lee_alkureishi
Forum Newbie
Topics: 7
Posts: 27
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Hi all,
I'm hoping this catches the attention of p53, or someone else with a bigger stats brain than me!
I got my step 1 scores today - 261/99!! So happy!
Like many people I see on here, I really didn't feel the exam went well afterwards - there were at least 8-9 questions PER BLOCK that I had to guess at... So, it was a massive relief to see my score...
Now, I'm trying to get my head round the "figure out your percentile" thread, and it's getting the better of me... I've tried it a few times, and I just can't figure it out. So, I thought I'd be a bit cheeky and ask if anyone could maybe work out my percentile for me? :-P
My score - 261/99
Mean - 222
SD - 22
I *think* it's around the 94th, but i really don't trust my stats lobe... i'm just glad this wasn't on the exam!
I also wanted to thank everyone on this forum - it's been a huge help for me while I've been prepping for the exams. As an IMG, I started out feeling totally lost, and reading this forum helped to bring it together for me.
Now, the Step 2 - I sat it today! (coincidence?)
Regards,
Lee
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| SpeaksSoftly
Forum Senior
Topics: 16
Posts: 190
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Holy cow! Awesome score! Now please give every tiny detail of your study method. 
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| lee_alkureishi
Forum Newbie
Topics: 7
Posts: 27
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Thanks!
I'm an IMG from the UK, and graduated from medschool 4 years ago. The thought of going back to basic science stuff that I haven't looked at for about 10 years was horrifying, to say the least. Then, I realised that most of the material is stuff I've NEVER seen before; my med school had switched to the "new curriculum" the year before I started, which essentially means "let's chuck all this basic science stuff in the bin, and hope the students pick it up as they go along..." :P
I used First Aid as my main study guide, and found it very useful for the most part. I also used "Step-up", which was less comprehensive but covered some slightly different topics to FA. Those 2 books formed the backbone of my studying.
For further reading, I used:
BRS Path (read thru once - excellent)
BRS Physiology (read thru once - excellent)
HY histology (read thru once - pretty good; covers more than just histo, so a lot of reinforcement)
HY gross anatomy (read thru once - not great, but probably all you need. no index!)
HY micro (skimmed only - far too too in-depth!)
Micro flash cards (read thru once - really good)
Lippincott Illustrated Pharm (read thru once - loooong but worth it)
Pharm flash cards (read thru once - good to reinforce the big pharm book, but not essential)
HY Behaioural sciences (hardly used - waaay too in-depth)
Immunology book (I forget which one, but only used it to clarify things that were unclear in FA)
HY Molecular Biology (just a couple of chapters e.g. receptors/2nd messengers - the rest of it was totally unnecessary and waaay too in-depth)
HY biochem (didn't touch this, as it's an awful book. and no index! As such, I didn't really use a separate biochem text - learn FA biochem section, and you'll be good)
HY Neuroanatomy (horribly long an unnecessary, but the preface gives a "top 20" topics which are really useful - didn't use it for anything else)
HY Embryology (useful - read thru once)
In all, I actually found the HY series of books to be fairly concise, comprehensive and well-written (with the exceptions noted above). I know a lot of people don't rate them very highly, but for me they did the job 
Questions: Did UW once-through, untimed, tutor-mode. Found it incredible frustrating at the time, as it's sooo pernickety about small points - the exam isn't like that at all. In hindsight, it was probably worth it to go into that detail - I certainly knew the topic better as a result.
Also did the FA question book (from USMLERx - 1000 questions). It was pitched much closer to the actual exam - maybe slightly easier, but quicker to get through. I think it's in first edition, so there were a tonne of mistakes, both in questions and answers. Hopefully that'll be fixed in the next edition, because it was a useful book.
I did 4 of the NBME forms, and found them pretty useful for guaging where I stood. They don't give answers, but it wasn't too difficult to look up the ones I wasn't sure of. I would say, though, that the NBME forms were quite reassuring (probably because you can look up the answers at the time) - the actual exam was NOT reassuring at all (see my first post).
For me, the most important study tool was: wikipedia!
Seriously, having my laptop (or PDA) beside me while studying was incredibly useful. If I wasn't sure about something, pulling it up on google or wikipedia was far quicker than hunting through my other books. I made sure to annotate any answers I found into my FA book too, so that my "second-run" of reading just focused on FA (much quicker!)
I intended to study for 2 months, but my visa came through in the meantime and I emigrated to the USA toward the end of my studying. So, I bumped the exam back by a week. In all, I studied for about 9 weeks (way more than I did for finals!). I felt pretty ready by the end of studying.
Very important - the night before the exam, I stopped studying and went out to see a movie with the wife. I know this doesn't work for everyone, but it helps me to relax a bit and try to forget about the next day... A few more hours of cramming wasn't going to make much difference for me!
Sorry for the long post - I hope this helps someone who's prepping at the moment.
Now gimme my stats! hehe
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| lee_alkureishi
Forum Newbie
Topics: 7
Posts: 27
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Never mind! I did a good search, and found that MS Excel (and openoffice calc) have a NORMDIST function that'll work out the distribution for you
I know it's not the best for brushing up on your stats knowledge, but I really doubt the USMLE will require anyone to work out standard deviations/percentiles during the exam!
For openoffice calc, the syntax is:
=NORMDIST(score; mean; SD; 1)
The "1" tells the program to work out the distribution, returning a decimal <1 e.g 0.75 is the 75th perentile.
At least, that's what I think it does! If anyone knows better, please let me know!!!
Regards,
Lee
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| usmlekiller
Forum Guru
Topics: 18
Posts: 1,010
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congrats
___________________
FUTURE 99ER
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| lee_alkureishi
Forum Newbie
Topics: 7
Posts: 27
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thanks
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