Official 2008 Usmle Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

[lion]

Greetings my brothers and sisters ,

I am new member here and will be taking my boards in another few months .
I thought I would start a thread devoted to a compilation of 2008 usmle experiences . I don't have anything to report as yet since my test is in a few month but anyone who has taken the test in 2008 please share with us your experience and feedback so we can keep the SDN tradition alive !

Good Luck

"Never , never , never , never Give up ! "

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[Mixtli]

Holy crap! These scores on SDN are ridiculous. I think the actual exam may have been curbed easier than the NBME in terms of scores.
I got 205 on NBME3, 235 on NBME4, 240 on NBME5, and 250 on the real deal. I counted around 8 Qs I got wrong right off the bat after the test, and ~50 Qs I was very shaky/guessed.

I must thank first Lippincott's pharm cards and Robbin's Pathreview for the big help in pharm and pharmacology, and UW repeating very similar USMLE Qs. I must also thank myself for not doing well in year II and skipping class to set some time to study for the boards.

 

[medstylee]

So, I took the exam yesterday. I'm finally emerging from my hangover/coma, so I will share my experiences. This thread has been very helpful to me, so I thank everyone for contributing such detailed posts.

My prep:
I gave myself 5 weeks to prepare. I took a total of 1 day off - I had planned 2 others, but those were thwarted by my p.i. pleading with me to come in and enter data all day (I was too much of a sucker to say no). I initially made a study schedule and I stuck to it for a good 2 weeks, then I started getting burnt out and fell off a bit. If you are a disciplined person, I think mapping everything out ahead of time is a great idea. Anyway, I spent probably 4 days on biochem, 1 on genetics, 1 on molecular, 2 on neuro, 1 on behavioral, 4 on physio, 4 on micro, 5 on pharm, 7 on path, 1 on immuno and the rest was just random review. I started kaplan's qbank and got through about 40% with an avg of 68%, but i really found it frustrating. I switched to USMLE world and loved it. I completed about 80% of the bank and finished with a 75% cumulative. I also took NBME 1 before studying (scored 226) and NBME 4 with about a week and half left (scored 247). I used a variety of resources, some which were great, some which weren't...

Path: Goljan RR was absolutely fantastic - it helped me score very highly on the pathology shelf and it helped me immensely on step 1. i like it much better than BRS because it incorporates a lot of pathophysiology which is really the bulk of the path & physiology content on step 1.
Micro: CMMRS was great. Great short chapter on HIV. I loved the charts (pretty much all I studied from) for bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites. Some of them were a bit too extensive (ie, helminths, platyhelminths, yadda yadda), but you know what to cut out.
Biochem: The kaplan book was spot on. The chapters on Molecular biology are especially good.
Immuno: Kaplan book was, again, awesome. The charts at the end for interleukins, CD markers, etc are important.
Physio: Costanzo's BRS book is mostly adequate. You may need to supplement endocrinology and renal with something a little more detailed. I used Vander's Renal Physiology (short and wonderful) and just said some prayers for endocrine...
Behavioral/Biostats: HY Behavioral Sci was short and helpful - especially the biostats section which actually explains the different tests/equations. I needed to know formulas for NNT and ARR on my exam and this was the only source I found those in.
Pharm: I found it most difficult to pin down a good source for this. I flipped between Kaplan (sometimes good, sometimes too bare), FirstAid (great sections on chemotherapy and type II diabetes meds) and RoadMap Pharm (extremely good chapters on pharmacokinetics/dynamics and CNS drugs)
Neuro: HY neuro was way too extensive, but for the content that is actually important, it's incredibly helpful. Check out the pathways for sure.
Gross Anatomy: UW was the best for this, I thought. I checked out HY Gross but it was atrocious. Should be called Low Yield Gross Anatomy.
First Aid: honestly, I hated FA. It's just not how I study - I find it a waste of time to annotate things because I'm a slow studier in general. Some sections were helpful (see above - chemotherapy), but it's just a huge skeleton of a book (I guess that's the point, really). It seems like 75% of med students love this resource, but it just wasn't for me - total personal preference.

Step 1 (6/19) = 250/99

 

[hippocampus]

study time: 2 months... way overkill. (for those taking it soon, 1.5 months is good).
nbme 1,2,5 = 230s
nbme 3,4,6= 240s
....my nbme scores kept going up and down. it was driving me crazy. go over my past posts if u want to read about it.
150 free Qs = 85% correct 1 week out
uw assessment= 258, 2 weeks out.

step 1 score= low 250s/99

pretty surprising. i wasn't going to check my score until winter break so that i could have time to cry and be depressed and get over it. i couldn't help but check my score since everyone on sdn seemed to have done better than they thought they would... luckily, that included me.

resources:
first aid 2008
goljan
kaplan lecture notes
high yield books
qbank kaplan
usmle world qbank

how i felt during the exam:
i felt like a piece of cr*p and wanted to die. i cried for multiple days.

if i could do it over again, i would:
-not move my test back to another date. moving the test back will do nothing for you
-after ur done with question banks, take the test
-dont take all the nbme tests, it's overkill
-dont take an nbme test near ur exam date. if u do bad, you'll freak out
-focus on high yield topics... the test is nothing like the practice exams. you need general knowledge of everything. in the end, it is all based on how lucky you are
-i've pretty much done research on ppl's scores, and i realized that if you get your average nbme practice score, and add 10+, that will likely be your step1 score.

good luck!

 

[LadyWolverine]

250/99

Same here.

I mainly used:
- FA 2008
- UW (I mostly did only Qs relevant to material I had just reviewed)
- RR Path

Other supplemental stuff:
- BRS Behavioral Sci (annotated into FA)
- Lippincott Biochem (read cover-to-cover)
- HY CMB
- Pharm Cards (wish I had spent more time on pharm, esp in FA)
- Micro Cards (I wanted to read CMMRS, but ran out of time)
- BRS Physio (only a few of the chapters - the CV, resp, and GI chapters were crucial)
- Langman's embryo/HY embryo

Unsolicited advice:
- Do well in years 1 and 2. If you master (or at least become familiar with) the material the first time around, you'll have an easier time reviewing and retaining everything in a few short weeks.
- Take the time to read the explanations in UW for ALL of the answer choices, and not only just for the Qs you get wrong. Exhaust all of the Qs in each subsection.
- Know both FA and RR Path cover-to-cover. Everything else is just "extra."
- I didn't take a single NBME, which meant I saved some money. It also meant an exceptionally nerve-wracking wait for my scores, since, as I had no basis for comparison, I had no clue what my score would be. I honestly wasn't even sure whether or not I had passed, because I didn't really know what passing felt like on a simulated exam.
- It took me a while to get into the "groove." I ended up spending a TON of time on behavioral sci, biostats, genetics, biochem, CMB, and embryo, just because I was taking my time and being really thorough, doing lots of background reading, annotating, doing all the Qs in UW and then reviewing the answers, etc. I had to really step it up and start cranking it out once I hit path. By the time I finished with RR/FA/BRS physio, I had only a couple of days left to review micro and immuno and pharm.
- Do the pharm as you go along with each system.

Good luck to those who still have yet to take this thing.

 

[gluon999]

Here is some motivation for all the "average" folks out there:


I was smack in the middle of my class at an average school, for the first two years. When it came to boards studying, I worked my butt off. Here are the results...

Practice exam at school: 163
nbme 4: 214 (3 weeks before exam)
nbme 6: 230 (10 days before exam)
nbme 5: 230 (5 days before exam)
kaplan full-length practice exam - 71% (7 days before exam)

MCAT: 32
Kaplan Q-bank: 59% cumulative (90% completed)
USMLE World: 60% cumulative (100% completed...on the last 5 blocks, I averaged 66%)

Real exam: 248!!!

Still in disbelief with my score. I think my clutch performance had to do with doing 7 hour blocks of practice questions on two occasions, to get me mentally and physically trained for the grueling test day, for it can be exhausting. What also helped me was spending the last couple of days focusing on the areas that were identified as weaknesses on the NBME exams.

So to all the people who think they are 'just average', there IS hope that you too can rock the boards!

 

[Viridae]

Coming out of the woodwork to post my experience...

MCAT: 37
Med school: P/F, test scores usually within a point or two of the class average
Goal score: >220 (not aiming for anything competitive)
Time frame: 4 weeks, M-F 6-9 hours a day, did an NBME each Saturday AM but took the rest of the weekend off
Resources used: FA, Rapid Review Path/Micro/Immuno, HY Biochem/Cell Bio/Anatomy/Embryo, BRS Physio/Behavioral, BRS Micro/Pharm/Path cards
Question bank: UW, overall 65% with ~90% completed, last week getting in the 70-75% range, reviewed all missed questions
NBMEs:
#1 (before studying): 216
#2 (one week in): 226
#3 (two weeks in): 226 (wow, did that piss me off)
#4 (three weeks in): 228 (and that pissed me off even more)
UWorld Self Assessment (three days before test day): 238

Real Deal: 245/99

Moral of the story: I wouldn't advise my plan for everyone, but apparently it worked out OK for me. I spent the first two days and the last two days going through FA, then the rest of the time about equally divided between reviewing resources and doing questions. I also spent about ~45 minutes per day on flashcards (I learn really well that way). In addition to the purchased cards, I also made my own as I went through for easily flashcardable things that I felt weak on or got wrong in UW. I knew that I didn't have a lot of time and so I paid really close attention on my initial FA run-through to my areas of strength and weakness and triaged my studying accordingly.

I got very nervous during week three because my scores were not improving as I had hoped, but everything came together for the last week. It almost felt like magic. If I had it to do over again, I probably would have tried to schedule a few more days of studying to give myself a little more of a cushion, but I'm certainly not going to complain about how things worked out.

Congrats to everyone and good luck to those of you who are still prepping for the exam!

 

[tfom08]

Do the pharm as you go along with each system.

That's really good advice. Make sure you are spending time with pharm on each system so that it is familiar and then really drill it in the days leading up to the exam. There are SO many easy points to be had just by putting in the time to memorize the mechs and SEs.

 

[mtDNA]

Ok, so I have been reading this board pretty much throughout the first two years, and even during first year, I spent some time with first aid, trying to get an early handle on things. I figured when I took the test, I would write a huge post on here about everything I did, but honestly, I feel like most of what I am about to say is already on this board, so this won't be that long. Ill start by talking about my resources:

FA- What else is there to say. THis is your most important resource. Nearly all of the answers are in here, you just need to learn it all well enough to integrate it. I struggled with the format for a while, and I know that many people do, but I think you need to just buckle down and find a way to use this because it is amazing.

Rapid Review Path- I actually used this as a primary resource during second year and basically just did poorly in my path class. That probably wasn't really necessary though. I felt like there were some key chapters in here where he really explained things, the chapter on red blood cells comes to mind, and I also think that his chapter on the cardiovascular system stood out. Interestingly enough though, I actually first aid path was better for certain subjects. the vasculitis stuff comes to mind. The only thing I don't like about this book is that it is so long, and honestly, I feel like I wasted a lot of time trying to learn some things that really weren't all that high yield. If I were to do it over again, I wouldn't even try to read this cover to cover, I would either use first aid to guide the material that I study, or use BRS path, along with FA and Rapid Review's pictures, and maybe some of the really good chapters in RR as well.

BRS phys- A great book, not as necessary as the above though. I would say skip the neuro chapter, it is so long and seems to be really low yield. FA complemented with select material from HY neuro are all you need for neuro. Make sure you look at the cardio phys in FA, because BRS leaves out some very important things on this.

Usmle World- I didn't get through all of this, but I thought it was a great resource. There are a lot ridiculous questions in there, so don't get hung up on everything you see in there (some of these questions less than %10 of all people getting them right, that means that a monkey would do better than someone who actually has some education on the material...I'm pretty sure that means the question is bad), but there a lot of questions that really help you integrate information and get you thinking. I actually did my questions by subject after I had just reviewed the subject, which is not what most people do, but in the end, it worked out, so I think you can do this either way and it is fine. I really don't think you should be using UW to predict your score anyway, because the NBMEs are great for that.

I studied for 4 weeks, here are my stats:

UW: average was 68% overall, honestly I can't tell you what my scores were like towards the end because they were all over the place. I literally did a block where I had a 30%, and then did another block the same day from the same subject and got 90%. I think that UW is a horrible way to assess where you are at, it is best to just use it to learn.

Goljan audio: Use this when you are driving or walking to school. Use it throughout 2nd year, I think it is pretty high yield. I would not use it when you could be studying from a book though.

NBME 3: did it 1 week out, got a 245. Btw, I think it is a great idea to do an NBME, because it is an accurate predictor of your score, and the time and money that it takes to do one really aren't a big deal in the big scheme of things. Before I took the NBME, I had no idea where I was at and I was very nervous and worried about all of the things that I seemed to be forgetting. After the NBME, I was calm and confident, worth every penny. I actually slept great the night before the exam too!

Real deal: 247. I was really happy with this, but the fact is that my last week of studying was pretty low yield. I am glad I let myself have a week of vacation instead of trying to just use all of the time given to me to study, because that probably would not have raised my score by much, if at all. And its not like I wasn't productive in my last week, I staying on task and reviewed all of path one last time, along with some micro and biochem. I really think that the foundation you lay out for yourself during the first two years is critical. There were times when I was very lazy throughout those years and I always justified it to myself by saying that since I was focusing more on boards than my peers, I would do much better on the only test that mattered. But the truth is, the people who learned everything really well the first time were in better shape than I was. I'm not complaining, becaues I am REALLY happy with my score, but I am just pointing this out to people who are going to take the test in the future.

Hmmmmmm...I guess I did end up writing a pretty long post

 

[Doctor Bagel]

NBME 2 -- 230
NBME 4 -- 238
NBME 5 -- 248 (one week before the real deal)
Step 1 -- 256/99

My method -- question banks. I did all the questions in Kaplan's Qbank, USMLE123, USMLERx and UW. Maybe overkill, but I learn the best from Q&A types of stuff. I started doing the qbanks in January but didn't do any other official step 1 studying until we got out of school in mid May.

Also, yes, try to learn stuff the first time you hit it, especially path and phys. Try to really grasp the underlying cell bio stuff early on instead of trying to learn it while doing board prep. I wasn't a bio major and felt like I had to spend a good chunk of my official studying learning the super basics.

We had comprehensive pharm and path exams in May, so I concentrated on those. After those, I took a 3 day break and then studied for 4 weeks for the test. I did very little path and pharm studying after the comprehensive exams -- doing questions was enough to keep the material fresh in my mind. If I could do it all over again, I'd cut the post-school studying to 3 weeks. I really wasn't productive at the end.

Books
1. FA 2007 -- I didn't look at this until May, but I'd really recommend looking at it earlier. It's pretty darn helpful.
2. BRS Path -- hate to say it, but I like it more than Goljan
3. Goljan RR Path -- used it for my path class but not for board prep. It's full of great info, but the presentation doesn't work for me.
4. HY Neuro -- highly recommend this. Lots of useful info and short.
5. HY Anatomy -- eh, I only make it partway through. I used the qbanks to pick up the anatomy I needed to know.
6. RR Biochem -- Good. It takes a while to get through, though.
7. HY Behavioral Science -- probably could have done without it. FA covers most of the stuff you need to know. I looked through it on my last day of studying.
8. CMMRS -- long but great.
9. USMLE Roadmap Immunology -- I got this because I really didn't grasp immuno. It was OK but FA is probably adequate. Actually I'd advise learning immuno in class instead of just memorizing stuff.
10. BRS Cell Bio and Histology -- I found it useful because I really didn't grasp this stuff in medical school. Probably overkill for most people.
11. HY Cell Biology (1999 edition). Good, but probably not worth the hype, imo.
12. BRS Phys -- great
13. BRS Pharm -- don't waste your time or money. Way overkill and lacking in good things for pharm like charts.

 

[cmistmd83]

I originally planned to take the test July of 2007 but due to a family member's death right before the exam I ended up not being able to take it and then I had lab (I was taking a year off to do lab work) and everything else so wasn't able to take it until June of 2008.

The first time I studied I used a study group. I would highly recommend this. We actually started studying by going through the first aid our first and second year. It helped us with our classes and when it came to actually starting to study we already had notes in the first aid.

I did Kaplan's medessentials which was awesome. It has great charts and graphs and provides a level of detail that the FA is lacking.

I listened to Gosjan about three times. The first time taking notes and the second and third times just looking up stuff I didn't understand. I never understood heart sounds until I listened to him.

I went through BRS path and phys but now that I look back on it that was probably a waste of time especially the BRS phys because it's so redundant. I would only recommend doing the questions out of the book.

I got the Kaplan audio lectures free and listened to those once. They go over alot of physiology. The microbiology and behavioral science lectures are awesome.

I did Qbank and remember being so depressed because my average was only like 65%.

During the year when I didn't have anything to do in lab I would listen to audio lectures and over winter break I went through usmleworld.

When it was May and finally time for my to start studying again, after a year , read through kaplan medessentials, and then did usmleworld questions again.

after waiting a year I was so happy to finally take the test and get it over with.

In med school I was always average and with an MCAT score of 27 I was so fearful I was destined to do poorly on the Step I.

Final score 250/99
my stats were
QBank 65%
usmleworld first time around 75%, second time 85%
150 free questions 87%
NBME form 3 228
NBME form 4 219
NBME form 5 224
NBME form 6 236
MCAT 27
I don't know how I got a 250 with my NBME scores being so low. I'm proof you can still get a high score in spite of an average performance in med schools, low MCAT and average NBME scores.

 

[LSU Tiger MD]

Well, here is my report...

I am a decent student, and I have always done well on standardized tests. I went with the less is more approach and bought FA, RR path, and BRS phys. These were the only books I wanted to use. I bought Kaplan QBank and decided it sucked and got USMLERx about 2 weeks into studying. I ended up barely using RR Path, and First Aid and questions were the backbone to my studying. I really feel like I could have done more questions and at least been more confident. I am definitely someone who learns from questions, and I think that you can learn everything you need to know from question explanations and FA. Here are my stats:

Kaplan: 59% final average (70% completed)
USMLERx: 74% final average w/ an 81% average in final 3 days (50% completed)
NBME 5 (3 weeks out): 216 (490)
NBME 6 (2 weeks out): 226 (530)
Free 150 (1 week out): 88%

I walked out of the prometric center feeling like crap. I really feel like the nbme tests were not representative of the questions I got on my real test. I was expecting somewhere around 225 based on the sense I got from my exam, and my NBME practice tests, so I was thrilled when I read my score report:

244/99

 

[veenut]

Honestly, all I want to know is:

How did DwyaneWade do???

 

[IndyZX]

Above-average med student, but my grades are nothing spectacular. I studied really, really hard for three weeks straight (first pass) and then took UW1 to see where I was. Then, I studied for another two weeks (second pass) and took NBME5. Finally, a week spent going through my weak spots. That last week might have useful, maybe not, but it was definitely an unfocused week of studying. Anyway, here are my stats and stuff. PM me if you have a specific question, but I don't have any secret study plans or anything.

*** First Aid, RR Pathology, BRS Physiology, MicroCards. FA is an amazing outline for what you need to know, but my primary sources were always RR Path and BRS Phys. For me, the FA micro section was too disjointed so I used MicroCards which I thought were excellent. I hand-wrote flash cards for every drug in First Aid (they should sell them), which I found to be sufficient for the actual test even though I was worried about it when I was doing practice Qs.
* HY Neuro, BRS Behavioral Science, RR Biochemistry, How The Immune System Works. All these books were great, but instead of reading them cover-to-cover, I used them as needed to expand my understanding of the material in FA. I also had HY CMB 99, which was nice, but the important concepts were covered on UW.

MCAT 38
UW 100% completed, 76% overall, 82% over last 10 tests.
UW1 253 (6/2)
NBME5 253 (6/18)
Step1 261 (6/25)

 

[mtDNA]

Honestly, all I want to know is:

How did DwyaneWade do???

Hah, I am curious about that too now that you mention it.

 

[plainolerichie]

My crap is:

MCAT scores, FYI - 27, 28 (I know, not that great)
NBME 6 - 247 (2 days before, HOLY Shpadoinkle!)
NBME 1 - 234 (about 5 days before)
NBME 5 - 232 (8 days)
NBME 3 - 214 (20 days before)

Real one - 235,98

I don't know if I feel happy or sad about it (well, kinda disappointed ). I actually felt good about the test. My initial goal was for 235 when I started studying and then felt like that was impossible after my NBME 3.

BUT THEN, I was feeling like I got at least >240 after the test (especially compared to the 247 two days before, it felt about the same difficulty as that test). I honestly really wish I didn't get that damn 247, I would feel SO much less disappointed now.

Anyways, do you know what the second number (the 98) even means? And does anyone know where I can find averages for residency matches and board scores?

 

[hsans23]

http://www.nrmp.org/data/chartingoutcomes2007.pdf

i can't find 2008's, but this should give u an idea

 

[plainolerichie]

http://www.nrmp.org/data/chartingoutcomes2007.pdf

i can't find 2008's, but this should give u an idea

What does the second number really mean, and is there any way to get an idea about my chances at certain specific programs (or do you know where to get this information)?

 

[flashMD]

Hi all, just wanted to "give back" to this fantastic board!

I just finished the beast...wanted to post while everything was fresh (disclaimer...had a few too many glasses of champagne)...

OVERALL: What a beast! It was long, mentally/physically/emotionally taxing, but DOABLE! After taking it, I really don't know what else I could have done to improve my score...it was a whole bunch of randomness. I felt like I knew so much more than what was tested, but was simultaneously clueless about some of the crazy questions! There was about 5-10% sheer memorization (from first aid factoids etc) and mostly REASONING! USMLE World was probably the closest to the real thing, but was probably more difficult overall.

PREPARATION:
Main Sources:
-First Aid
-Goljan RR Path
-BRS Pharm cards
-USMLE WOrld (75% complete)

Supplemental Sources:
-Goljan audio
-Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple
-BRS Pathology/Physiology
-HY Embryology/Gross Anatomy/Immunology
-Clinical Neuroanatomy MRS
-Rapid Review Biochemistry
-Kaplan Home Study Books +/-
-Underground Clinical Vignettes--behavioral science, biochem
-Kaplan Q bank (30% complete...hated it!)

TEST EXPERIENCE:

First off...I literally ALMOST missed my test. Make sure you have the actual testing permit! The link to print out the testing permit from USMLE got sent to my SPAM mail, so I didn't realize that there was another sheet I need to test! I had to run out find a Kinkos and print it out...literally had 3 minutes remaining when I got back to Prometric before they would no longer let me test for the day. Very stressful, not the best way to start out the day .

BEHAVIORAL: LOTS of vignettes! I had like 3-4 per block of "what would you say next". Honestly, a few were straight off USMLE World, but mostly just had to use common sense. Still not sure how to answer 2-3...not sure how you could prepare better. 3-5 biostats questions, answerable from First Aid.

BIOCHEM: RANDOM. Only 5-6 questions total. A few enzyme questions, a few AA questions, 1-2 genetics questions, 1-2 molecular. 1 lysosomal storage. ALL in FIRST AID!

MICRO: Pretty well represented. Very doable. Straight forward from First Aid! Mostly bacteria, 1 parasite, a few fungal, a few viruses.

IMMUNO: Pretty under represented. Had a few cytokine and mechanism questions (i.e. which T cell would be stimulated in ____). A few hypersensitivity questions. A few immunodeficiencies. All answerable from First Aid.

PHARM: Very little pharmacodynamics/pharmacokinetics. Mostly straightforward side effects, mechanism, or indications of specific drugs. ALL answerable from First Aid. There was not a single drug that I had not at least heard of. 3-6 random graph questions....pretreated with drug X, what is drug Y etc (those were the hardest...but I just always hate those!)

EMBRYOLOGY: seriously like 2 questions overall. very UNDERrepresented. All answerable from first aid...super LOW yield subject on my exam.

ANATOMY: Again very few questions overall. 1 cervical plexus, a couple name this structure on MRI/CT, and 1 insertion etc. Probably could only directly answer 2-3 from first aid, but I also did HY Anatomy and flipped through netters...did not help. I really DO NOT suggest spending more time studying for this (based on my test)...memorizing Netter's would not have helped answer these (very obscure).

PATH: Pretty straightforward, but A LOT of random basic pathology (not necessarily systems based)...was a little under prepared for these. Would suggest spending more time reading BASIC chapters from pathology book. Clinical presentations of diseases were not as straightforward as USMLE World, but overall, pretty recognizable. I had a TON of Reproductive and Neuro. Know your basic reproductive pathophysiology WELL (I totally screwed up like 2-3 questions confusing myself on this!) Decent amount of cardiac, some respiratory, heme, practically NO MSK/Rheum, endocrine (some diabetes, DKA), or GI. I surprisingly had quite a few straight HISTOLOGY questions...(felt a little underprepared...it had been a while).

PHYSIOLOGY: LOTS of arrows questions. Know pathophysiology well, (i.e. pulm function tests, endocrine). Very little straight physiology.

AUDIO/VISUAL: 1 question...did NOT need sounds to figure out question.

All in all, I have NO IDEA how I did. I marked a lot of questions (much more than USMLE World)...could have scored a 184 or a 250, I'm clueless! Honestly, I really don't know what I could have done differently to prepare for the beast. It was really RANDOM. Pretty anti-climactic after all that studying!

 

[PeepshowJohnny]

Congratulations to everyone who passed, regardless if you got an "SDN score" or not.

And for everyone trying to figure out %, don't go too crazy. The consensus reached last year is that the Step 1 data seems to be quasi-bell curved, but it has a steep drop off the higher you get so it's not perfectly normal (Look at the "Step 1" distribution curves on charting outcomes). So don't fret too much about what % your 247 makes you.

And even if you did bring home the whopper 272 score, remember, it's not the only thing for residency applications. Third year clerkships can matter huge, so it ain't over.

Ones again, congrsats!

 

[Mathemagician]

My stats:
MCAT: 26
1st 2 years of med school: completely average

Main sources:
First Aid 2006: 3x
Goljan Audio Reviews: 3x
Uworld: 100% completed

Other sources:
Cell & Molecular Biology: HY
Microbiology: HY
Neurology: class notes
Pathology: Goljan Rapid Review, Robbins Qbook
Pharmacology: Deja Review
Physiology: BRS

For all other subjects I used First Aid only.

Preparation:
I studied 8-12 hrs/day for 5 weeks. Each morning I would do random, timed 50 question blocks in UWorld. During weeks 1 & 2 - 1 block/day, weeks 3 & 4 - 2 blocks/day, week 5 - 3 blocks/day. I'd also try to listen to 1 or 2 Goljan lectures/day while I was driving or working out.

Day 1-3: Read FA cover to cover
Day 4-5: FA Biochem
Day 6: NBME 3
Day 7: FA Micro
Day 8: HY Micro
Day 9: FA Immuno
Day 10-12: Read Goljan RR cover to cover
Day 13: BRS Physio
Day 14: Free 150 @ Prometric center
Day 15: Deja Review Pharm
Day 16: FA Pharm
Day 17: FA Psych
Day 18: NBME 4
Day 19: FA Neuro
Day 20-21: Neuro class notes
Day 22: HY Cell & Mol Bio
Day 23: NBME 6
Day 24: Skimmed FA Micro, Immuno again
Day 25-27: Goljan RR, again
Day 28-30: FA organ systems, again
Day 31: Re-read HY Cell & Mol Bio, skimmed FA Biochem again
Day 32: FA Biostats/Behav Sci
Day 33: FA Anatomy/Embryo, Pharm
Day before: Goljan RR blue boxes/notes, FA rapid review

Actual Test:
Super long question stems, 2-3x as long as UWorld, plus tons of unnecessary lab values listed. The bulk of my test was Path and Pathophys as I expected, but I was surprised at how much Cell & Mol Bio and Behav Sci was on my test. I had 15-20 questions on receptor types and second messenger systems, most of which I wouldn't have known if I hadn't read HY Cell & Mol Bio. Usually I like Beh Sci, but my 10-15 quote questions were quite difficult, but I don't think I could've studied for them anyway. My Biostats questions were weird too, no actual calculations except 3 NNT questions which I never learned how to do! However, surprisingly easy and underrepresented was Biochem, Anatomy and Micro. At the end of the day, I had a splitting headache and felt utterly exhausted!

Scores:
NBME 1 (10 weeks out): 194
CBSE (5 weeks out): 210
NBME 3 (4 weeks out): 216
Free 150 (3 weeks out): 81% (wikitestprep - 225, medfriends - 241)
NBME 4 (2.5 weeks out): 224
NBME 6 (1.5 weeks out): 236
UWorld (100% completed): 68% (average of last 500)

Step 1: 241/99!

I'm really pleased with my score. Ever since my 26 MCAT and poor shelf exam scores during the first 2 years of med school, I've thought of myself as a chronic crappy standardized test taker...not anymore! I firmly believe that you can raise your score significantly if you are focused and work hard during those last few weeks. Good luck and congrats to everyone!

 

[turtlehunter]

6 wks before test (no studying): NBME 1 - 216

4 wks before test: NBME 2 - 222

1.5 wks before test: NBME 3 - 228

1 week before test: 150 Free questions at center (highly recommended, smartest thing I did the whole time) - 87% (medfriends = 253)

UWorld Cumulative = 65%

Real Deal: 247/99

 

[BrownieGirl]

I have no idea how this worked out for me...

5/3 NBME 6 350/178 (2 weeks evening studying)
5/8 NBME 1 440/204 (after 10 hour study days)
5/10 NBME 3 390/190
5/16 NBME 5 520/224
5/20 NBME 4 480/214

QBank 100% of questions, timed, no repeats - 56%

5/22 - Actual Exam 233!

Looks like eventhough NBME 5 seems super easy, it's really the closest to your score.

 

[McMD]

First Aid: I have a love-hate relationship with FA. It is a great skeleton, but you will need to hang some meat on it.

To all future test takers, I completely agree with this statement that Goose posted. I haven't received my score yet (took test July 2), however, all the upperclassmen at my school kept telling us insistently "every answer is in first aid"...well, I luckily didn't believe them because I'm too neurotic to trust one resource, and at least for my exam, MOST of the questions could never ever be found in first aid. I know people that only studied FA for this exam (without a substantial MS1/MS2 background) and I don't know how they fared, but if they had anything similar to my exam, it wouldn't be pretty.

 

[okin]

Step 1: 261/99 (June '08)

mcat: 13bs/13ps/8verbal
free 150 nbme questions: 90%
Qbank: 72% overall; 79% last 400 questions (timed blocks of 50); 90% completed
NBME given at school: 207/73 after only studying micro - This score made me mad and motivated me to study.
Other NBME: did not do any

I had a 100% focus on lecture material during the first 2 years (up until 2 months left in 2nd year, in which I began studying for boards with ~20% of my time). I literally did ZERO boards studying/questions until end of march. Therefore, don't worry (as I did) if you feel like you are doing something wrong by focusing on school while everyone else is focusing on boards!!!!!

I cracked open FA 2008 in the end of march, and began Qbank in April with around 15 questions per day. As the test approached, I began doing timed blocks of 50. Throughout my studying, I did some questions as a "break" on a daily basis. I read every explanation and typed up a ~50 page word document outlining the stuff i got wrong. Questions help so much, as you often know the information they are testing, but may not initially know what they are trying to get at in the question stem. Try to start these early, as they may differ substantially from med school test questions.

I did micro first during spring break, did biochem by the end of April, and then I annotated FA in parallel with lecture material during our last unit of lectures, bringing me to "summer time".

Devoted 4.5 weeks of "summer" to boards studying, averaged ~16 hours per day (aside from taking 2 days off and a couple of half-days to stay sane). I wrote in a ridiculous amount of notes into FA from other review books (see bottom) and from lecture powerpoints (which were very familiar to me due to focusing on school all along).

I would highly recommend skimming over your lecture slides that correspond to FA sections to make sure you are not missing any big points, drugs, and diseases/syndromes. Also, this is a good way to see more histopathology images, photographs, and radiographs that are associated with each disease/syndrome (beyond what is in FA). I am very happy I used my lecture slides, as FA and review books do not cover everything. Lecture slides were a main source of pharm for me (on top of FA), as FA lacks details that I want to know.

I ended up spending 1-2.5 days per FA section depending on the length and my subjective comfort level with the topics. I studied by organ system (anatomy, phys, path, drugs). I completed the first pass on FA in ~ 3.5 weeks (beside micro and biochem - done previously). I spent the last week going back over FA, from oldest to newest material, by reading every word that was written, but i only made it through 70% for the second pass.

The night before I went over all of the drug sections: I'm very glad I did this. I could not fall asleep because i was so nervous: i took a shot of vodka to remedy this and finally fell asleep at 3:45am after 5 hours of rolling around.


Review Books: Annotate FA until there is no more space to write.

Done before summer:
- High Yield Micro - I read every word in the book 1x
- High Yield Biochem - read the whole thing, but this book was not that good (would not recommend this one)

Done during summer:
- Goljan Path - I read everything beside the chapters on genetic diseases and derm
- BRS Phys - Read everything beside the neuro chapter
- Roadmap Anatomy - almost read the whole book with a focus on the clinical examples (excellent use of time - no anatomy surprises)
- High Yield embryo - read selective parts that I did not understand based on FA (read < 15% of the whole book)
- High Yield Neuro - read ~30% in order to elaborate upon and better understand FA material; I used this book mostly to re-learn neuroanatomy rather than to learn the diseases
- High Yield Behavioral Science - i skimmed some of the basic psychology and examples of "what would you say next" questions

I would never have been able to make it through this many books in such little time if I did not focus on lecture material over M1/M2: this stuff was >98% true review with very little new information. If you learn it right the first time, your review will be faster and more efficient.

Lastly, don't freak out and be confident in yourself. After reading up on what others have done for step 1 and talking to your upperclassmen, you have to choose what you are comfortable with. Choose a schedule and stick to it (most important suggestion I have to offer) even if your peers are doing something else, and even if you feel like you haven't mastered everything: it's hard to admit to yourself but you never will know it all. I thought it was helpful to schedule 1 "review day" per week, which provided some leeway if i got a bit behind. If you do crappy on a qbank question set 2 days before the exam, don't freak: you worked hard for 2 years! After the test, don't freak out: it's easy to fixate upon the questions you know you got wrong and forget the hundreds you got right. If you work hard, it will show. Try not to worry about your practice scores (qbank, nbme, etc): spend your energy studying because this is the only way your real score will go up.

I apologize for this long post, but I wanted to give my input, as the input of others on SDN has helped me tremendously during med school interviews and when determining how to organize my Step 1 studying (thank you!). I hope this post will be equally helpful to someone out there.

good luck.

 

[wally22]

Congrats to everyone on here for some great scores. To everyone else - remember that the average is around a 222, so don't freak out. That being said, I did surprisingly well, so here's my advice:

MCAT: 30 - V12,B9,P9
Score: 250/99 - still can't believe it, waiting for a "we sent you the wrong score" email.
USMLE World: 76th percentile, 100% complete. low 60's in the beginning, 70-a rare 80 by the end.
I'm not really sure what NBME 1,2,3 etc. are but I took a practice test at the prometric center and got a 91%.

I started studying on May 19th and took the test June 20th. Nothing before that. Don't freak out if you haven't remorized the brachial plexus by the end of spring break. Use your spare time during second year to RELAX b/c the actually 5 weeks of studying is pretty crazy. Many people I know did a subject-based review, but I like the systems-based method because you can learn the phys, path, pharm, etc. for each disease so it becomes a nice little knowledge nugget. Also, it spread the pharm out and made it less overwhelming. It's also how we learned in in 1st and 2nd year, and it follows the First Aid format. I did 2 days on most systems, which was especially useful for Cardio, Endocrine, Renal, and GI. I would study from 8-12 and 1-5, then go home and eat dinner, do World questions for 2+ hours and be done by 8pm so I could watch TV and actually see my fiancé.

Now for books and stuff. I think first aid is a great core resource to use. It has a section for most everything, and it's nice and simple. A big mistake some people made was to read so much each day from so many books that they never really committed anything to memory. I used FA as my study guide and wrote a lot of notes in it. I used BRS physio, which was very useful for Cardio, Resp, and Renal since FA didn't really do a good job on these. I also used BRS Path which I thought was OK but not great. I bought High yield neuro but I only really used it for the SC and BS lesions and the anatomy atlas at the beginning - the rest was way to much info to remember. I used High Yield Embryo just to supplement the FA section, so not too much from that. I didn't review any anatomy besides what was in FA. For Biochem I didn't do use anything besides FA because I hate biochem. Moral of the story: First aid a great, but supplement it with BRS physio and a BRS path. Don't go crazy and buy more than one supplemental book for each subject.

Questions - USMLE World is great. I HATED doing the questions, but I did between 80-100 every night. For anything that didn't look familiar, and for every wrong answer, I would write a note in first aid. There were at least 10 questions that I knew on the real thing only b/c of USMLE world. I did random questions the entire time as not to exhaust one subject and then forget about it.

Practice test: If you can, definitely take a practice at the prometric center. I was surprisingly nervous for my practice test, so it got a lot of those jitters out. Then you can show up on the real day and feel comfortable with the place and routine.

I've been told that studying for step 1 is the worst part of med school. It sucks. Just stick to your schedule, do practice questions, and make sure you don't overwhelm yourself with sources of material. Leave yourself enough time at the end of each day of studying (so for me 3:30-5) to review the material you just looked over, especially to cover up tables and quiz yourself. And go take a practice test at the center!

Good luck and Godspeed

 

[Musashi450]

I read this thread many times and have been extremely grateful for it. I really think the motivation and advice I read in this thread is a major factor I was able to do well. I'm proud to finally be able to contribute to those that read this in 2009 and I hope I'm able to help you as best I can. I really consider myself the down to earth slightly above average student but nothing spectacular and for every one thing I think I know their are atleast 10 things I don't. I should also say that I really firmly believe that this test is a terrible indication of how good a doctor a person will make. With a little hard work it wouldn't be unheard of for a middle of the pack person to get a 250+ on this thing. Remember that your studying for a test!

Scores:
MCAT (for the anal ones) = 30
CBSE ~205 I'm pretty sure.
NBME 1 = 230
NBME 2 = 245
NBME 6 = 220 (?!?! Freaked)
NBME 4 = 236
Step I = 244

Goal
The first step in all of this should be to set a goal. Its amazing how much this varies from person to person. In my opinion their is no such # that is considered a good score. A good score is one that YOU would be happy with. Initially mine was 220 (Keep in mind I want to do surgery, if I wanted to do derm, this most likely wouldn't cut it). After reading these threads that moved to 230, and after my first NBME to 240. Whatever you do don't go down. Holding yourself to a high standard I seriously think is important because the fact of the matter is, fear is a big motivator and because a med students worst fear is failure, it unfortunately is a good drive. It may be for this fact alone that your compelled to not set a goal (You don't want to fail) but try your best to bite your lip and do it. It's probably not healthy but in my case it worked so take that for what its worth.

Resources

First Aid 2008
I would recommend buying this before 2nd year starts and using it for every unit so that you are extremely familiar with the book by the end of the year. This way you can also take notes in it even though I wrote VERY few notes. If one remembers all this information cold, a person will destroy the exam however I feel that many of the things that a person is asked to memorize in this book are ridiculous. If it sounds stupid, chances are it is. Don't waste time on huge lists unless its high yield (I had not one lysosomal storage disease or helminths question, and I knew I probably wasn't going to get more then 2 max so I didn't bother) Knowing helminths doesn't make one a good doctor...again studying for a test... *Steps off the soapbox*

BRS Pathology
USE SECOND YEAR. This could probably be swapped with Rapid Review Path (A Goljan book) Take a look at both and decide which format is easiest for you to follow. 85% of this test is path so its important that a person learns path concepts and disease presentation before the major studying starts. In fact I think that's the big thing of the test. When I studied second year all the books list the diseases and then the facts when infact you really have to do it the other way around (ie. figure out the disease from the presentation). This is why the questions are so good to do.

USMLE World
This should really be put at the top. Do this Period. Questions are the single most important thing to do for this exam in my opinion. Read everything though, not just the ones you got wrong since you'll find a lot of the questions you got right were for the wrong reason. I started out doing this by section and then forced myself to do these random and timed. I would actually only do 30 at a time though since I have the worlds shortest attention span and I felt I retained a bit more that way. Reading the explanations really took up a huge portion of my day. Aim to do 75 per day and just do extras the next day if you fall behind.

BRS Physiology PRN (as needed)
Since their are only a couple of physio questions don't spend much time with this. USMLE world will cover most of these. Just use this if you don't understand an explanation. This is probably best used first year but if your reading this, that time is long gone. Seriously don't sweat it.

Thats it! If your using more then this, its to much. Seriously it is. Pharm is covered plenty good in firstaid. All the random things can be found in USMLE World too.

Schedule
You really should make one and do your best to stick with it. I didn't but it was because I was lazy and if I had my score would have been higher. studied for 5 weeks after 2nd year ended and became inefficient by the end of the third week (this is why a schedule is important) Study memorization at the end and wherever you study make sure its efficient so that your not reading it without actually thinking about it (ie. don't just read to finish a section, you need to think about it when you read) Try and get through big things multiple times and ideally everything multiple times. For example I actually studied micro before my year was over. I then studied it last. Consequently, micro was one of my highest sections and I had always considered myself weak in it. Tackle what your know your terrible at. After a week or two take an NBME (These are considered the standard for estimating your score) Their are plenty of threads covering which ones to take. Whatever you decide just make sure you take multiple tests and simulate EVERYTHING as best you can. This means taking it at 8, keeping track of break time, taking breaks, very quiet, no calculators, blah, blah, blah. Try and take one every week from this point. Also several of my questions I saw were graphs or pictures that were identical to what I saw on these exams so it actually does benefit a person to go through these answers. Just google it, you'll find it.

The Test
I'm hardly going to discuss this. It's all random and so don't read at all into when people said they had tons of micro or tons of biochem. If you do everything above, you'll be prepared and won't need to try and study for what you think will be represented on the exam (again because it will vary). What you should know is that I recommend you TAKE YOUR BREAKS. The only time I didn't take a break was between blocks 1 and 2 and that was because my adrenaline was still going. During breaks do pushup, jumping jacks, smoke meth, whatever you need to do to keep your motivation up. Test fatigue, just like the MCAT, plays a big part. But that's why we've been doing NBMEs every week!

That's all I got. If your reading this, chances are your going to do fine because your so motivated to do well, that your researching what you need to do in order to kill this thing. Any questions, feel free to PM and good luck. Your well on your way!

 

[BobBarker]

237/99 DO student

I'm the pretty laid back, light studying type. However, I'm very serious about doing an allopathic residency so I knew I had to do well on step 1. I started working on step 1 on January 1st, doing 50 Kaplan Qbank questions a day. This really helped get my knowledge base up. I did much, much better in my 2nd year classes than 1st year. Dr. Goljan is our pathology professor so that was an invaluable help. He also provided us with a biochem review. It was a printable pdf with lots of great graphs and charts, very easy to read and understand. Also, the previous year he had given a 12 hour biochem review, which was filmed and made available for download. I watched the review while riding down to Florida for Spring Break, and read through the hard copy of the review the 4 days prior to the test. Biochem was an admitted weakness for me before studying, but by the use of these materials I performed better on biochem than any other section. His Rapid Review biochem is very similar to what he created for us to print. I used FA mostly for micro and pharm and it was pretty helpful for the depth and breadth of the test. The last month of study I began using UW, which helped prepare me better for the test and question style than Kaplan and helped interconnect my thinking. I took the UW practice test 8 weeks out and scored 213 and NBME 3 6 weeks out with a 214.

My essential review materials:
FA (I'm not as big of a fan of it as most people, I need a little more of a story to my facts)
Rapid Review Path (Goljan)
Rapid Review Biochem (Goljan)
Rapid Review Laboratory Medicine (Goljan)
Usmle World
Kaplan Qbank

Dr. Goljan provided the biochem and the laboratory medicine source materials free of charge to his students at OSU.

 

[Pewl]

Good Lord, I need to stop coming here. I'm starting to feel inadequate with a 247/99 on this thread. The way I see it, anything close to 250 is gonna be close to a 88-90th percentile. The real distribution isn't a true Gaussian curve so the 68/95/99 rule doesn't apply exactly. It's a somewhat close approximation though.

 

[UditNarayan]

Hello!
I used to have another log-in name but have changed it for various reasons. I know that most people will skip my comments and go right to my score, so here it is: 266/99!

Below I listed my scores, sources I used, etc and I really hope it helps those who are still looking to take the test. One thing I have found (after spending hours combing through the forums during my step 1 studying time) is that there are quite a few people who use the same resources and will tell you similar advice - I decided to follow this advice and it really helped. Unlike my classmates, I did not take a Kaplan or similar prep course and without the help of some SDN giants, I would have had more difficulty staying focused and on top of my game during the study time.

Sources:

• Goljan RR (yep, it's good), it's a dense read but well worth it. I did not get a chance to flip through the pictures and blue margin notes one last time before the test and looking back at it, I wish i could have somehow found the time. These things are very high yield and are asked in some way, shape, or form.
• I did not use any of the Goljan audios - takes up too much time for me.
• HY Neuro (not so good, i found there to be a lot of extra and lack of other info but something I needed to look at nonetheless; has a few good chapters like brain angiography that helped massively. some of the other chapters are too detailed and not testable by Step 1 standards.)
• HY Histo (takes less than 0.5 days, is only ~74 pages of really minimal writing)
• CMMRS (very detailed, I enjoyed the read but took me a while, somewhere between 3-4 days, craziness)
• FA (I only went through it once and a half, hated it. I couldn't seem to be able to pick up information well with this source. I ended up having to use my short term memory in the 5 days before the exam to memorize a few of necessary facts). During path classes in 2nd yr, I tried to skim through the relevant sections.
• BRS Behavioral - yep, I liked it. very easy read, I didn't even do a single question from this source because 1) the questions arent all that representative, 2) didnt have time to sit and ponder the questions. I read through it as fast as I could, and since I am a VERY SLOW reader, it took my almost 2 full days.
• USMLE Roadmap Gross Anatomy: another good book, but I am such a slow reader that I ended up looking mostly at the pictures and the clinical correlations. These clinical correlations are especially good and I would definitely recommend them. Step 1 anatomy for me was detailed and hard but looking at this source brought many details back.
• BRS physio for some chapters, Costanzo physio (bigger book) for other chapters: I tried to really nail down my weaknesses here. At the least, the clinical boxes in the costanzo big book are very high yield, well written and easy to understand. I recommend!
• Kaplan Biochem - solid, awesome; Hansen's book is a great stand alone source (I used no other Kaplan sources, other than a bit of QBank).
• HY Cell and Molec, new edition - I couldnt easily find the old '99 edition so I got the new one. New one is fine, I liked having to think through the detailed parts because those were some of the "tough" questions on my test. Overall, decent info, too much detail so just skip the sections that you know are overkill.
• UWorld - good, not the greatest (nothing is) but good. I felt like all the questions were similar; they all asked me to think using similar logic so once I figured out how they wanted me to attack the problem, my scores rose quickly. Each set of 50 questions would take me about 4 hours total; I was going frustratingly slow but I was learning a lot from the explanations. Final avg was aroung 81-82%, with the final 7 blocks averaging around 84% (actually, I think a bit higher, but I no longer have a subscription to check)
• QBank – used 60% during the beginning of my studying, had a 74% average.

Total study time 8 weeks (took off about ½ day per 2 weeks)

• I am a slow reader which is why I needed this time. I’m not a good memorizer at all but can understand most concepts the 1st time around, which is why I scheduled in more time.

Med school years 1 and 2

• Cannot emphasize how important it was for me to have a good foundation. A stellar score may require you to remember some important things from yrs 1 and 2 that will not be found in review books. Even the best of us cannot recall all concepts but studying hard the 1st time around gives you a chance at least.

CBSE (mock board): 86 = 240 (converted 3 digit score)

• This was without any studying...I was shocked when I received this and didn’t quite believe it to be true

NBME 1: 244 (1st day of studying, 8 weeks out)

• I wanted to reconfirm my baseline, not the best way to spend $45 but we've been spending on so much for med school already
• This gave me confidence going into my hardcore study period

NBME 2: 248 (6.25 weeks out)


I created a study schedule at the beginning and got off track by the 2nd day. I was scared about freestyling my study plan but I quickly discovered that that is just the way I work. I went through everything as thoroughly and quickly as possible, but it’s just a frustrating time. In my mind, I would want to get through physio in 3-4 days, but when it takes longer you definitely start to feel rushed. Remember to trust your instinct – if you know you are weak in physio, path, pharm, etc rushing through the review will not necessarily mean you will be able to answer more questions correctly. Take the time you think you need but keep in mind that you have only a limited amount of time – this will hopefully let you maximize your efficiency.
I did the normal things, nothing out of the ordinary. I would take notes from UWorld in a marble notebook but never even got around to reading it before the exam. Sometimes, the act of writing something down helps and if this is for you, I would suggest it. No need to rewrite a textbook, but jotting down a few notes helped…

NBME 4 = 800 = >265 (4.5 weeks before exam)
NBME 6 = 800 = >265 (4.5 weeks before exam)

• Took them both on same day, back to back, alternating blocks of 50 questions
• I contribute this large jump up in score to a thorough Goljan read and 50 UWorld questions per day

Free 150 questions, taken at the Prometric center = 94% overall (~3 weeks before exam)

• Medfriends equivalent of 268
• Highly recommend taking it at the center

NBME 3 = 780 = 264 (10 days before exam)
NBME 5 = 800 = >265 (10 days before exam)

• Took them both on same day, back to back, alternating blocks of 50 questions
• I wanted to simulate what it would feel like taking that many questions per day – to sum it up in one word: exhausting.

The week of the exam was the worst. I realized that there were many facts in FA that I simply had not memorized and I was frantically trying to get through. It just felt like I couldn’t stuff anything else into my head! I wanted to end early the day before but just couldn’t do it…I read FA until about 10:30 PM, tried to sleep at 11PM but couldn’t sleep until about 3AM!! My head kept hurting, my brain refused to turn off and go to sleep, and I knew it was going to be a rough test day.

Someone drove me to the test center which was really nice. I ended up only getting 4ish hours of sleep so I tried to rest a bit on the ride to the center. I cleared my mind and just focused – I knew that with such little sleep and a throbbing headache regardless of advil, I refused to allow these “excuses” affect my performance. I didn’t even bring FA into the center…I just sat there, talked to some of the other students in the room, tried to be very loose. My exam started about 30 mins late and I didn’t care…I wasn’t going to let anything affect me mentally.

Before beginning the exam, I pumped myself up a little and then started the 1st block. 1st block was ridiculously difficult, as was blocks 2, 3, 6, 7. Much much more difficult than UWorld which I thought was not bad. The question stems were so long, with so much excess info that I needed to comb through the questions as quickly as possible. Since my practice questions weren’t really like this I needed to move quickly ensuring that I would have enough time to finish the exam. When I did sets of UWorld (random, unused, timed) I would have like 10-15 mins left after each block. But on the real deal, I would have only 5-7 mins left on most blocks. That is a large difference, but REMEMBER on test day, do not let these surprises affect you. Sure it was different, sure I didn’t like the fact that I would need to read questions that took up the entire screen length, but you don’t need to like it, you just have to go along with it and do it. My head hurt sooo much, I popped an advil (or motrin) but it didn’t help. I took full advantage of my breaks – after each section, I would sign out, eat a quick granola bar or equivalent, go to the bathroom (yes after each section) to wash my face and prepare myself for the next section. I just took my time…the damn prometric ladies were upset with me because I would be the last person in the testing center and would be making them stay late (since my exam started late due to Prometric’s own fault!!). I didn’t care, this was my exam, and I was gonna do it the way I wanted to. After my 6th block, I saw I had 10.5 mins left of break time. That was great news to me bc I wanted to take a bit of a rest. I did my usual breaktime activities and when I came back and logged in, I saw that I had lost about 1 minute of my final block time! Apparently, I had gone over my assigned break time and I was being docked. I had a rush of panic, which I quashed right away and just jumped in and took the last block. It was such a hard block but once it was over, I was free! No more studying, no more step 1 (well, at least I hoped)!

The massive 7 week wait was worse than studying for the test, but it all worked out in the end. I was extremely happy when I saw that 266/99 and I will remember that feeling for a long time. Good luck to everyone, and please do not hesitate to PM me with questions. A lot of great people at SDN helped me reach this goal and I definitely hope to continue this tradition

 

[DwyaneWade]

99

 

[tfom08]

99

Wow, really? Just tell us you topped 271. Don't let the lurkers come out of the woodwork and try to take over. You are the king on these streets.

 

[mstald1]

Took the test yesterday...did not come away with a fantastic feeling. Definitely not an easy test. I've done relatively well in the first 2 years, so I feel like I brought a pretty strong base of knowledge to this thing...

Studied for about 5.5 weeks:
Kaplan 4 book Home Study Series - Good books. Long. I used these because I felt only using First Aid would be like memorizing trivia...not how I learn. I need some context with my information, and this series did a pretty good job of that. Took about a month to get through.

First Aid - Used as a review for the final week of studying.

USMLE World - Great question bank (though I didn't used any other sources so I have no context for comparing others). Tough questions that I think best prepared me for the real thing...very similar.

NMBE Practice Exams - After taking the real thing my opinion of these is that they are not representative of the test I took. They seem like a joke now in retrospect. I guess they are helpful in giving you some way to track your progress, which is nice.

NBME 1 (after 1 week) - 219
NBME 2 (after 2 weeks) - 224
NBME 6 (after 3 weeks) - 224

Stopped spending $45 for these after I was only getting frustrated at my apparent lack of progress.


So the real thing...For me it was a pretty rough experience (and I am not one that is rattled by tests usually). The question stems were ridiculously long, longer on average than World. World was the closest thing to my test, maybe even not as hard as that beast I took yesterday. Lots more biochem than I was expecting, so that sucked. Overall, if I had to do it again I would do everything the same. I just don't think that preparing any differently would have changed my performance on this test. There were few to 0 gimme questions, most of the questions had very vague answer choices that left me feeling unsure about many of my answers, even when the question was regarding a scenario which I was familiar with...whatever, its over now. I'll see how it all turns out in July when I get the joy of receiving my score...Thanks to everyone who has posted their experiences and advice here, it was all very helpful.

99

Never would have guessed I got this score...I was always told that everybody feels like they bomb this thing coming out of the test, I guess it really doesn't matter what you feel like as long as your prep was adequate...this validates my efforts for the first 2 years of school, I couldn't be happier...

 

[SdCap]

Good job and congrats everyone, I'll post an experience in here later.

 

[4Hisglory]

Good Lord, I need to stop coming here. I'm starting to feel inadequate with a 247/99 on this thread. The way I see it, anything close to 250 is gonna be close to a 88-90th percentile. The real distribution isn't a true Gaussian curve so the 68/95/99 rule doesn't apply exactly. It's a somewhat close approximation though.

What do you mean? How do you know?

 

[wahoo06]

Most of what I say will echo what (many) other previous posters have said seeing as I received most of my advice from these message boards. I will try to chime in on the things I found particularly useful in my personal experiences.

I studied for about four and a half weeks exclusively, but I always tried to look over review books and resources over the course of the year in conjunction with my course work.

General advice for the study period – make a schedule and stick to it. Try and do at least 50 questions per day. Know your areas of weakness and ration the most time for them. In the midst of all the craziness, don’t forget to exercise, keep up with friends, go out and grab a beer every once in a while. This is just another hoop to jump through in the circus that is the path to becoming a physician.

Congratulations to all that made it through this ordeal.

Score history:
Cumulative Qbank (finished 100%) – 79%
5/26 - NBME 3: 710 (257)
6/5 – NBME 4: 750 (261)
6/12 – free 150 usmle questions – 92% (taken at test center, which I would recommend)
6/16 – NBME 1: 800 (265+)
6/19 – USMLE test date– 267/99 (I was very happy to say the least, I have attached a picture of my score report because some people have accused others of making up inflated scores. I can’t imagine why anyone would be so insecure as to feel the need to do this, but alas)

Resources I used
Goljan audio – probably the best advice I could offer to anyone would be to listen to these lectures early. I could not imagine trying to get through even half of them during the “boards” study time at the end of the academic year. I eventually got through the whole set over the course of a month early in the year (loaded them on my ipod and would listen while I was on long bus/train rides or running errands.) Listening to these tapes early will give you a better idea for how to approach and tie together all the material when studying for classes.

Rapid Review Pathology – the main resource I used throughout the course of studying. I would definitely recommend reading the relevant chapter / section before or after your exam the corresponding medical school course. First time through, read to understand and grasp the major concepts. Eventually, you want to attempt to MEMORIZE every section of this book. i.e. for every table heading, you should aim to be able to list out the subsequent bullet points. I used flash cards to help me with this and feel it helped immensely.

First aid – I used the 2007 version. I have no idea as to any differences between the differences throughout the years. I felt FA was an excellent resource for the basic sciences (biochem, micro, etc,) but I always found it somewhat lacking in terms of pathology (hence me spending so much quality time w/ RR pathology)

Other books I use
BRS physiology – pretty much the standard text here
HY Neuroanatomy – dense, but an important subject
HY embryology – gleaned through over one afternoon (ridiculiously detailed for some sections, but it does have lots of good pictures)
MMRS – read through it and annotated important points in the FA micro section.
HY behavioral science – an area I was very weak on before hand, so I spent a lot of QT with this book
Lippincot biochem – read it through once and took rather detailed notes for later. I also annotated the FA section on biochemistry which I found very helpful.
For pharm I used the flash cards that I had prepared for my pharm course and I supplemented with BRS pharm cards (very quick, easy review)

Question banks – I used Qbank, I thought it was ok. Many classmates of mine spoke very highly of USMLE world, but in the end I didn’t want to end up buying another resource. I thought Qbank was good enough for Behavioral science, biochem, and pathology questions. I felt it to be a little skewed towards anatomy and microbio minutiae.

Robbin’s review of pathology was a very good book to use in conjunction with course work. The questions in this book are all “thinking questions” and have a bunch of great pictures.

 

[BillyRubinstein]

Most of what I say will echo what (many) other previous posters have said seeing as I received most of my advice from these message boards. I will try to chime in on the things I found particularly useful in my personal experiences.

I studied for about four and a half weeks exclusively, but I always tried to look over review books and resources over the course of the year in conjunction with my course work.

General advice for the study period – make a schedule and stick to it. Try and do at least 50 questions per day. Know your areas of weakness and ration the most time for them. In the midst of all the craziness, don’t forget to exercise, keep up with friends, go out and grab a beer every once in a while. This is just another hoop to jump through in the circus that is the path to becoming a physician.

Congratulations to all that made it through this ordeal.

Score history:
Cumulative Qbank (finished 100%) – 79%
5/26 - NBME 3: 710 (257)
6/5 – NBME 4: 750 (261)
6/12 – free 150 usmle questions – 92% (taken at test center, which I would recommend)
6/16 – NBME 1: 800 (265+)
6/19 – USMLE test date– 267/99 (I was very happy to say the least, I have attached a picture of my score report because some people have accused others of making up inflated scores. I can’t imagine why anyone would be so insecure as to feel the need to do this, but alas)

Resources I used
Goljan audio – probably the best advice I could offer to anyone would be to listen to these lectures early. I could not imagine trying to get through even half of them during the “boards” study time at the end of the academic year. I eventually got through the whole set over the course of a month early in the year (loaded them on my ipod and would listen while I was on long bus/train rides or running errands.) Listening to these tapes early will give you a better idea for how to approach and tie together all the material when studying for classes.

Rapid Review Pathology – the main resource I used throughout the course of studying. I would definitely recommend reading the relevant chapter / section before or after your exam the corresponding medical school course. First time through, read to understand and grasp the major concepts. Eventually, you want to attempt to MEMORIZE every section of this book. i.e. for every table heading, you should aim to be able to list out the subsequent bullet points. I used flash cards to help me with this and feel it helped immensely.

First aid – I used the 2007 version. I have no idea as to any differences between the differences throughout the years. I felt FA was an excellent resource for the basic sciences (biochem, micro, etc,) but I always found it somewhat lacking in terms of pathology (hence me spending so much quality time w/ RR pathology)

Other books I use
BRS physiology – pretty much the standard text here
HY Neuroanatomy – dense, but an important subject
HY embryology – gleaned through over one afternoon (ridiculiously detailed for some sections, but it does have lots of good pictures)
MMRS – read through it and annotated important points in the FA micro section.
HY behavioral science – an area I was very weak on before hand, so I spent a lot of QT with this book
Lippincot biochem – read it through once and took rather detailed notes for later. I also annotated the FA section on biochemistry which I found very helpful.
For pharm I used the flash cards that I had prepared for my pharm course and I supplemented with BRS pharm cards (very quick, easy review)

Question banks – I used Qbank, I thought it was ok. Many classmates of mine spoke very highly of USMLE world, but in the end I didn’t want to end up buying another resource. I thought Qbank was good enough for Behavioral science, biochem, and pathology questions. I felt it to be a little skewed towards anatomy and microbio minutiae.

Robbin’s review of pathology was a very good book to use in conjunction with course work. The questions in this book are all “thinking questions” and have a bunch of great pictures.

Thanks for the validation/authentication - we'll check you of the liar list.....very nice score by the way

 

[BusterDO]

99

i actually laughed out loud when i saw this. bravo.

 

[bikedoc1021]

anybody currently getting an "invalid document request" error when trying to access their score?

 

[Pinkertinkle]

...

 

[Pinkertinkle]

Most of what I say will echo what (many) other previous posters have said seeing as I received most of my advice from these message boards. I will try to chime in on the things I found particularly useful in my personal experiences.

I studied for about four and a half weeks exclusively, but I always tried to look over review books and resources over the course of the year in conjunction with my course work.

General advice for the study period – make a schedule and stick to it. Try and do at least 50 questions per day. Know your areas of weakness and ration the most time for them. In the midst of all the craziness, don’t forget to exercise, keep up with friends, go out and grab a beer every once in a while. This is just another hoop to jump through in the circus that is the path to becoming a physician.

Congratulations to all that made it through this ordeal.

Score history:
Cumulative Qbank (finished 100%) – 79%
5/26 - NBME 3: 710 (257)
6/5 – NBME 4: 750 (261)
6/12 – free 150 usmle questions – 92% (taken at test center, which I would recommend)
6/16 – NBME 1: 800 (265+)
6/19 – USMLE test date– 267/99 (I was very happy to say the least, I have attached a picture of my score report because some people have accused others of making up inflated scores. I can’t imagine why anyone would be so insecure as to feel the need to do this, but alas)

Resources I used
Goljan audio – probably the best advice I could offer to anyone would be to listen to these lectures early. I could not imagine trying to get through even half of them during the “boards” study time at the end of the academic year. I eventually got through the whole set over the course of a month early in the year (loaded them on my ipod and would listen while I was on long bus/train rides or running errands.) Listening to these tapes early will give you a better idea for how to approach and tie together all the material when studying for classes.

Rapid Review Pathology – the main resource I used throughout the course of studying. I would definitely recommend reading the relevant chapter / section before or after your exam the corresponding medical school course. First time through, read to understand and grasp the major concepts. Eventually, you want to attempt to MEMORIZE every section of this book. i.e. for every table heading, you should aim to be able to list out the subsequent bullet points. I used flash cards to help me with this and feel it helped immensely.

First aid – I used the 2007 version. I have no idea as to any differences between the differences throughout the years. I felt FA was an excellent resource for the basic sciences (biochem, micro, etc,) but I always found it somewhat lacking in terms of pathology (hence me spending so much quality time w/ RR pathology)

Other books I use
BRS physiology – pretty much the standard text here
HY Neuroanatomy – dense, but an important subject
HY embryology – gleaned through over one afternoon (ridiculiously detailed for some sections, but it does have lots of good pictures)
MMRS – read through it and annotated important points in the FA micro section.
HY behavioral science – an area I was very weak on before hand, so I spent a lot of QT with this book
Lippincot biochem – read it through once and took rather detailed notes for later. I also annotated the FA section on biochemistry which I found very helpful.
For pharm I used the flash cards that I had prepared for my pharm course and I supplemented with BRS pharm cards (very quick, easy review)

Question banks – I used Qbank, I thought it was ok. Many classmates of mine spoke very highly of USMLE world, but in the end I didn’t want to end up buying another resource. I thought Qbank was good enough for Behavioral science, biochem, and pathology questions. I felt it to be a little skewed towards anatomy and microbio minutiae.

Robbin’s review of pathology was a very good book to use in conjunction with course work. The questions in this book are all “thinking questions” and have a bunch of great pictures.

Not that I don't believe you but your picture is less than conclusive proof. There's little boxes around the numbers and I can't see the imbedded background dots anywhere else. Perhaps you could post a higher resolution image?

 

[4Hisglory]

Are you kidding? Do we really have nothing better to do than ask people to post photos to verify their scores?

 

[Alex05]

Time to do my part.

I would like to start by thanking all those that came before me. I will put stuff in the order I thought was most important as I was looking other peoples reviews.

Resources:
FA
Qbank
UW
And host of other things to explain FA when it did not make sense.

Studied for about 5 weeks. Hardcore at first, then eased off. I was getting burned out.

Qbank - did 15% of it - got somewhere around 78% correct.
UW - Did about 30% of it got around 72% correct
You DONT have to do all of them. Just use them to help you judge if you are understanding the material. They should NOT be used as a study resource as many have suggested, but UW is better then Qbank as everyone else has said.

Free 150 - Did only First block got 86% correct - Best predictor of score. Checked with a lot of friends at school. This was my most important question, whats the best predictor of my score, in my opinion, THIS IS IT.

USMLE 253/99. I did not get stars in all fields, and even scored borderline on one subject. You can do it too.
MCAT 32 (second score), 1st MCAT 21.
School Performance: at the top of my class

Overall test: It is not hard, in the sense that it tests the basics applied to the human body. IE, everyone is aware of the cardiovascular loop diagrams, but they want to know how they change in someone who has CHF. This WAS NOT on my test, but an example of how they test material. I will give examples, none of which appeared on my test, but just to give an example of the KIND of questions that COULD be asked.

Anatomy: The shoulder, the foot and other stuff I still dont know what they wanted.

Biochem: big picture. Like no just the enzyme missing, but the AA not broken down, and not the step before or after the enzyme

CV: Know how to integrate path and physio. If the heart stops beating (VF) what happens to BP - Its not ZERO. This applies to all organ systems- like what happens in lung, what happens in kidneys...

Endocrine: This is where you really have to know you physio. You have to integrate what happens to hormone level when ion increases or decreases (disease processes that either increase the ion or hormone...)

Micro: Honestly straight out of FA. People have said this before and I will say it again. Just remember to really know treatment for parasites.

Pharm: IT IS ALL IN FA. I wish i would have listened. It really is in there

General Health and stats: Please dont ignore this. They love that stuff, I felt like one block was dedicated to stats. I didn't mind, because I was prepared, but I was surprised.

BS: Its all in FA. Cant really say more.

Overall: Understand FA and you will be golden, just like everyone before me has said. If you did well in medical school, you will do well on this test. Don't get stressed out and you will be fine. This is just another hurdle we have to tackle.

Good luck!

Please excuse punctuation and spelling. This was done late.

 

[Neo2011]

I'm just wondering if anyone could share a detail study schedule/plan of their USMLE step preparation.

congrat.....everyone, and thank you for sharing your experience.

 

[Dr.TobiasFünke]

yo... anyone know if were in danger of having to go through this bs again when they combine Step I and Step II?

 

[imasoga]

*Update - I got my score back on Wednesday. 225. Not an awesome score, but I am happy! Again, I appreciate all of the help from reading other's posts.

First of all I have never posted here but I have definitely been a regular visitor to the site and thought that I would explain my process. I have DEFINITELY appreciated all of the advice from those that have already taken and taken the time to write about it.

I am definitely an average medical student so take that for what it is worth…I will not be getting a “SDN” score.

I had approximately 5 weeks to study. I have my overall schedule attached if anyone is interested (this is actually what I did, I changed it to reflect the adjustments I made). I did a systems based study except for thinks like Micro and Biochem.

Sources I used:
First Aid
Rapid Review Pathology
USMLE World
BRS Physiology
Micro Made Simple
Immunology from Rapid Review Micro
Kaplan Audio for Biochem
Half of Goljan Audio (I loved this but did not listent consistently)
High Yield Biostats

As for the time I studied. I would get up and start by 7 AM every day. I would take a break from 12:30 to 2 (this got shorter as it got closer to the test) and then studied until 5:30. I would break from dinner until 7 (this also got shorter) and then studied until 10 PM. My wife (who is also a medical student) and I would have a "date night" together once every week where we didn’t study.

It was definitely an intense schedule for me, especially because I do not enjoy schedules. To be honest, I was trying to use this time to make up for sub-par studying during my second year of medical school...I will definitely try to update folks on whether it worked.

As for the sources I used, I think that they were all very useful. I honestly felt like USMLE World was one of the absolute best learning tools that I used. I literally had questions that were almost verbatim from World. I feel like they were a perfect source to fill in the gaps of knowledge that I had. I cannot overstate how helpful they were for me. Other than that I think that First Aid is a good source for preparing you for the fact-based questions on the test (and I definitely had a decent amount of those) and great for consolidating all of the information. For the concept-based questions Rapid Review is a fabulous source.

As for where I stood before taking the test…I finished 85% of the World questions with an average of 57%. My last week of questions averaged 63%. I took the World Assessment test about 1.5 weeks out of the test and scored a 206.

As for the real thing, I don’t have too much to say. I thought that it was difficult but definitely easier overall than World. There were also some Cell Biology questions that I definitely did not feel prepared for from World (one of the few areas I thought World was weak in). I definitely felt like there were many more fact-based questions on the real test than World which was frustrating for me (I am definitely more of a concept person). I felt like all subjects were pretty well represented except for Micro and Biostats. I had very little of either of those which was interesting to me.

I can’t think of anything else to say…except that I hope that is over for me and that I do not have to take it again.

My Advice for those that haven’t taken the test:
-Study High Yield Lists from First Aid the day before such as: Lysosomal Storage Dx’s, Drug Side Effects (the high yield list in the Pharm section), Tumor Suppressors/Oncogenes, etc. I tried to go through Goljan’s High Yield Document and it would have been better for me to go through the facts from First Aid.
-Leave yourself time at the end of sections to review and ONLY mark the questions that you absolutely have to come back to (I know this should be obvious, but I wish that I had marked far fewer questions than I did as I didn’t get back to all of them).
-Do not think about questions after you finish a block (I know this is also obvious, but something I struggled with, especially if I remembered the right answer afterwards!)


I can’t think of anything else…

I don’t know if this is helpful at all but I wanted to at least try to contribute. I have appreciated being able to read everybody’s feedback (and get freaked out by those that have dominated the test!!!).

Good Luck!

 

[BrisketAttack]

yo... anyone know if were in danger of having to go through this bs again when they combine Step I and Step II?

i heard that was a couple years away.

 

[diosa428]

i heard that was a couple years away.

Yeah I read somewhere that in Jun 08 they stated that it will likely be another 4 years before they make the change. Even 4 years from now, I would imagine there would be a transition period where those who took Step I would still be able to take Step II without taking the combined test.

 

[doctorFred]

Are you kidding? Do we really have nothing better to do than ask people to post photos to verify their scores?

wahoo06 posted a picture of his own score totally unsolicited. the picture in question looks doctored (no pun intended) -- he officially brought it upon himself.

also, this statement from his post

(I was very happy to say the least, I have attached a picture of my score report because some people have accused others of making up inflated scores. I can’t imagine why anyone would be so insecure as to feel the need to do this, but alas)

makes the whole thing a bit of a give away.

 

[peludoguy]

I agree with with 4Hisglory;

There's no need to verify scores on this board and no need to doubt folks publicly.

I would like to thank everyone who has made this thread such an awesome source of info for future test takers (like myself). I hope we can try to keep the negativity to a minimum so future posters won't be inhibited from sharing their pearls of wisdom.

 

[devinypin]

MD/PhD student at wisconsin. I had 3 weeks and 2 days for boards studying after a short 4 day break after finals. I studied 8 -10 hours a day for the first two weeks and took complete days off on the first two saturdays in the first two weekends. that way I could go out on friday night, drink and hang out with friends and feel normal. the last 10 days were more intense with 10-15 hour days.

8d: FA (2006 version)
2d: HY neuroanatomy
2d: BRS phys
1d: BRS behavioral scriences
7d: Goljan RR path
4d: cram FA before exam, also quick read through of goljan blue margin notes

did virtually zero boards studying before finals were over. My school was strong in pharm and micro so I focused on those much less. FA was very sufficient. Used USMLE world for questions, finished about 30% of them with an overall average around 71%.

score: 256/99

retrospective views: I was frustrated with my HY/BRS studying week. HY neuro probably helped somewhat with good neuro performance but was difficult to get through. BRS phys is useless if you know phys, which you should if you've finished 2yrs of med school. BRS behavioral sciences was useless. The goljan week was intense w/ 12 hr days, but I learned a lot, especially about tumors.

conclusion: you don't need 8 weeks of studying to do well on the boards. 3 weeks is sufficient. I would have gone crazy in anything over 4 weeks. it's just a test. And, people who are worried they didn't get >260 should consider trying to boost their ego with something other than test scores.