NBME 18 and 19 or Practice test on usmle website

[Orestis]

Hello guys...

I am having my exam on the 17th of January. Some weeks ago I did NBME 16 and 17. I was thinking about doing nbme 18 and 19 this week and then try to relax for a couple of days before the exam. Today I was checking the tutorial on the usmle website and I saw that they also offer 3 blocks for practice for free. Is it worth doing these 3 blocks?

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[Orestis]

So I did NBME 18 and I scored 211 which freaked me out. I did the 1st block of of the free practice tests which seemed ridiculously easy, scored 88%. From a reddit post, I found that 88% that correlates to 240-245. Which one is more reliable? NBME 18 in my opinion did not provide many information about the patient(symptoms, finding etc.) while the free test was just like Uworld.

 

[sahell]

The practise is more similar to the actual test imo, but NBMEs are the most useful for score prediction according to everything I've read.

 

[Orestis]

but if NBMEs are better for score prediction it makes sense that they will be similar to the test, doesn't it?

 

[sahell]

Not necessarily. The scoring information is not available so everything is conjecture. The NBMEs are retired questions and the curve is pretty steep, but somehow the vast majority gets scores within 10 points of their NBMEs. Also the free 120 has fewer questions so there's more spread as far as I can tell. The test has a lot of simple NBME style questions and a lot of conceptual UW type questions. I got a few obscure questions on the test like you saw on NBME 18, whether they're experimental or scored only the NBME knows. There's no way to predict what your form will be like so I'd suggest do as many questions as possible.

 

[Orestis]

yeah kinda figure it out. Until now I have done nbme 16(197), 17(200) 18(211) 19(223) UWSA1(230) UWSA2(232) uworld x2(1st pass 55%, second 71%) and today I am doing the practice tests from the website. It looks like I am gonna score somewhere between 230 and 240, not perfect score but descent.

 

[USMLE_Pro]

For both Step 1 and Step 2 CK, I have found that NBME's are great for content (if I were only allowed to use a single resource, I would memorize the 6 NBME self assessments), but awful and highly variable for score prediction, particularly the more recent ones. For example, I got a 240 on Form 19, 262 on real deal Step 1. The UWorld SAs are far more predictive, in my opinion (I got a ~260 on 1, ~270 on the other).

 

[Step_1]

I am an international med graduate. I scored 221 on form 17; 230 on form 18 and 242 in Uworld SA 1.
I am thinking about postponing the test because I think these are low scores.
Any advice

Thanks.

 

[USMLE_Pro]

Hey Step_1, what is your score goal? When were you planning to take the exam?

 

[Step_1]

Hey Step_1, what is your score goal? When were you planning to take the exam?

I have a goal in the range of 240 to 250
exam in 4 days