Feeling after the exam

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hardee17

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Anyone else waiting for their scores feel absolutely horrible about the exam they took? Whats the largest drop from NBME averages that anyone has heard?
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Feel the same, scored 260s on NBME 12(2 wks out) and 15 (5 days out). If I get 230+, I will be neutral knowing that it will make the year and Step 2 much much harder. If I get 240+, I will be super pumped. If I get 250+, I will go donate all my money in my wallet. If I get 260+, I will hope they don't automatically rescore because I would think its an accident.
 
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tripwm said:
Feel the same, scored 260s on NBME 12(2 wks out) and 15 (5 days out). If I get 230+, I will be neutral knowing that it will make the year and Step 2 much much harder. If I get 240+, I will be super pumped. If I get 250+, I will go donate all my money in my wallet. If I get 260+, I will hope they don't automatically rescore because I would think its an accident.
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If i can pull a 230+ i will instantly become religious

My nbmes were in the high 260s for an average
 
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Dude, relax. Most people feel like crap when they come out. Nothing you can do about it now, so go enjoy life and get ready for your rotations. People say NBMEs are predictive for a reason.
 
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Wordead said:
Dude, relax. Most people feel like crap when they come out. Nothing you can do about it now, so go enjoy life and get ready for your rotations. People say NBMEs are predictive for a reason.
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I realize I can't do anything about it now, just wanted to create a thread to see if anyone else is feeling the same way I am. So far, I've found someone who dropped 20 points from their NBME's, can anyone find a larger drop?
 
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hardee17 said:
I realize I can't do anything about it now, just wanted to create a thread to see if anyone else is feeling the same way I am. So far, I've found someone who dropped 20 points from their NBME's, can anyone find a larger drop?
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I've heard of a 45 pt drop, does that help?




In all seriousness, my GF (and the majority of med school students) are neurotic little buggers like you. All her NBMEs were 250-260, she came out in tears thinking she failed, ended up with a 270. Stop being stupid. You didn't randomly hemorrhage everything you knew on test day.
 
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wanderer said:
You probably got a 220.
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If i get lucky!

Wordead said:
I've heard of a 45 pt drop, does that help?




In all seriousness, my GF (and the majority of med school students) are neurotic little buggers like you. All her NBMEs were 250-260, she came out in tears thinking she failed, ended up with a 270. Stop being stupid. You didn't randomly hemorrhage everything you knew on test day.
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See, this is what im looking for. Do you know anything else about the 45 pt drop? People may feel badly, but i actually looked up questions and know for a fact that i missed them. A 45 point drop would put me close to 220, lol. This thread might be more accurate than we think
 
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Okay, so you found 23 you know you missed and probably some more you didn't remember.

My calculation is that 85+% correct is 260 range, so even if you miss 2x as many as you can remember, you're still around a 260. And 80% is still 245-255 ish, so that's almost 3x as many as you can remember. The % from the NBMEs is not at all like the real deal simply due to the number and breadth of questions.

See how many you'd have to miss to drop all that far? And some of those you missed were probably experimental anyhow!

Step 1 is written to be tricky and make you think. It's not designed to see who remembers the most factoids from FA. It's designed to test understanding and assess competence for becoming a licensed physician.

I think on the low end you'll end up with a 245-250, but I'd say you're 80% likely to land in the 260s, 10% likely to hit 270+, and 10% likely to be 245-260.
 
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operaman said:
Okay, so you found 23 you know you missed and probably some more you didn't remember.

My calculation is that 85+% correct is 260 range, so even if you miss 2x as many as you can remember, you're still around a 260. And 80% is still 245-255 ish, so that's almost 3x as many as you can remember. The % from the NBMEs is not at all like the real deal simply due to the number and breadth of questions.

See how many you'd have to miss to drop all that far? And some of those you missed were probably experimental anyhow!

Step 1 is written to be tricky and make you think. It's not designed to see who remembers the most factoids from FA. It's designed to test understanding and assess competence for becoming a licensed physician.

I think on the low end you'll end up with a 245-250, but I'd say you're 80% likely to land in the 260s, 10% likely to hit 270+, and 10% likely to be 245-260.
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You really think i have less than a 1% chance to score sub 245? Ill name my first kid after you if thats true.

Edit: id like to keep this thread on track for people woth feelings or experiences like mine
 
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People always feel like crap when they come out. I know I felt progressively crappier with each Step and actually ended up doing progressively better and better. It's a trick of the brain - you forget all the questions you immediately knew the answer to and just moved on and focus on the ones you struggled with. I'm sure you all did fine, and better yet, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING you can do about it now! So sit back, relax, have a mojito and wait.

Survivor DO
 
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The rule of thumb is that how you feel coming out of the exam has zero correlation with respect to how you actually performed.

Many people think they "failed" and get way above their NBMEs. It's actually annoying how often this occurs.

Other people think things went smoothly and then only do okay.

I personally thought I rocked it when I left the exam (i.e. above my NBMEs), but I actually performed below my last three NBMEs (slightly).
 
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I was one of those ppl who felt like crap coming out and did better than my nbme scores. Everyone should know going in that he/she will feel pretty bad coming out even if he/she does well on the exam
 
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survivordo said:
People always feel like crap when they come out. I know I felt progressively crappier with each Step and actually ended up doing progressively better and better. It's a trick of the brain - you forget all the questions you immediately knew the answer to and just moved on and focus on the ones you struggled with. I'm sure you all did fine, and better yet, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING you can do about it now! So sit back, relax, have a mojito and wait.

Survivor DO
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Phloston said:
The rule of thumb is that how you feel coming out of the exam has zero correlation with respect to how you actually performed.

Many people think they "failed" and get way above their NBMEs. It's actually annoying how often this occurs.

Other people think things went smoothly and then only do okay.

I personally thought I rocked it when I left the exam (i.e. above my NBMEs), but I actually performed below my last three NBMEs (slightly).
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D elegans said:
I was one of those ppl who felt like crap coming out and did better than my nbme scores. Everyone should know going in that he/she will feel pretty bad coming out even if he/she does well on the exam
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Well I sincerely hope I'm totally off base with my feelings. The problem is that I usually am pretty good about predicting how I did on an exam. I guess I won't start studying again until I get my result. Whatever happens, I hope this thread can help someone in the future.
 
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I thought I came out of the test having failed it... ended up doing 11 points better than my last NBME.
 
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hardee17 said:
bump. two weeks until my score. anyone else taken it recently had an experience like mine?
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me... took it about 10 days ago and have been trying to block the entire experience out of my mind but obviously it's not working since I'm on this forum reading this thread.. I thought block 6 was particularly hard and I literally had to take a 10 minute break afterwards so I could (attempt to...) think again. I also didn't feel too good after block 1 and 5... and had to go with my instinct on a lot of questions because if I didn't I would've lingered too long on each question and ran out of time....
 
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operaman said:
Okay, so you found 23 you know you missed and probably some more you didn't remember.

My calculation is that 85+% correct is 260 range, so even if you miss 2x as many as you can remember, you're still around a 260. And 80% is still 245-255 ish, so that's almost 3x as many as you can remember. The % from the NBMEs is not at all like the real deal simply due to the number and breadth of questions.

See how many you'd have to miss to drop all that far? And some of those you missed were probably experimental anyhow!

Step 1 is written to be tricky and make you think. It's not designed to see who remembers the most factoids from FA. It's designed to test understanding and assess competence for becoming a licensed physician.

I think on the low end you'll end up with a 245-250, but I'd say you're 80% likely to land in the 260s, 10% likely to hit 270+, and 10% likely to be 245-260.
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Are you sure that 85% correct is ~260 range. I think 85% correct on nbme is about 240 on real one. Little confused here.:confused:
 
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999999 said:
Are you sure that 85% correct is ~260 range. I think 85% correct on nbme is about 240 on real one. Little confused here.:confused:
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Nobody (except the test makers) knows the % correct to score correlation on the real Step 1 especially because this is highly variable between test forms (due to varying difficulties, variable number of unscored experimental items, etc.).

The NBMEs scaling is not indicative of scaling on the real thing. However, the scaled scores on the NBME exams are the best estimators of real Step 1 score available.
 
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The NBMEs have fewer questions and are thus more volatile when it comes to scaling. That said, the scaled score they predict has been shown to be pretty accurate.

The percentages are probably pretty accurate across forms of the real exam. World % correct, despite the many confounding variables, seems to correlate very powerfully with scaled score. IT stands to reason that if you are averaging 85% in world that you would hit something relatively close to this on the exam, and this seems to be where you start seeing the 260s reported. I know from my own exam that I answered ~87-88% correct and was a little over 260. People hitting around or above the 90% mark seem to report the 270+ scores.

While hardly scientific, this seems to be a pretty good estimate. Forms vary somewhat, but not much because you need them relatively equal as far as length, difficulty, etc. The NBME claims a 6 pt standard error for the real exam, so they can't vary all that much because even scaling has limits.
 
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So...... out of curiosity, what made you walk away with the feeling that "you [asking anyone in general] did horrible"?

Because I just took mine yesterday and I didn't feel good about it either. It seemed like lots of the "high yield" material everyone usually studies for was nowhere to be found. I think I made lots of educated guesses, but I don't like it when I can't tell for sure if I know the answer, lol. Maybe that's just a confidence thing, I don't know.

Was it strictly difficulty on your guys' part?

also -________- at "23 that you know you missed". That's it? /facepalm
 
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thawunandonly said:
So...... out of curiosity, what made you walk away with the feeling that "you [asking anyone in general] did horrible"?

Because I just took mine yesterday and I didn't feel good about it either. It seemed like lots of the "high yield" material everyone usually studies for was nowhere to be found. I think I made lots of educated guesses, but I don't like it when I can't tell for sure if I know the answer, lol. Maybe that's just a confidence thing, I don't know.

Was it strictly difficulty on your guys' part?

also -________- at "23 that you know you missed". That's it? /facepalm
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So a lot of the stuff you saw wasn't even mentioned in FA/UW?
 
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Brain Bucket said:
So a lot of the stuff you saw wasn't even mentioned in FA/UW?
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That's how it felt like to me :c
Of course, I could be exaggerating like most other people, but when it's enough it becomes noticeable. Mine had lots of molecular bio stuff... as for other specific, systems... none really stood out.
 
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I dropped 11 pts from a 257 to 246. Most others I know were within 5 atleast.


Felt I did WAY worse than what I did
 
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thawunandonly said:
That's how it felt like to me :c
Of course, I could be exaggerating like most other people, but when it's enough it becomes noticeable. Mine had lots of molecular bio stuff... as for other specific, systems... none really stood out.
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Gah...
 
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My exam was yesterday (Sunday). I'm just a 'normal' average student but i guess i gave it my best shot. Had a lot of micro slides and immuno that at a point i started wondering if i had been studying the back of my FA. I studied immuno 2days before the exam and yet the exam almost slaughtered me!

The exam wasn't easy. I left thinking i may have performed below my NBMEs. I did 2blocks..2blocks..2blocks...1block. the first two blocks were like an 'intro'. I was a bit tensed i must confess. the last was a parting gift from step 1. HAD AROUND 15 IMMUNOLOGY questions!!
I'm just glad its over.
The order of my practice tests:
After my first round of Uworld (66% correct)
NBME 11 4 months out... 214
UWSA 1 3 months out.. 230
Started my 2nd round of uworld (87%) then took these tests..

NBME 7 2 months out... 214!! *was so discouraged at this point.
NBME 12 1.5months out.... 228.
NBME 15 4weeks out....... 233
NBME 13 4days out ...... 252
UWSA 2 3days before my exam .. 265 ( 87% correct)


Will update in 3weeks time.. **fingers crossed
 
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T- 1? It's so weird. I'm getting excited for this. This really is the height of living vicariously.

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk 4 Beta
 
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Brain Bucket said:
T- 1? It's so weird. I'm getting excited for this. This really is the height of living vicariously.

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk 4 Beta
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Haha i doubt im going to sleep tonight.

thawunandonly said:
We placing bets? I got him at 260+
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No way, if i was a betting man id put half my money in the fail and half in the 230s bracket.
 
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Final prediction before tomorrow: sadly, failure. I just made way too many stupid mistakes. I dont want to make excuses, but i feel like i also got rather unlucky with the question distribution. Less than 12 hrs to go.
 
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Dude, chill. You are not special - almost everyone feels like complete crap coming out of the exam. I certainly did and it went much better than I predicted. I expect the same for you
 
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Thanks guys. Here's my thoughts:

KEEP IT SIMPLE

KEEP IT SIMPLE

KEEP IT SIMPLE

Seriously. The exam is essentially the basics, but in a reworded way. Stop studying any rare diseases that aren't in FA or UWORLD. Total waste. Stick to the basics. FA/USMLERX + UWORLD ONLY. No kaplan, no webpath, no anything. The exam is about the basics. Trust me when I say that the questions I missed were the absolute easiest items in the world. Not going to give any specifics obviously, but they would be things like "what layer of skin is found only in the hands/feet?" Super super easy junk like that. I spent so much time on complex 4th and 5th order stuff. I did learn a lot in my studying that might help me in the future, but that's yet to be seen.

Also, due to the important nature of this exam, I would advise stopping studying 2 full days prior to the exam. I usually cram until the last minute during school, and my grades are quite respectable--but I think my cramming here hurt me. Stay calm and confident. Treat every question with a blank slate.

For more specifics, you can look at my post history for my nbme averages and stuff. I think I way over studied. I dropped between 10-15 points from those into the 250s. Disappointing, yes. I simply got too nervous. Oh well, time for some step 2 fun.
 
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