of the pathology or pathophysiology of the disease.
I honestly don't think that UW prepares you that well for the actual exam. I read another test takers post in this thread that stated this some time ago and here's the link:
http://www.prep4usmle.com/forum/thread/12074/28/
Read "nursebetty's" post. She says that, "Usmle world was testing on unimportant minutia which is not something that I focus on given my clinical background."
I agree. And this really threw me off for the exam. Because of Kaplan LN's and UW I knew the details of every disease and the first test and the second test and the work up, and the cause of disease. All I can tell you is that UW makes sure that you know everything and when I walked out of the exam I literally felt like less than 10% of all my knowledge was tested.
Here's the mistake I made: I wanted to rock the exam so I spent so much time on every IM subject. I knew everything about GI and I knew everything about Neuro and I knew everything about ID and I knew everything about Cardio. I felt very confident in other subjects but I rocked these subjects. You know how UW makes sure that you know what the symptoms are for every possible lesion in Neuro and every possible complication status post MI or everything about the esophageal disorders? I kept waiting to use all of this knowledge that I had attained from my UW studies. Also, those questions from UW that seemed high yield, the ones where kept the question ID's so I could review them over and over, the ones with EKG's and Radiology and important concepts, well I'm 100% sure that going over those over and over did not help at all. I cannot stress enough that having an extra month to review facts and high yield info would not have helped at all. And I know this seems counter intuitive.
The exam is about application of clinical knowledge and less about knowing what something is. I can't explain it any better than that. I could give examples all day long but it wouldn't be prudent. Let me summarize by saying this: If I would have had 1 more month to study and look over my notes and to go over the high yield material it would NOT have helped at all. And the reason I say this is because the exam I took was not about what you knew, it was more about how you applied it and about the pathophysiology behind it. If I had 1 more month to look over all the notes I took on UW questions I would not have gotten one more question right. I know it might sound silly but its the truth. I was just waiting for my knowledge to be tested. Knowing all about a specific disease and the work up and the step by step treatment and first line and 2nd line didn't really help all that much.
There were only 3 EKG's, there was 1 MRI, 1 CT scan and 2 other random pictures. Psychiatry was one of my best subjects throughout my studying and I knew everything, I rocked my Psy rotation and I was a Psy minor in college. I did average or above average in every single subject on Step 2 except for Psychiatry and Mental Disorders. The Psy questions I thought were challenging but I thought that I handled most of them well. I will admit that some of them had answer choices that I could not find in any review book and obviously if I would have done as well in Psychiatry on this exam as I did on UW or any of the NBME's then I would have gotten well over 200. So, I guess the Psy questions are confusing but I don't know what to suggest because once again, and I can promise you 100% that this is fact when I say this, knowing everything about Psychiatry and Kaplan and the review books have to offer and going over it over and over does not mean that the knowledge transfers over to the real exam.
My final point is: this exam should be about assessing whether or not you have the tools and knowledge to be an intern and whether or not you are ready to be trained in clinical medicine and not so much about knowing already as a 4th year student how to apply all of your knowledge clinically. I have seen and heard of so many people that have passed this exam and have gotten a 99th percentile just by using UW alone and doing it like 4 times and never ever opening up a review book. I don't think that's what the educators in the field of medicine intended when they created a step by step format to getting licensed and prepared to be an intern. I was in the top 10% of my medical school class and I mostly got A's in all my classes but I've always been an average standardized test taker as compared to tests we take while in medical school.
I'm very happy that I passed and I'm happy to move on in my career. Thank you to everyone on this forum, your knowledge and feedback and wisdom has helped me more than you know. If you have any questions, feel free to message me or post.
I took the exam today. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I had atleast 5 minutes left at the end of each block. Questions were comparable to UW. I studied by UW and Kaplan qbank. I prefer UW ...it was more straightforward and helped me learn concepts and those concepts were the ones I needed on the exam today. Kaplan had too similar of choices and gave me headaches. I took frequent short breaks. I had a silken tofu soy and fresh strawberry shake for breakfast. I had my coffee and got up early. I thought I could start early if I got there early, but I ended up just sitting and waiting for 45 minutes at the test center. I took granola bars and a bagel sandwich. I didn't eat much of the sandwich. I never really took a long lunch break. I just ate enough to keep my stomach quiet.
I kept waiting on it to get harder, but it didnt until the very last block. The last one had some weird questions and by then I was tired, but my stamina for the real exam versus studying and practice was much better. I was worried about focusing for that long, but it was ok.
Content: IM>> psych > ob/gyn
I highly recommend UW! My first time through it my average was only 57%, but I read all the explanations and looked up things I had questions about. I did very little other than Kaplan qbank and UW.
UW last 6 blocks first time thru - 57% did it over and over until I was getting 70s - 80s
Practice test - 73
Kaplan qbank - I used 83% of the questions with a 57% overall Kaplan qbank practice test - 57%
NBME online form 1 taken April 24th - 540 NBME online form 2 taken April 30th - 510
I was ok with my NBME scores, but my test was already scheduled and I just left it. I was bored with studying by the time my test came around. I didn't take any other NBME exams closer to my test date.
Real score - ??? waiting. Will post it when I get it.
tompat Forum Guru
Topics: 62 Posts: 543
06/16/10 - 06:19 AM
#572
exam date 26th may 2010
score reporting 16th june 2010
NBME 4- 570 1 WK b4
NBME 2-560 2 wk b4
NBME 1 - 570 3 wk b4
i did form 3 but in bits n bites as i was exhausted
UWSA- 610
UW cumulative 68 % right , timed ,mixed, unseen
dint do kaplan q bank
used kaplan notes, there was a lot of gap in my step 1 and step2 ck because of the paper work i had to do for ECFMG.
step 2 ck score - 237 ( 98%) just needed 2 more marks!!
do all the NBME's please
99/ 98/ cs passed 1 st attempt
Lovecat Forum Newbie
Topics: 0 Posts: 1
06/17/10 - 06:23 AM
#573
Exam date: May 26, 2010
Study for five months. Part-time.
Read kaplan note once.
UW Q bank once, 67% correct. Repeat wrong Qs once.
Kaplan Q bank once, 65% correct. No time to repeat wrong Qs.
NBME form 4: 670 4 weeks before
UW self-assesment: 420 10 days before.
Also did NBME form 1-3 offline in the last 3 weeks. 20-29 wrong questions for each form.
Have no idear how I did after the test but know I didn't mess up. But there are many unfamilar questions, and I made stupid mistakes.
CK score: 99/254 Very happy! [/quote] <!--Session data-->
I used first aid, crush step 2 and secrets. I also took all the shelf exams and I used the casefiles series for pediatrics, obgyn, surgery and internal medicine. Those casefiles books were awesome books! especially for obgyn loved it! peds and surgery too. Remember,... clinical stuff, NOT fellowship in nephrology stuff. Common diseases and the mechanism of those diseases, not crazy pulmonary calculations either! Its what u see in the ER etc., and good common sense. And dont skip the statistics stuff or u will be mad at yourself when u miss those easy questions. Good luck!
Can anyone tell me what is shelf exams and what are case files? Thnx.
___________________ 'God does not change the condition of people until they change that which is in their souls' -Ar-Ra'd (13:11) ''On no soul Allah places a burden greater than it can bear (2:286)
sdf43550 Forum Newbie
Topics: 0 Posts: 27
06/30/10 - 07:16 AM
#576
I just got my result today
234 /97
I wrote about my exam experience previously so I will cut and paste it below. I had 57% average on UW first time thru average of the last 6 blocks unused. I kept going mostly in tutor mode until I had an overall average of 64%. UW is the best!!
I didn't get a 99, but I am very happy 06/09/10 - 04:21 PM #571
I took the exam today. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I had atleast 5 minutes left at the end of each block. Questions were comparable to UW. I studied by UW and Kaplan qbank. I prefer UW ...it was more straightforward and helped me learn concepts and those concepts were the ones I needed on the exam today. Kaplan had too similar of choices and gave me headaches. I took frequent short breaks. I had a silken tofu soy and fresh strawberry shake for breakfast. I had my coffee and got up early. I thought I could start early if I got there early, but I ended up just sitting and waiting for 45 minutes at the test center. I took granola bars and a bagel sandwich. I didn't eat much of the sandwich. I never really took a long lunch break. I just ate enough to keep my stomach quiet.
I kept waiting on it to get harder, but it didnt until the very last block. The last one had some weird questions and by then I was tired, but my stamina for the real exam versus studying and practice was much better. I was worried about focusing for that long, but it was ok.
Content: IM>> psych > ob/gyn
I highly recommend UW! My first time through it my average was only 57%, but I read all the explanations and looked up things I had questions about. I did very little other than Kaplan qbank and UW.
UW last 6 blocks first time thru - 57% did it over and over until I was getting 70s - 80s
Practice test - 73
Kaplan qbank - I used 83% of the questions with a 57% overall Kaplan qbank practice test - 57%
NBME online form 1 taken April 24th - 540 NBME online form 2 taken April 30th - 510
I was ok with my NBME scores, but my test was already scheduled and I just left it. I was bored with studying by the time my test came around. I didn't take any other NBME exams closer to my test date.
Real score - ??? waiting. Will post it when I get it.
I just got it. 234/97
jasonbourne99 Forum Junior
Topics: 8 Posts: 83
06/30/10 - 07:59 AM
#577
Score-241/99 Form 2-520 10 Weeks out Form 4--660 3 Weeks out
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