Official 2017 COMLEX Level 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

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Roxas

Roxas

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Alright friends, let's do this.

I'm planning on sitting sometime in late June (COMLEX only). FA 2017 is on the way, starting UWorld in January and Combank around April.

Feel free to share and help keep each other accountable until we slay the beast.
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trs88 said:
What score do you need for D?

I'm not doing too great but I was able to get a 400 and I got that when I was only halfway through FA. I felt that it was a fair range of questions, meaning it wasn't super heavy on one particular topic or section. The only bad thing my class as a whole found with it was that it tested us on old pharm drugs. Some of us wrote down the questions because we had never seen those meds before and bugged our pharm professor. We showed her the questions and answers, her response was nice. "Really? Those were the answers? They don't even sell these drugs in the US anymore".
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Do you know if most of the "old" drugs are at least covered in Sketchypharm? Cause I get that they test things that aren't always applicable or common just because they make good questions, but hopefully they're not too out there.

In order to get a complete green light from my school I need 450, but 400-450 is okay, I just have to talk to our curriculum coordinator and come up with a "study plan"
 
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Roxas said:
Do you know if most of the "old" drugs are at least covered in Sketchypharm? Cause I get that they test things that aren't always applicable or common just because they make good questions, but hopefully they're not too out there.

In order to get a complete green light from my school I need 450, but 400-450 is okay, I just have to talk to our curriculum coordinator and come up with a "study plan"
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I didn't feel like the pharm was that bad on D. I remember one drug specifically that I couldn't even place (i.e. had no memory of learning it, lol) but it's in First Aid. In general I thought my pharm class + Sketchy prepped me just fine. I'm sure you'll be able to score in that range given your recent COMSAE. You got this!
 
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ananasmed said:
I didn't feel like the pharm was that bad on D. I remember one drug specifically that I couldn't even place (i.e. had no memory of learning it, lol) but it's in First Aid. In general I thought my pharm class + Sketchy prepped me just fine. I'm sure you'll be able to score in that range given your recent COMSAE. You got this!
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Some of the psych questions on D though...also get off the internet and study ;)
 
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Dr.Jekyll75 said:
Some how this doesnt suprise me . What were one of the drugs ? Our pharm prof constantly tested us on drugs that havent been in use since the early 90s
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:( I'm sorry, I can't remember specific names since we took D a few weeks ago.

Roxas said:
Do you know if most of the "old" drugs are at least covered in Sketchypharm? Cause I get that they test things that aren't always applicable or common just because they make good questions, but hopefully they're not too out there.
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If you know your sketchy pharm, you're great! I should of added that it was only 3-5 questions of "Never seen that drug" level. For sure, no more than that. I definitely agree that you'll get in that score range for sure!
 
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trs88 said:
:( I'm sorry, I can't remember specific names since we took D a few weeks ago.



If you know your sketchy pharm, you're great! I should of added that it was only 3-5 questions of "Never seen that drug" level. For sure, no more than that. I definitely agree that you'll get in that score range for sure!
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Despite comsae C saying it was one of my better subjects, I've actually only gone through about half of sketchypharm but I'm working on it. Good to know it's not a test full of zebras though.
 
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I'm sorry but you guys are doing it wrong. My friend just took COMLEX a few days ago. He took COMSAE C,D,E and said none of it was representative of the real thing. The closest to what he saw are Combank questions (granted that he finished Combank on top of Uworld). In lieu of wasting 4 hrs and energy to worry about scores on the COMSAEs, you could be utilize better time use like hitting Savarese, FA, Pathoma, or do question banks.
 
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kenjixshadow said:
I'm sorry but you guys are doing it wrong. My friend just took COMLEX a few days ago. He took COMSAE C,D,E and said none of it was representative of the real thing. The closest to what he saw are Combank questions (granted that he finished Combank on top of Uworld). In lieu of wasting 4 hrs and energy to worry about scores on the COMSAEs, you could be utilize better time use like hitting Savarese, FA, Pathoma, or do question banks.
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I agree, those comsae's are always +/- 100 points from the real deal so they are not very predictive
 
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kenjixshadow said:
I'm sorry but you guys are doing it wrong. My friend just took COMLEX a few days ago. He took COMSAE C,D,E and said none of it was representative of the real thing. The closest to what he saw are Combank questions (granted that he finished Combank on top of Uworld). In lieu of wasting 4 hrs and energy to worry about scores on the COMSAEs, you could be utilize better time use like hitting Savarese, FA, Pathoma, or do question banks.
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I personally think that gauging your UFAPS progression with NBMEs is best since they test raw knowledge and application. Supplement it all with a COMLEX-specific qbank (I used COMBank) to get used to question style + Savarese and you're gold.
 
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kenjixshadow said:
I'm sorry but you guys are doing it wrong. My friend just took COMLEX a few days ago. He took COMSAE C,D,E and said none of it was representative of the real thing. The closest to what he saw are Combank questions (granted that he finished Combank on top of Uworld). In lieu of wasting 4 hrs and energy to worry about scores on the COMSAEs, you could be utilize better time use like hitting Savarese, FA, Pathoma, or do question banks.
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Well yeah those are the foundations but people are asking if they are predictive or not. It always helps to know you're on the right track. But I will agree with you on your comments. I have a question for you though was it as heavy on reproductive musculoskeletal and Neuro as everyone says it is


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Dr.Jekyll75 said:
Well yeah those are the foundations but people are asking if they are predictive or not. It always helps to know you're on the right track. But I will agree with you on your comments. I have a question for you though was it as heavy on reproductive musculoskeletal and Neuro as everyone says it is


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I'm curious of this also. Even a bunch of the people I know that took it last year said it wasn't nearly as neuro/OB heavy as they were expecting.

I yearn for the days of old when bugs/drugs/omm were all you needed for a good score for this thing
 
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kenjixshadow said:
I'm sorry but you guys are doing it wrong. My friend just took COMLEX a few days ago. He took COMSAE C,D,E and said none of it was representative of the real thing. The closest to what he saw are Combank questions (granted that he finished Combank on top of Uworld). In lieu of wasting 4 hrs and energy to worry about scores on the COMSAEs, you could be utilize better time use like hitting Savarese, FA, Pathoma, or do question banks.
Click to expand...

Sure, but many schools require a certain COMSAE score and people are just trying to make sure they hit that bar to save themselves more hoops to jump through. I agree in general that maybe they aren't great as "study tools" but we still have to deal with them lol :p
 
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what the hell is an abducted/adducted clavicle. Everytime i get some kaplan question on it i get it wrong. Anyone else see this stuff in other qbanks?
 
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yankees527 said:
what the hell is an abducted/adducted clavicle. Everytime i get some kaplan question on it i get it wrong. Anyone else see this stuff in other qbanks?
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Nope. My school has a pretty solid OMM curriculum and never learned it, it's not in Savarese, and it wasn't on my COMLEX form.
 
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Roxas said:
Kinda. I don't have to pay for a face to face course (thank heaven) but I have to meet with our curriculum dean to discuss my plans from here on out
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what the hell? they make you pay for a study course? thats pretty crappy. Our cut off was 450 and i wanna say about 40% of my class didnt meet it (we are out of 310ish students)
 
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Dr.Jekyll75 said:
what the hell? they make you pay for a study course? thats pretty crappy. Our cut off was 450 and i wanna say about 40% of my class didnt meet it (we are out of 310ish students)
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Indeed, it is crappy. My school graciously offers a prep course needed to meet the requirement...for an extra $1000. One of my friends didn't meet the 400 cutoff and he seemed pretty crushed.
 
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Anyone else required to take COMSAE E? That one was required by my school instead of D. While we're on the subject, has anyone taken C? I took it yesterday and it destroyed me.
 
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The Dayman said:
Anyone else required to take COMSAE E? That one was required by my school instead of D. While we're on the subject, has anyone taken C? I took it yesterday and it destroyed me.
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Comsae E yes, i thought it was pretty omt heavy but other than that it wasnt bad. Saving C until next week
 
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Going into the exam without combank

Are the questions really that much different from USMLE? Idk if never seen the big deal of things being worded another way, it's either you know it or you don't
 
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yankees527 said:
Going into the exam without combank

Are the questions really that much different from USMLE? Idk if never seen the big deal of things being worded another way, it's either you know it or you don't
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i think the style is different and how they describe things in the question are different. Also ive noticed that the question types are multipart which can mess some people up.
 
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yankees527 said:
Going into the exam without combank

Are the questions really that much different from USMLE? Idk if never seen the big deal of things being worded another way, it's either you know it or you don't
Click to expand...

I just took it. I think you'll be fine without COMBANK personally. I did a bit of it and didn't feel like it really made a difference. But do study OMM one way or another.
 
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ananasmed said:
I just took it. I think you'll be fine without COMBANK personally. I did a bit of it and didn't feel like it really made a difference. But do study OMM one way or another.
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Fam, tell me, how bad was OMT ? do i have to be A.T still junior to hit the 600+ ? and anything of interest you notice on the exam
 
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Dr.Jekyll75 said:
Fam, tell me, how bad was OMT ? do i have to be A.T still junior to hit the 600+ ? and anything of interest you notice on the exam
Click to expand...

There was some legit weird OMM on my exam that I couldn't have prepped for. Plenty of viscerosomatics and Chapmans. You got this, fling your banner to the breeze.
In general, there were a lot of videos/audio clips that I wasn't really expecting??
 
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ananasmed said:
There was some legit weird OMM on my exam that I couldn't have prepped for. Plenty of viscerosomatics and Chapmans. You got this, fling your banner to the breeze.
In general, there were a lot of videos/audio clips that I wasn't really expecting??
Click to expand...

Visual audio? I'm guessing they really are like combank. Did you use the YouTube video to study for Chapmans points?


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Dr.Jekyll75 said:
Visual audio? I'm guessing they really are like combank. Did you use the YouTube video to study for Chapmans points?


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Yeah I didn't do enough COMBANK to see questions like this I guess haha. It was okay though. I used the youtube video but ended up basically just making a quick/dirty list in my mind of the main anterior points, which seemed to be enough.

Roxas said:
Did you use Savarese?
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Yep and probably not enough hah. Although not sure the stuff on my test was all covered in Savarese anyway. Some of it felt strange/obscure. But I'd definitely recommend going through it and some of the practice questions in there!
 
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ananasmed said:
There was some legit weird OMM on my exam that I couldn't have prepped for. Plenty of viscerosomatics and Chapmans. You got this, fling your banner to the breeze.
In general, there were a lot of videos/audio clips that I wasn't really expecting??
Click to expand...

please don't tell me there was an 1874 question on the exam...
 
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Anyone know why it says in savarese that sacral inhibition increases PNS and is used for diarrhea and dysmenorrhea. This makes no sense.
 
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Dr.Jekyll75 said:
what the hell? they make you pay for a study course? thats pretty crappy. Our cut off was 450 and i wanna say about 40% of my class didnt meet it (we are out of 310ish students)
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What happens to that 40%? Interested to see how this compares to other schools i.e. does that much of the class usually struggle to hit 450 on comsae
 
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Staphylococcus Aureus said:
What happens to that 40%? Interested to see how this compares to other schools i.e. does that much of the class usually struggle to hit 450 on comsae
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they have to retake the comsae but instead of E , they have to do D. I begged my school to let me take D but they said no, so that means i have to pay for C -_-. Idk if it was a lack of care or that they didnt actually know the stuff. Alot of my classmates are only taking the Comlex, and we have until july 20 something to take it. Because we are in Michigan people feel safe on just taking the comlex but i think thats a bad idea since the merger. Before, you could have done that and you could have match pretty easily to any specialty with an average score in Michigan. Alot of PDs love MSUCOM students or the are alumni.
 
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Dr.Jekyll75 said:
they have to retake the comsae but instead of E , they have to do D. I begged my school to let me take D but they said no, so that means i have to pay for C -_-. Idk if it was a lack of care or that they didnt actually know the stuff. Alot of my classmates are only taking the Comlex, and we have until july 20 something to take it.
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I wonder if there might be something behind the scenes then. Our school had us take form D, we had a cut off. If you didn't make it there was some stuff, but you might have to take form E and be held back. Since the majority of folks lost form B recently, I emailed our dean who handles nbome stuff and asked if everyone could take form E. All he replied back was "it couldn't be done". So I dunno. Maybe the schools are under contract?
 
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trs88 said:
I wonder if there might be something behind the scenes then. Our school had us take form D, we had a cut off. If you didn't make it there was some stuff, but you might have to take form E and be held back. Since the majority of folks lost form B recently, I emailed our dean who handles nbome stuff and asked if everyone could take form E. All he replied back was "it couldn't be done". So I dunno. Maybe the schools are under contract?
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the behind the scenes thing is that they are cheap
 
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Staphylococcus Aureus said:
@Dr.Jekyll75 how well does your school's curriculum prepare you for boards? Seems like too many people not hitting 450.
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our last semester we had a class that basically prepared for step 2. So many people barely passed that and it made alot of people lose knowledge for step 1 stuff. On top of that, alot of people burned out during that class so much that people took 2 week break after and then our comsae was the next week. Our school preps us more for step 2 than 1, we still go over first aid concepts but most of our question really didnt focus on them
 
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Dr.Jekyll75 said:
our last semester we had a class that basically prepared for step 2. So many people barely passed that and it made alot of people lose knowledge for step 1 stuff. On top of that, alot of people burned out during that class so much that people took 2 week break after and then our comsae was the next week. Our school preps us more for step 2 than 1, we still go over first aid concepts but most of our question really didnt focus on them
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That sucks, is it like that every year? Wondering if all schools have that many performing sub-450 after two weeks of dedicated.
 
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