COMSAE D (1 month out): 620
COMSAE C (2 weeks out): 650
USMLE: >240
COMLEX: > 700
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I thought the exam was challenging. Realistically, I felt better walking out of it than my USMLE but I would be lying if I wasn’t still a bit worried. I felt like the COMLEX that I took was much more similar to the USMLE than would have been expected from previous student’s experience, stories on SDN, or the COMSAEs. Stems were much longer than the COMSAEs and I felt that the questions were decently integrative in a fashion similar to the USMLE.
My preparation:
I did very well in the first two years. I don’t know what my class rank is; I’ve never looked into it. I know people say it all of the time, and that it comes off as somewhat cliché, but the single best preparation for the boards is doing well in your course work. I can’t even begin to imagine how I would have approached the material if I didn’t have a strong fund of knowledge to pull from. My second set of advice is to really spend time fully understanding every concept in FA, even if you only look at it once. This is especially true of the things that are low-hanging fruit like neuro lesions, endocrine, how the nephron works, the fundamentals of pathology, and basic cardio physiology. Know all of reproductive cold, because like others, I’d say about 20% or more of my exam surrounded reproductive issues. Honor OPP, even if you don’t want to. OPP was heavily represented on my exam. A solid OPP foundation is 90% of preparation for that subject.
I had about 5-6 weeks of dedicated preparation time, depending on what you considered dedicated. I really don’t feel like you can do very well on either exam without about 4-5 weeks of solid uninterrupted preparation. I took lots of breaks during my studying to avoid burnout.
I prepared for the USMLE, took it, and then spent 3 days reading the green book once through. I did very little OPP preparation prior to this time. I also did all of the COMBANK OPP questions and reviewed some of the more obscure micro known to show up on the COMLEX during this timeframe. I did very, very little COMLEX-oriented question banks.
I did UFAP primarily. DIT was helpful and it gets my seal of approval. Pathoma is a must. I completed about 80% of UWorld. Unlike many students, I did virtually no questions until my dedicated period. I had been through about 50% of FA prior to my dedicated study period. FA was reviewed with DIT and relevant Pathoma chapters. FA was heavily annotated. I gave certain subjects dedicated attention. For instance, I gave neurology an entire week of my time during the period before my dedicated studying. I thoroughly reviewed aspects of biochemistry and immunology. I rewatched/reread all of the general pathology concepts from Pathoma. During my dedicated period I pretty much reviewed FA, Pathoma, and did UWorld questions VERY slowly. I was lucky if I did 60-80 questions a day. The key to UWorld is to thoroughly review every single word and diagram in that program. My USMLE and COMLEX were heavy on tying physiology and pathology into tricky scenarios and reflex knowledge of a lot of the concepts really came in handy. UWorld does a good job of hitting the high-yield stuff from multiple different angles and, with the COMLEX more closely mimicking the USMLE (see below), I think this is a 100% must buy product.
Which leads me to a few conclusions…
I think a lot of the griping I’ve heard from fellow students and on this forum is deserved (I agree). In my opinion, the exam was retooled to be much more similar to the USMLE. I have my theories about why this happened, but I think it probably screwed anyone who did not prepare for the USMLE. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the scores stratify that way. Just a theory with n=1 information. My advice to every DO student is to prepare for the USMLE, period. The only corollary is that I think that COMLEX micro is more difficult in the expansiveness of bugs covered. The USMLE did have some weird micro questions, but they were isolated instances. USMLE biochem and biostats is more difficult than COMLEX, but I think DO schools could correct for this by just spending a modicum of additional time on the subjects.
Interestingly, the single best preparation was UWorld.
My advice: start day 1 with the assumption that you are taking the USMLE. Buy UWorld and do as much of it as you can. Understand what’s in First Aid. The only reliable information about these exams is on SDN (I found the expectations of faculty to be off-base). Don’t believe that you need to spend 6 months studying for this test. Continue to do well in ALL of your courses and approach the review process in a way that makes sense for YOU. I saw students flipping through First Aid in January and February, many of whom talked a big game and carried their mega-binders of First Aid around everywhere. Don’t listen to people who claim to be doing 100+ UWorld questions a day while supposedly carrying a full class load. That’s BS. So many people use UWorld incorrectly that a book could be written entirely on the wrong ways to approach those 2200 questions. Anyone who claims to be reading an entire system in First Aid in a few hours is also full of crap. You should understand everything you read in that book. Flipping through First Aid is NOT reviewing for the exam. If you don’t remember something, seek and acquire a secondary source to clarify the subject. It may be a textbook, a PPT from a professor, or a video series. Don’t memorize stuff because you think that these two exams are recall exams, because that’s only about 50% of the test. I probably brute-force memorized a select handful of concepts and those were things that lent themselves to that type of learning. Continue to do well in your course work (all of it) and beg, borrow, and steal any time that you can for dedicated preparation.
Finally, First Aid, Pathoma, and UWorld will get you 80% of the way. Supplement with another resource. If you need structure, get DIT or another review course. I’d highly suggest a dedicated book for biochemistry and a quick reference for physiology (BRS, of course).
Things I’d have done different:
1) Eliminated some of the stuff our faculty provided for “preparation.” Time is the name of the game with this test.
2) With more time I think I could have finished UWorld and maybe improved my USMLE a few more points.
3) Sidebar for #2: this is an exam with diminishing returns. When you start feeling sick of looking at the material, you’re probably starting to plateau. This is where I think time spent before your dedicated studying probably makes the fortunes of your higher scorers. Being able to healthily review the material over several months in bite-size proportions probably helps.
Good luck everyone. I wish you all the best.
