Score came back Wednesday: mid 260's. Pretty happy with this, keeps all my options open.
Rough time line of my studying:
Beginning of M1: start Firecracker, did it religiously up to test day. I also annotated in things from Pathoma and QBanks during M2 so that I could see them again.
M1 along with classes: BRS physio, SketchyMicro, Picmonic
M2 summer: some review of M1 stuff in Kaplan (anatomy, physiology, neuroanatomy, immunology [not sure that any of this was that helpful outside maybe immuno since I didn't have a great handle on that]), try to flag stuff in FC that we had mentioned in M1 but was more M2 material (75% flagged by the start of M2).
M2 first semester: USMLERx by system along with classes, Kaplan pharm, Pathoma and RR Path along with classes, would also read FA chapters along with class but not annotating anything yet or spending much time there.
M2 winter break: preread coming semester systems in Pathoma and finish flagging FC
M2 2nd semester: essentially the same as first semester M2 except I also completed Kaplan QBank on timed random and made a first pass from beginning to end of first aid (tried to read around 25 pages before bed each night, would annotate some things from this into Firecracker). This got to be a bit of a grind towards the end because I miscalculated and got a little behind on Kaplan, so some days I had to do up to 3 blocks. My grades really took a hit here (though we're true P/F so it's not super concerning, just not ideal).
Dedicated 5 weeks: UWorld timed random (88% first pass average), 2 passes of first aid, pathoma (read the book because I didn't feel like I had time to watch the vids, which was not ideal since I think that's the best part of pathoma), BRS physio, Kaplan Ethics, HY neuroanatomy, blue boxes in Moore's. All additional things from UWorld/Pathoma were annotated by hand into first aid (which I'd highly recommend getting hole punched at put into a binder).
Practice tests:
UWSA1 5wks out/beginning of dedicated: 265
NBME11 3 wks out: 269
UWSA2 2 wks out: 265
I did the last 5 NBME's over 4 days leading into the last week of my prep. I wouldn't recommend this, but it's just kind of what happened and I wanted to make sure I got through them all in case there were any repeats on the real thing.
NBME12: 273
NBME13: 273
NBME15: 262
NBME16: 266
NBME17: 271
Free 150: ~96-7%
Real thing ~265
I already posted about my feelings on test day earlier, but in brief: it sort of sucked. Didn't feel great about it at all, but didn't feel terrible.
Overall I think things turned out great. 2nd semester of M2 really sucked at parts, but I think front loading my work made it a little more low key during my dedicated prep time which was nice. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping to break 270 based on practice test scores (and for bragging rights
), but my final score is pretty in line with my later NBME's and should be more than enough for whatever I end up deciding to do so I am psyched. As an aside, I think it's funny that I was always railing against UWSAs as a predictive tool and ended up scoring very close to them, but I still don't think they're great predictors and their cutoff at 265 made their prediction in my case somewhat coincidental.
Big thanks to all those who've made this forum as helpful as it is. Congrats to those of you who've already taken it, and best of luck to those still preparing. Happy to answer any questions via PM, I'd hoped to do a more thorough write up but M3 has already gotten the better of me and I should get back to studying (it never ends...).