Wrote COMLEX this week and figured I'd sign up and write a reply since this forum has been helpful!
COMSAE B: high 500s, couple months ago
D: low 600s, a month ago
NBME avg for the newest 3 was low 250s
UW 2x, 1000 COMBANK qs (mostly OMM, neuro, MSK), and 1000 Rx qs
FA more times than I can keep track, and some pathoma, not much really.
Savarese 2x but never did the questions in the back
After reading this forum I was hoping and praying I wouldn't get the OMMneuroMSK heavy one because those have never my fav. The first two sets were really straight forward (endocrine, neuro, repro), I think I marked 8-10 and even felt pretty confident about those. I thought I had escaped the form of doom, but I was wrong. The final 6 sections had to have been about 75% OMMneuroMSK. Of those I felt confident with just over half.
Neuro/MSK was either straight forward (FA) or classic presentations, but asking the oddest things about mechanisms. I really don't know how I would have studied differently other than to know a little better exactly where every cranial nerve goes in relation to EVERY freaking brain structure... and which cranial nerve would be "most affected" given a location of pathology. Know dermatomes, spinal tracts, sensory and motor of extremities was straight forward and high yield for mine. Had 10ish videos.
OMM was either straight out of Savarese or... not. Had like 10ish viscerosomatic questions which were easy points, I think i may have mixed up parasymp and sympathetics a couple times (idiot!). A couple of random special tests that I lucked out having looked over the day before, I had about 7-9 treatment position questions which weren't bad, a couple were random but if you stayed awake for half of OMM lab you should be ok. Handful of cranial questions- easy. The hard ones for me were super long ridiculous patient histories after which they would give you like 6 bullet points of different OMM findings and then ask WHY is something happening. Then I would have to tease through answers A-E which all had OMMish answers that sounded legit, but there's just no way to be confident about an answer. My advice would be to just stick to green book and then hope for the best haha. I always performed well on OMM exams in school and some of these board questions just take it to a whole new level of sucky.
Repro was another huge chunk of mine and seemed unnecessarily vague and annoying. Stick to FA... pathoma helped on a couple as well.
GI was, again, classic cases but asking weird, vague mechanisms... what is the main reason for nausea, diarrhea, etc. And you have to pick the answer that sounds the least dumb.
Micro: i had 5 gram stains and presentation gave you little help... not too bad. Several weird bugs I've never heard of before. 1 antibiotic question on my whole exam which I was pissed about... what a waste. Know your bug vectors! Virology was super low yield on mine while zoonotics, parasites, and fungi were equal in representation to classic bacteria. Some classic bacteria but you had to recognize classifications that aren't in FA, but were in UW.
Endocrine: a good portion of mine, if you know FA you'll get them all
Renal: maybe 3 questions... waste
Biochem: 2 questions... waste
Behavioral: a handful, 2 simple calculations
Cardio: just basic physiology, a couple EKGs that were straightforward
Heme: just a couple, basic
Resp: a couple tricky mechanism questions but FA will get you where you need to be... COPD/restrictive.. and then the FA table with lung sounds, percussion findings is obviously important
Psych: know FA, easy points.
Pharm: of all the freaking drugs I know I was asked side effects of two of the most random drugs in the world and just took a shot in the dark, missed them both... sigh. Pharm was really low yield on mine.
The most difficult part of this exam is that the questions for the OMMneuroMSK take forever long to read and I just lost too much time reading/re-reading patient presentations. Didn't have time to take breaks other than my lunch so I was feeling pretty burnt out on sections 4 and 8 especially when after you answer 3 vague neuroOMM hybrid questions in a row and you are hoping your next question is going to be on medicine and lo and behold its another ridiculously long neuroOMM question. I was smiling through the second half of the exam at the ridiculousness of it all. I walked in hoping for 600+, walked out hoping for 500+... felt like they switched out my medical boards exam for chiropractics boards.
Sorry for longest post in SDN hx, but it will probably be 1 of very few from me haha, hope it helps at least one person. Post my score in a few weeks!
