I saw that there was a similar thread for 2011 that had plenty of useful info so I figured its best to start one for 2012. 
Official 2012 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread
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HAHAHAHHAAAH thats what you have to show for 9 months of studying? Very disappointing. LOL so glad I stopped by this thread. Phloboston you sure you dont need another year to master step 1? maybe do 5 more qbanks? Maybe make a couple more predictions about what it takes to hit a 270?
HAHAHHA
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iCY, my step1 prep wouldn't have been complete without your final words of culminated inspiration, so thanks for stopping in.
The real deal is 12:30-8:30pm tomorrow. I may or may not be too tired to post about it afterwards, but I'll get to it eventually. I'm just hoping for a lot of biochem and a lot of micro. If I get lucky with those handful of minutiae questions, I could possibly have a chance. And I'm also just hoping not too many obscure MRI-identification questions pop up.
The real deal is 12:30-8:30pm tomorrow. I may or may not be too tired to post about it afterwards, but I'll get to it eventually. I'm just hoping for a lot of biochem and a lot of micro. If I get lucky with those handful of minutiae questions, I could possibly have a chance. And I'm also just hoping not too many obscure MRI-identification questions pop up.
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No. My Lol's mean that I'm smiling, not laughing. If I were laughing, my post would like more like iCY's above, because you can tell he's definitely enthusiastic.
Happy to help! Hey if you feel like you haven't hit a 270 by the end of the test, you could always kick out the power cord and try it all again!
I'm excited to see you realize how much all your step 1 minutiae is going to make you a superstar on the floors! Because thats what makes a good doctor, memorizing every detail in preclinicals
I really hope your judgement going forward is not as poor as it has been in the last 9 months.Good luck!
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Happy to help! Hey if you feel like you haven't hit a 270 by the end of the test, you could always kick out the power cord and try it all again!
I'm excited to see you realize how much all your step 1 minutiae is going to make you a superstar on the floors! Because thats what makes a good doctor, memorizing every detail in preclinicals
Good luck!
Hey there! Grow up?
Happy to help! Hey if you feel like you haven't hit a 270 by the end of the test, you could always kick out the power cord and try it all again!
I'm excited to see you realize how much all your step 1 minutiae is going to make you a superstar on the floors! Because thats what makes a good doctor, memorizing every detail in preclinicals
Good luck!
As an MS4, I must say that I've noticed an EXTREMELY strong correlation between scoring 260+ on Step 1 and being a complete beast during MS3. This is most likely due to work ethic rather than knowledge, but it hardly matters. The point is, the person who memorizes minutiae for Step 1 is also the kind of person who will go the extra mile for MS3 and ensure that "Honors" grade.
Sometimes Phloston gets annoying with his Step 1 talk, but the bottom line is that he has a 90% chance of being a top notch clinical student and you have a 100% chance of being a dbag.
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Good luck. You've put a lot into helping others prepare-- karmically, that should help. I'm starting my prep soon and will try to pick up the slack.
perhaps. Although we should inform phloston that he wont get 9 months to study for each shelf exam
Bottom line is when a 2nd rate student takes 9 months to get the same grade that a US student can get in 6 weeks, he will not make a top notch clinical student.
Trying to dupe the system (by studying 9 months) with a high step 1 score is not going to help him, because hes not going to be able to inflate the rest of his application (like his 2nd rate medical school, the fact that he probably doesn't have any research publications because he spent 9 months studying for a test, and most likely poor performance hes going to get in clinicals when he goes back to working on an actual medical student work schedule). Inflating his step 1 score doesn't hide the fact that he can't keep up at our level
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Folks,
Let's keep things civil.
Let's keep things civil.
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Doing well on this test has little to do with memorizing minutiae and much more to do with a thorough medical foundation combined with excellent problem solving skills.
perhaps. Although we should inform phloston that he wont get 9 months to study for each shelf exam
Bottom line is when a 2nd rate student takes 9 months to get the same grade that a US student can get in 6 weeks, he will not make a top notch clinical student.
Trying to dupe the system (by studying 9 months) with a high step 1 score is not going to help him, because hes not going to be able to inflate the rest of his application (like his 2nd rate medical school, the fact that he probably doesn't have any research publications because he spent 9 months studying for a test, and most likely poor performance hes going to get in clinicals when he goes back to working on an actual medical student work schedule). Inflating his step 1 score doesn't hide the fact that he can't keep up at our level
Why are you so mean spirited? Phloston has committed himself to this test and has given a lot of advice along the way. Wish him well, he deserves to score high on this exam.
Pretty well said. FWIW, he was already scoring way in the 250s long ago, so it's not the time. He put in the effort, despite already scoring way above average, he said he would sit for the test in December, not sooner, not later. I think I remember it was like in July or August (or sooner) where he was scoring at 240+.
You rock Phloston!! Thanks for the many elegant posts. You've got haters the same way celebs do...I'm pretty sure you have more fans though. I wish you well on your exam tomorrow. I hope it's jammed packed with the minutiae you know well.
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The difference between high 260s and 270s is probably more due to luck than anything else.
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Meh. I go to a bottom quartile school in the middle of ****ing nowhere so it's easy to shine. Scoring well has nothing to do with your physical exam skills, ability to take a good history, presentation skills, efficiency in pre-rounding, or your ability to blow smoke up your attending's ass. It does help with your differential and pimp questions which are also a big part of the subjective evaluations. Shelf exams are a joke.
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That lie helps me sleep well at night. The top competitor in my class scored 271... I'll never live it down. It HAD to be due to random chance.
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Rock on Phloston!!!
haven't been here for a while. stopped by for whatever random reason. Somehow it ended up being the day before Phlostonian's exam. I remember seeing him on the boards back in April/May when I was prepping. Seems like so long ago. I can't imagine still prepping at this point. I commend your work ethic dude. I really hope you demolish this thing. I know it won't prove anything in terms of the score-to-study time correlation but I think you deserve it. Good luck tomorrow
And of course,
And of course,
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^^^ that Pholston quote was perfect. Good luck bro. Looking forward to see what you thought.
Your opinion is no more valid or evidenced-based than mine, I suppose. I took the test and my subjective perception of reality was that minutiae separated me from the 260+ scores. You are welcome to feel however you wish, though.
I'm not very active on SDN but I was just wondering if anyone had any thoughts re: Gunner Training? A few kids at my med school use this and I just started looking into USMLE resources. I then found this thread and I noticed from looking at pages here and there that among the resources no one talks about Gunner Training - is there a reason for this? The kids in my med school seem to like it.
Thanks for any thoughts and also if there is another thread about this, feel free to link me there.
Thanks for any thoughts and also if there is another thread about this, feel free to link me there.
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I have no doubt that you are correct about the minutiae being the difference. My argument is that there is no way to memorize every bit of the minutiae that may or may not show up on your particular test.....the shear volume of it makes studying it all both impractical and extremely low yield.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using SDN Mobile
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I sat the real deal today.
I'm quite winded right now. I promise I will eventually give more detailed, holistic thoughts / breakdowns / pointers with regard to the exam, but maybe in a few weeks, not this moment. I'm watching Cable Guy and eating a spicy red Thai curry.
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I did the first two blocks back to back with no break (took 60 seconds sitting at my desk without leaving the room). I then took ~5-10 minutes for each one subsequently. After the second and third blocks, I had half a protein bar and a few sips of water. After both the 4th and 5th blocks, I had half a PBJ sandwich and a diet RedBull. After the 6th block, I chugged the third diet RedBull but consumed no calories.
I had three repeat questions from the NBMEs and an exact image (with a different vignette) from Free-150.
I marked an average of 2-4 questions per block. I think the second block I had marked 5.
Having done as many practice questions as I had turned into a blessing. By the time I got to the 6th and 7th blocks, my sensorium had become increasingly clouded and I was in a different world. My conscious mind had departed and I pretty much answered everything on rapid recall. I tried to go with my gut the best that I could. Some of the questions I would read for 4-5 seconds, instantly click an answer, then go back and spend another 2 minutes reading, only to keep the same answer.
What I will say though is that I'm undoubtedly thankful that I put in the time to prep for this thing. When I first sat down at the console to start the exam, the intensity of the moment was profound. I was fortunate that the first 20 questions were pretty easy because it helped me build momentum. I think if I had had to deal with some esoteric ethics or graphing question right off the bat, things could have been much more stressful.
There was a lot of minutiae that showed up, and I was very lucky that I had built a repertoire of factual knowledge. I was able to answer these questions based on this and only this. I'm talking about small, one-liners asking pure obscure facts. Don't let anyone tell you not to study details.
I'll write more probably when the results come back.
I'm quite winded right now. I promise I will eventually give more detailed, holistic thoughts / breakdowns / pointers with regard to the exam, but maybe in a few weeks, not this moment. I'm watching Cable Guy and eating a spicy red Thai curry.
------
I did the first two blocks back to back with no break (took 60 seconds sitting at my desk without leaving the room). I then took ~5-10 minutes for each one subsequently. After the second and third blocks, I had half a protein bar and a few sips of water. After both the 4th and 5th blocks, I had half a PBJ sandwich and a diet RedBull. After the 6th block, I chugged the third diet RedBull but consumed no calories.
I had three repeat questions from the NBMEs and an exact image (with a different vignette) from Free-150.
I marked an average of 2-4 questions per block. I think the second block I had marked 5.
Having done as many practice questions as I had turned into a blessing. By the time I got to the 6th and 7th blocks, my sensorium had become increasingly clouded and I was in a different world. My conscious mind had departed and I pretty much answered everything on rapid recall. I tried to go with my gut the best that I could. Some of the questions I would read for 4-5 seconds, instantly click an answer, then go back and spend another 2 minutes reading, only to keep the same answer.
What I will say though is that I'm undoubtedly thankful that I put in the time to prep for this thing. When I first sat down at the console to start the exam, the intensity of the moment was profound. I was fortunate that the first 20 questions were pretty easy because it helped me build momentum. I think if I had had to deal with some esoteric ethics or graphing question right off the bat, things could have been much more stressful.
There was a lot of minutiae that showed up, and I was very lucky that I had built a repertoire of factual knowledge. I was able to answer these questions based on this and only this. I'm talking about small, one-liners asking pure obscure facts. Don't let anyone tell you not to study details.
I'll write more probably when the results come back.
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Congrats on being done Phloston! sounds like it went well for you
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Were you manic or just on PCP? Or just histrionic? Another possibility is that you have been taking an antidepressant (I'm sure most of us would if we spent 10 months studying for Step 1) which are known to induce manic or hypomanic episodes in a person with underlying BPD.
Glad it went well.
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Good to hear you did well, hey phloston I know your exhausted and all but if you could just answer a few questions I would be grateful... exam in a week
1.Having given the exam now what would you recommend is the best routine to follow in the final week to do to get the most out the last few days?
2.How was the exam compared to NBME? Uworld? Uwolrd assessment exams?
3.Can 90% of it be done from FA as many have stated before?
4. Anatomy was it from FA or should we supplement another source and go through pictures/ diagrams etc.?
any other avdice which is key to doing well would be appreciated
thanks
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Most important question for Phloston: how much for your annotated FA?
Don't think he'd ever sell it. Or rather, shouldn't. It's his reminder of the hard work he is capable of, for the rest of his life. He should keep it in a protected space in his apartment like the bro code and the play book.
Most important question for Phloston: how much for your annotated FA?
Great job phol. Could you also comment on pathology, if FA + pathoma is good coverage? I own Goljan but it seems low yield.
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Hey, man, I am pretty beat right now. I only got 3 hours of sleep last night (the night after my exam) because I had difficult questions flying into my head that I wasn't sure whether I had gotten wrong. I even woke up with my heart beating to a renal calculation question that I thought I may have messed up on. I'm hoping everything went okay.
As far as the final days are concerned, I had been asking people that question for a long time as well. I pretty much spent the last couple weeks, believe it or not, at ~50% the workload / # of hours that I normally put in throughout the year. The final week for me was literally alternating days of just doing an NBME and then going through a chapter of FA. In the final week, don't study physio. You know that stuff. Make sure you learn the biochem, micro, pharm and embryo that's in FA. I had one day where I just did biochem. One day was just embryo. One was just micro. And the last was just going through the drugs at the end of each chapter and in the pharm chapter itself. Know your side-effects. I had a low-yield side-effect show up in a very tricky question, where they wanted you to think it was a different drug they were asking about.
I would rate the exam much closer to UWorld in terms of question-style and difficulty than the NBMEs. I found the NBME questions to be either joke-easy or WTF-hard, no real in-between. The real deal was mostly middle-ground difficulty, with a handful of gimmies and a handful of hard ones. I found the UWSAs to be much much harder than the real deal. That being said, I had thought the UWSAs were harder than UWorld QBank as well.
I would say that FA alone is not nearly enough. I think about 60% +/- 10% of my exam was straight from FA. The rest was literally all QBank material. When you get to the real deal, you'll know what I'm talking about. You can read FA, but if you haven't done a lot of practice questions, you're toast. Do a ****load of questions. I've read posts in the past where people say FA was >90% of the exam. Those people either got very easy exams or are just oblivious.
Love that you ask about anatomy. I was worried most about this going in, but I may have gotten lucky I think. I didn't have too much, but the ones I had were WTF questions, and for some ridiculous reason, I knew them. There was one obscure MRI anatomy identification question (go figure) that literally popped up like the 3rd to last question of the whole exam. It kind of sank my mood ever so slightly, but I tried not to let it bother me. But yeah, I had no idea wtf it was asking. Abdominal x-ray, both frontal and lateral views, pointing to different things. Hopefully I got it right.
If I were you (and listen to me square), know your neuroanatomy. This was exceedingly high-yield on my exam. I had pretty much everything you could have imagined, and would have been royally ****ed had I been weak in this area. I would say I'm above average, not excellent, with neuro, and I was still able to get by for the most part.
I didn't use Pathoma. I listened to about 2/3 of the Goljan audios but didn't use the rest of them because I was impatient. I think the audios are great if you're learning that material for the first time, but if you're approaching crunch-time, there's other things that are higher priority. The FA% on my exam I mentioned above.
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now that you've given your exam I vote that you should be a moderator here, there is no one that has dedicated more effort than you on answering questions and helping others out... over 1000 posts just on the USMLE... along with the work effort you put in for the exam. your advice will go along way in helping out future test takers
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By "QBank material", do you mean just UWorld?
Because as far as I can gather from the forum posts about the other two banks, USMLERx is basically just FA and 95% of Kaplan QBank is FA including reference to the page numbers in FA.
The other argument which I hope someone can answer is, if FA authors have been clever enough to put all the facts needed to solve all the 10x322+150 NBME questions in their book, how do the NBMEs still correlate so well with the score from the actual test that has only 50% of necessary facts from FA?
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Phlosten, I sure hope you don't put this much pressure on yourself for shelf exams. And don't freak out when you try to remember some drug side effect or something in 3 months and you can't believe you forgot it. Third year changes everything.
I'm glad you are happy with your prep and I have no doubt you'll receive an excellent score.
I'm glad you are happy with your prep and I have no doubt you'll receive an excellent score.
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Each QBank contributed something unique. USMLE Rx seemed to draw heavily from FA with its actual questions, but the explanations sometimes provided a lot of low-yield factual info. A few drug names popped up on my exam that I had only seen because USMLE Rx had mentioned them. They weren't the answers to the actual questions, but I at least knew they weren't right.
USMLE Rx's questions are much more simple than the real exam's. When I had gone through the QBank in March/April, I thought the difficulty was normal, but I had gone back through ~5-600 questions within 3 weeks of the real deal (7 months later, so no, I didn't remember any questions), and they were so easy that I felt it wasn't the best use of time to tackle the QBank a second time. Once was fantastic. Twice was a no no.
In short, if I am as objective as I can possibly be, I think FA alone can get you most of the straightforward questions, just as reading that text would help you with Rx, but the harder questions require that you know a mechanism really well and then be able to manipulate it. FA alone can't give you practice with that, and Rx is only the first step in developing your thought processes.
Kaplan QBank is definitely not 95% FA. KQB was the hardest of any resource I had used while prepping for this exam, and it had a ton of low-yield info. It definitely helped with my molecular biology, which interestingly was very high-yield on my exam.
As far as the NBMEs are concerned, as I've said before, 90% of the questions on those exams are cake-easy, so it's not a surprise that FA can be generally adequate. But the curves are extremely extremely steep. When you do those exams, it will become apparent to you how much bearing the low-yield info has on your score.
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No what I meant to say about the NBMEs is that the FA authors certainly would have seen every single one of those questions and they would have incorporated the factoids into FA somehow. I haven't taken a single NBME yet but I can bet every question in them would have the factoids needed to solve mentioned in FA. If 50% of the questions on the actual test needed minutiae outside of FA to even solve, I am not sure how NBME tests still correlate that well with the actual scores, steep curves or not.
If you are saying Kaplan QBank is not 95% FA, I think I should really try it, though I have no freakin' idea where I would find the time for it! However, I have read at least ten posts on this very forum by ten different people saying that 95% of the questions in Kaplan QBank can be solved using factoids from FA and those 95% even give the page numbers in FA where the answer may be found. That is the confusing point.
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The bold is not what I've said. FA may have covered ~60% +/- 10% of my exam, but that doesn't mean the remainder was minutiae. There are quite a few questions that require your external knowledge integrated with strong problem-solving skills.
FA does not build your pathology. You need BRS Path, Webpath and many QBank Qs to cover this area. FA's coverage of path is mere cursory.
I say I had a lot of minutiae on my exam. Probably about 20 questions fell into this category. They either required you know some small factoid, or you had to know what you were looking at without the help of the vignette. I'd say two of the hardest questions on my entire exam included images. Other difficult questions had patients with presentations I had never seen before. In fact, one of the most challenging questions on my exam had to do with a vitamin.
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