Official 2014 COMLEX 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

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YANKEES88

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Haven't seen one posted yet so I figured I'd get one started.
Feel free to share your experiences, study plans, thoughts, etc.

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Hey guys,

So I took COMSAE C and ended up with a 508... I'm taking COMLEX 0n the 26th and USMLE on July 1st. I don't feel confident in my score, I was aiming for upper 500s on the real thing so I was thinking about pushing my test date back. Would you suggest taking the USMLE first since biochemical pathways, etc. take much more time to learn than reading through Savarese 2 days before and memorizing viscerosomatics/ Chapman's? I have the time, I don't start rotations for a while so I want to use it to my advantage.

Thank you!
 
Honestly, I have no idea what the right track is. My COMLEX was out of this world ridiculous, to the point where I dont even know how I could have prepared for it. I
My exam was IDENTICAL to this, so much so that I can't even make a write up for it. At least with USMLE you can reason your way through the tough questions. My experience was 50% buzzwords, 20% critical thinking, 30 % WTF. 5 questions on the same bug (30% overall micro), so many anatomy questions on which nerve/artery/vein deals with a certain area, tons of cranial and chapman's points. Further, the OMM questions, I can remember 5 or 6 questions that I thought WTF why are you asking me this.

I legitimately left my exam upset, not because it was hard, but $500 and 6 months of studying for THAT? The NBOME should be dumbed, or at least refined with a very fine comb to get rid of the crap. Everyone has these questions, sure, but how does that crap evaluate us for competency in medicine. Some schools (mine included) don't teach cranial because its bogus, meanwhile 40/400 questions is cranial, chapmans, and viscerosomatic. I could have studied for 2 weeks and passed that exam, and probably 3 weeks would have gotten me to the same point at where I am today. 4 questions on SCS of weird points, I mean who uses CSC on a pinky toe....


In retrospect:
Green book is fine, study it for 1 day (had 7 days post usmle, and felt that details/facts/concepts were just oozing out my ears)

I did uworld, comquest, kaplan qbank (omm and usmle stuff), a bunch of nbme, comsae C, DIT, and read FA 6 times.

I think that 1 pass of FA, 1 pass of green book, and omm questions from comsae, and MAYBE 1 pass of uworld would have been sufficient. My comlex was nothing like comquest, comsae C, and was actually more like my usmle in the question stem length/description. The easier questions were not worded too poorly, but there was a plethora of garbage questions. I mean do I need 5 questions on one type of microorganism that isn't even seen in the USA?

Be prepared to do calculations without a calculator. I was caught off guard in having to actually crunch numbers on the whiteboard, biostats and some stuff not included in FA.

Timing: I finished 1.5 hours early, mostly because the breaks are not very helpful. You get 10 mins after 100 questions, 40 min after 200 questions, and 10 minutes after 300 questions. I needed 5 min to pee after every block and 5 minutes at lunch to chug some coffee and eat
some berries/gorp. Very disappointed after this exam with the whole structure, evaluation of my ACTUAL-EVIDENCE-BASED knowledge of medicine. In passing, many of my peers had similar experiences, this exam you can't study for, like you can for USMLE. I can honestly say that I needed 2-3 weeks of questions and review for this exam. Take this exam earlier and enjoy your time off.
 
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if you have to take a leak after the odd blocks, what's the deal? can you? i mean besides in the depends i may wear.
 
I also took it today, and it seemed . There were areas of medicine hardly touched, yet I had at least three questions on the exact same factoid. Luckily it's one I'm extremely confident on, but still, really?
 
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if you have to take a leak after the odd blocks, what's the deal? can you? i mean besides in the depends i may wear.
No, you get 10 minutes in between blocks 2&3, 4&5, and 6&7. For USMLE, i took a big chug of coffee during each break, and peed the next block. This exam, I was a little fatigued after blocks 4 & 8 but not terribly because there was less thinking.

I also took it today, and it seemed . There were areas of medicine hardly touched, yet I had at least three questions on the exact same factoid. Luckily it's one I'm extremely confident on, but still, really?
I know, I feel the same way. Near the 3rd and 4th times I saw a topic, I was scared that I answered the previous questions incorrectly, because one would think its not plausible to have 4 questions on one topic.
 
I took USMLE yesterday and I'm taking COMLEX on Thursday. I've blown off most of today. What should I try to accomplish over 4-5 hours tonight and 10-12 hours tomorrow?

-Savarese?
-COMBANK OMM questions that my school bought me? (208 questions over OMM)
-First Aid Microbiology chapter over weird bugs?
-CMMRS Bioterrorism? This is only like 5 actual pages so I'll read it.
-Microcards over weird bugs?
 
I took USMLE yesterday and I'm taking COMLEX on Thursday. I've blown off most of today. What should I try to accomplish over 4-5 hours tonight and 10-12 hours tomorrow?

-Savarese?
-COMBANK OMM questions that my school bought me? (208 questions over OMM)
-First Aid Microbiology chapter over weird bugs?
-CMMRS Bioterrorism? This is only like 5 actual pages so I'll read it.
-Microcards over weird bugs?
Omm questions, savarese chapters on cranial/chapmans/viscero/special tests, and I would even do combank micro questions. FA wouldn't have helped me much on my exam, and CMMRS is only 5 pages. There are so many questions they could ask on micro, it seems pretty hard to cram at this point. I would make sure you are well rested for the exam on thursday
 
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Omm questions, savarese chapters on cranial/chapmans/viscero/special tests, and I would even do combank micro questions. FA wouldn't have helped me much on my exam, and CMMRS is only 5 pages. There are so many questions they could ask on micro, it seems pretty hard to cram at this point. I would make sure you are well rested for the exam on thursday

Thanks, I was just reading your write-up.
 
I took USMLE yesterday and I'm taking COMLEX on Thursday. I've blown off most of today. What should I try to accomplish over 4-5 hours tonight and 10-12 hours tomorrow?

-Savarese?
-COMBANK OMM questions that my school bought me? (208 questions over OMM)
-First Aid Microbiology chapter over weird bugs?
-CMMRS Bioterrorism? This is only like 5 actual pages so I'll read it.
-Microcards over weird bugs?


Took my exam today and like many ppl, I came out of it very upset.
I felt I overstudied on some areas while I'm not sure how I could've prepared in others. The "wtf" type of questions felt like it was meant for residents taking their specialty exams. Luckily there weren't many of those type of questions. Also, I had only few really tough management type questions which were clearly meant for step 2.
I had one embryo question which I never saw on FA so I just guessed that. Few biochem but they were very straightforward and used many word associations. One stats question which was a piece of cake.
I overstudied micro. I didn't have many micro questions and I was happy whenever I got them. The bulk of micro focused on bacteria and less than 10 questions were on fungus, protozoan, and virus. Felt like I wasted my time going over all the micro in detail especially since I had zero worms question and so little virus. I only had like 2 wtf questions in micro and they both involved dermatomes and the answer choices weren't even in FA nor lippincott microcards. Luckily I knew a little about dermatome parasites so I hope I answered it correct.
I had audiovisual questions that made me watch some clip of physical examinations being performed. They were horrible cuz the clip isn't short and they spoke so damn slowly! I seriously wanted to fast forward them since they were wasting my precious minutes.
I went to the exam with high confidence in OMM. I've always done very well and I been killing all the OMM sections in combank and comsae, but I began to curse at OMM questions in comlex. I had so many OMM questions and they were very difficult. I had few easy points and they were mostly related to viscerosomatic reflex, but I had some very strange lower extremities OMM questions. One question asked me for treatment which I clearly knew how to do, but each answer choices were worded so strangely I had no idea what they were saying. Friggin semantics! It was like trying to solve a riddle and answering medicine. I wanted to kick the person who wrote that question.
I'd say more than 30% of my test weren't in FA. To be fair, that also includes all the OMM questions. I even got 4 questions about health insurance policies and laws. And it wasn't the easy medicare/medicaid question. One asked which health care law they were talking about.
I also had same exact question repeated few blocks later.
I had few very simple questions but by the end, I started to second guess myself thinking every question was a trap. Also it's annoying the 10min break is taken out from our exam time. By the time I go out, I had to wait for the proctors to finish talking to another test taker, sign out, wait on the stupid fingerprint machine to register (took me over 3 times at one point) pee, wait for the proctor to register another test taker, sign in, pocket check, then walk back in, it's nearly 10min wasted. Luckily not much higher level thinking is involved in this test so I could do each questions rather quickly. I actually wrote 2 blocks in an half sleep mode haha.
In hind sight, I should've studied less micro and should've focused on anatomy/OMM/neuro integration. That was the bulk of the exam and I felt the weakest in lower extremities integration. Only had one question on brachial plexus and rest were all lower nerves which I didn't prepare much for. But everyone has a diff experience so who knows.
I'm glad this is over. At this point, all I want to is pass. I'm gonna spend all my energy on killing USMLE and rally to have comlex burn at the bottom of Mount Doom
I'm just ranting
 
Friggin semantics! It was like trying to solve a riddle and answering medicine. I wanted to kick the person who wrote that question.
I'd say more than 30% of my test weren't in FA. To be fair, that also includes all the OMM questions. I even got 4 questions about health insurance policies and laws. And it wasn't the easy medicare/medicaid question. One asked which health care law they were talking about.
I also had same exact question repeated few blocks later.
I had few very simple questions but by the end, I started to second guess myself thinking every question was a trap. Also it's annoying the 10min break is taken out from our exam time.

The bolded is SO true. It felt like a riddle or a game where I had 2 or 3 plausible answers and you have to figure out what test writers are saying. And on the health care crap, I honestly haven't seen any of the questions before and have no idea how I would have studied for those. And the videos, I had 4 or 5 in my first block, I was in shock. I was praying, no more media!
 
I took it yesterday. It was a lot more difficult than COMQUEST. Comquest was a bit of a joke for accuracy of exam although it was good for learning and also as a confidence booster. But again, way easier than actual COMLEX. I'de say COMLEX was most like finishing COMBANK and then going over all the answers you got wrong. It was that caliber of difficulty. And also throw in some, not a lot, just a pinch of Uworld.

Skimming through my Clinical Anatomy Textbook was money.
 
Were there a lot of OMM questions that asked specific techniques (ie the exact motion for ME of x) or were they mostly general principles, chapman points, VS levels, etc?
 
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Well, that's disappointing to hear. Lol.

Any recommendations on a review source for that stuff? I don't think the green book really covers it.
Green book didn't cover the treatments I had to know, kinda like most of OMM make it up on the fly. Same for chapmans, know more than the green book. For everything else the green book is partially sufficient.
 
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Green book didn't cover the treatments I had to know, kinda like most of OMM make it up on the fly. Same for chapmans, know more than the green book. For everything else the green book is partially sufficient.

I have two weeks til my exam. Did you think you could have answered more of the OPP questions by reading your lab manuals?

I took COMSAE B the other day and got a 520 with OPP being my worst subject. I'm thinking that's an OK sign that I just need to keep reviewing and hit OMM harder than I want to.
 
I have two weeks til my exam. Did you think you could have answered more of the OPP questions by reading your lab manuals?

I took COMSAE B the other day and got a 520 with OPP being my worst subject. I'm thinking that's an OK sign that I just need to keep reviewing and hit OMM harder than I want to.
My lab course gives us 50-90 page powerpoints weekly. Even if they would be helpful (which they would have undoubtedly been useless) I wouldn't have had time. That said my school doesn't really hit the visceral-somatic stuff and cranial, so I had to learn that stuff on my own. Going outside of the green book is kind of futile just because there is so much stuff they could ask, and the odds of you covering everything is unlikely. Know the basics well, and try and reason out the harder questions.
 
Just finished my Comlex on the 17th and when I left the exam it definitely left me with the feeling as if I could have failed the test, but I know that a lot of people feel like that afterwards so I am going to continue to hold out hope for the results in a month.

On another note, there was not a single Chapman's point on my exam. Not one! And I had memorized 40-50 points so that was a bit disappointing, and none of the facilitation points matched up with Savreese so I just picked the closest grouping, however on 3-4 of them the answer choices they listed split the grouping Savreese had listed directly in half and so I had to guess and hope for the best.

Very few surprises in micro which was a blessing, but man some of those OMM questions were rough. I almost feel like there was no way to prepare for some of those and I had read Savreese twice.

Pharmacology basically tested your knowledge on drug mechanisms which was expected and was not terribly difficult.

Lots of cancer, neoplasms, and tons of biochem (totally was not expecting the biochem stuff), which was upsetting because those were my weakest subjects. Also, the biochem questions were not really the diseases either......they were pretty much just biochem reactions where you had to pick the correct serious of events (glucose kinase, glycogen phosphorylase, etc. etc.) Luckily I think I picked the right answer on most of the biochem ones after reviewing first aid at the conclusion of the test. I basically had to think back to my first semester of med school because I didn't really review biochem since everybody kept saying biochem was so low yield on the Comlex.

There were also several histology slides where you had to recognize what was going on without any help from the question stem at all. Our pathology professor had done us a disservice by telling us that the licensing exams were going away from forcing you to recognize slides and were instead giving histological descriptions. Just goes to show you that anything can happen come test day.

Genetics was tested but they were fairly straightforward.

I must have had 5 questions on Strep Pneumo.

Also there was one question that required you to calculate the person's BMI without a calculator and the numbers they gave were not easy to utilize during division lol. Luckily the person in the problem was sooo far in one direction that it was very easy to tell which category she fell into (i.e. she had a similar BMI to shamoo).

Anyways, can somebody else who took the exam on the 17th verify kinda how I felt? All in all after reviewing my answers in first aid I definitely felt I got more right than wrong, but who knows, I guess it can go either way.
 
It's concerning that OMM question answer choices weren't the same as content in Savarese.

Agreed. For the most part you could just pick the group of segments that were the closest. But on the ones where there were two answers that were both equally correct I have no idea.
 
I took it today and...wow. That was not what I was expecting. I took the USMLE on Monday and felt pretty good about it. It was pretty clear what they were getting after with each question and most of the time I felt like I had enough information to answer the question.

I took COMLEX today and felt like crap. I made A's every semester in OMM and now I'm doubting myself. I feel like I could have failed it or surpassed the average...I just have no idea.

I think I got most of the OMM-specific questions and microbiology but some of the questions were so poorly written or out of left field that I'm not sure any more. There were a lot of questions with more than one plausible answer. "Pt. has low bone density on their DEXA scan. Which bone will break the easiest? Here's a list of bones that old people break all the time."

A lot of the questions were really vague. To be fair I never took a COMSAE or did COMLEX-specific questions, so this was my first experience with it. However, some additional information would be nice. Some of the questions were so poorly-written or vague that I was left wondering WTF they were even asking me.

I'm hoping that I was just burned out from the USMLE and not feeling it today. 400 questions is a lot to run through. Some of the OMM and anatomy questions were just "WTF" type stuff. I guess we'll find out in a few weeks.

Definitely not impressed with the lack of proofreading that I saw, either. The interface was clumsy, the highlighting and stikeout features were cumbersome. The lab values panel got in the way. This is the product that we get after spending $550?
 
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I feel like everyone on SDN says it was a bad experience and it was crazy vague questions about random details and then most people end up doing really well especially on SDN...I mean you can tell if you guessed a lot or only on a few...
 
Hey guys i've got 4 days until my usmle and 11 days until comlex. I finished uworld and am only 40% through combank. Do you think it's a better use of my time to do my incorrects on uworld or finish combank out? Also I know this is the comlex page but i'm sure it equally applies, what do you recommend doing in the last 3 days leading up?
 
Personally, I think reviewing old questions in uworld is a bit overrated. If you've been through it once, you probably learned from your mistakes. Even though the other question banks are inferior to UWORLD, I would still spend your time doing those if you are looking for something to fill your time until test day; especially since they are "virgin" question stems. I just took the USMLE yesterday and I actually found the information in COMQUEST and COMBANK to be helpful to get questions correct on my USMLE in the subject areas of MSK, Neuroanatomy, and OB/Gyn.
 
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I feel like everyone on SDN says it was a bad experience and it was crazy vague questions about random details and then most people end up doing really well especially on SDN...I mean you can tell if you guessed a lot or only on a few...

I think part of it's that we remember more than we think we do, so we read a question and remember some lecture we attended or some sentence out of FA but it doesn't necessarily feel solid. Or not solid enough to want to stake our future on it.
 
Curious, what's the average amount of cranial questions people area getting per test? How about chapman's and tenderpoints?
 
Curious, what's the average amount of cranial questions people area getting per test? How about chapman's and tenderpoints?


The test is a random assortment of questions. You could get 30, you could get 0.


Studying based on what you "expect" to be tested on is a surefire way to be blindsided. You need to be strong in every area.


Edit: I think I had ~4 cranial and maybe ~15 chapman/tender points
 
Hey guys i've got 4 days until my usmle and 11 days until comlex. I finished uworld and am only 40% through combank. Do you think it's a better use of my time to do my incorrects on uworld or finish combank out? Also I know this is the comlex page but i'm sure it equally applies, what do you recommend doing in the last 3 days leading up?

Don't do old UWorld questions. You're better of going over your struggle topics in FA and the green book. That's 2 of your 3 days. Rest the day before. No nothing besides maybe a few warm up questions in the morning to keep it fresh; but most would suggest an enjoyable day (not too enjoyable ;) ) not thinking about this b.s. that you will one day smirk at.
 
I want to add a couple of things here that I haven't seen addressed.

1) One of our professors told us she sincerely believes the people who write board exams play mind games. I have to agree with her. You will encounter a series of 8-9 questions in a row where you're completely like, "WTF?" Then you will get a series of easy ones. I honestly believe this is by design. They want you to waste time, get worked up, and place yourself under pressure. I'm not saying go in and not give a damn - I'm just saying don't fall into that trap. There will be questions on the exam that they do not really expect you to answer correctly. There will DEFINITELY be questions that are long as hell and you didn't need any of the back story to give the answer they want to know. They're testing your patience and endurance as much as anything.

2) There are OMM questions on COMLEX you simply cannot really study for. You're going to see questions that ask you for treatment setup - that's a given. I didn't have many but they were definitely there. Maybe 15% of the entire OMM questions I saw. Here's the thing - typically they're going to tell you what kind of treatment they're doing (direct vs indirect, muscle energy vs counterstrain, etc.) and ask you to choose an answer that best represents that treatment setup. In order to make this decision you often (but not always) will have to remember anatomy. Muscle attachments, muscle function, etc. Savarese sort of hits this but not very hard.

That said, in my opinion, it is not worth your time to try and review that kind of material. You either remember it or you don't. For some material there's just not a very good way to review/retain it thoroughly during dedicated board study. And, truthfully, I believe it's the long-term retention of that sort of information (not just for OMM but for other topics too) that in part separates the 500-550s from the 600-700s.
 
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I am not sure how those who took the exam felt after they were done. I felt that it was very hard and there were so many vague questions. Micro was not as heavy as what others have said but a lot of cancer questions and things I thought were not HY for COMLEX. I felt that the majority of questions focused on the concepts.
 
Just took it. Don't want to jinx myself, but that was NOT a super difficult exam. I mean, it was written like crap at times, and there were a few so-called low-yield topics they like to repeat for some reason. I finished without feeling beaten up or tired or even aggravated for that matter (and that's unexpected). Sitting down to study for the USMLE right now in fact.

Anyhow, besides knowing your facilitation levels/innervations, I'm not sure there is a "high yield" approach to this exam. I wouldn't go crazy studying Savarese if you did ok in OPP class/lab. COMLEX is kind of random. Loaded with one-liners and auto clicks at some points followed by long stretches of the WTFness and "what-are-you-getting-ats?" . Sort of a cheesy and somewhat laughable exam IMO (with an interface that my original NES could outdo). They need to kick this thing to the curb and make everyone take the USMLE. The powers that be should be embarrassed of it IMO. Glad I'm sitting for the USMLE in a few days.
 
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@Dharma did you do any of the COMSAEs? Any thoughts on correlation?
I took C and D. They seemed similar to the real thing, maybe even a bit harder. I've heard of peoples' scores jumping all over the place between COMSAE and COMLEX which tells me something's fishy. You don't really hear of that happening much with NBME and USMLE. Maybe it's just my bitterness, but I think it says a lot about the quality of the exam and quite possibility its reliability.
 
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I took C and D. They seemed similar to the real thing, maybe even a bit harder. I've heard of peoples' scores jumping all over the place between COMSAE and COMLEX which tells me something's fishy. You don't really hear of that happening much with NBME and USMLE. Maybe it's just my bitterness, but I think it says a lot about the quality of the exam and quite possibility its reliability.

I agree with this. I took B, C, and D. C was kind of similar to my actual exam but overall there wasn't any real consistency between the three of them with the exception of micro content. My real exam had more facilitation than any of the COMSAEs I felt. I can definitely see how the score between COMSAE(s) and COMLEX could fluctuate because while they felt similar they definitely didn't feel the same.

That said all of them felt like just another block of COMBANK questions.
 
scores went up ~2 hours ago. In previous years it usually takes a little longer for them to release the failing scores though.
 
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Damn, it's hard to stay focused to study OMM post-USMLE.

No! Haha. Don't say that... I don't take the USMLE until July 9th and COMLEX July 15th. I still have such a long way to go and I'm already losing focus. Lol. Keep pushing. :)
 
Just got home from my COMLEX. I'm currently writing this with a beer in my hand and no pants on, so bear with me.

General thoughts: I completed the 400 question COMLEX in less time than it took me to complete the 326 question USMLE, and I was far less fatigued after. The questions are generally more straightforward, with lots of instant-clicks that you either know or you don't. There were still plenty I needed to stop and think about, but not nearly as many as on the USMLE. Also, I was expecting many more questions that were ridiculously vague than I actually got, and was pleasantly surprised because of it. There were also 2 disease processes that I got 2-3 questions that had nearly identical stems with identical answer choices. This is great (as long as I was right, of course).

Facilitation was huge on my exam, and didn't seem as straightforward as the charts in Savarese would have had you believe. Maybe it's because I just didn't know it cold like I should have, who knows.

Micro was AT LEAST 25% of my exam. It was mostly simple stuff without much to trip you up, but a few questions did make me think. By comparison, I only had about 4 questions on antibiotics, and all seemed fairly straightforward.

I had 20-30 questions total on pharmacology, with the psych pharm questions more difficult for me than what I was expecting. Otherwise I felt they were fair.

Biostats / Ethics were ok, except for the three payment schemes, which I hadn't done formal any studying for. Here's hoping I guessed right.

I had a good mix of cardio/resp/renal/rheum, with maybe a bit higher representation from GI than I would have hoped, and fewer derm than expected. Anatomy was a bit tricky, and my neuro was mostly easy/superficial.

I'm sure there's plenty I'm forgetting about writing, but I'm in the mood for celebrating. I doubt I'll end up with the 800+, but also doubt I failed. Other than that, who knows where I'll end up!

Best of luck to everyone who hasn't taken it yet!
 
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