USMLE Official 2017 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

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WeedForLunch

WeedForLunch

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I know this is quite early but most American Students have finished giving the test for this year.
I am an IMG and have been prepping for the steps since quite some time and have seen Phloston, Transposony's and others' threads for their respective years and how helpful they have been.

I intend on giving step in Jan.. let's share timetables, plans and other stuff on how everyone intends on taking on this beast.

P.S. : I think it is not that early.. the 2015/2016 threads were started in September/October.. but in true SDN gunner style..i wanna start it in August.. :)
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Been hearing a lot about how stems on the actual exam can be long. I feel like I'm screwed because I'm a slow reader and even have to read the stem twice sometimes to get the main point across to get to the answer? I really don't know how I can prepare for this anymore.
 
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sss2g2 said:
Been hearing a lot about how stems on the actual exam can be long. I feel like I'm screwed because I'm a slow reader and even have to read the stem twice sometimes to get the main point across to get to the answer? I really don't know how I can prepare for this anymore.
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I took the test last week, and my stems were not long at all. I am not a fast reader either, and time was not an issue for me.
 
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sss2g2 said:
Been hearing a lot about how stems on the actual exam can be long. I feel like I'm screwed because I'm a slow reader and even have to read the stem twice sometimes to get the main point across to get to the answer? I really don't know how I can prepare for this anymore.
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I think it comes down to test taking strategy. I start every question by reading the last sentence to help frame my mind while I read the stem. It is also helpful to take a 1 second glance at the answer choices so you have an idea what they are getting at while reading the question. This should save you some time by helping you to pick out the important details before getting to the end and then realizing you have to go back to read again.
 
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4 weeks out and forgetting things like crazy!!!!! Still have loads of NBMEs to do !! Can feel my energy levels falling... How the f do I snap out of this???
 
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admisam33 said:
4 weeks out and forgetting things like crazy!!!!! Still have loads of NBMEs to do !! Can feel my energy levels falling... How the f do I snap out of this???
Click to expand...

I had the same thing happening. I literally took off a day to rejuvenate cause I was so burnt out. Take a day off. Seriously.


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Just took it today and man it was a doozy. Questions stems were kinda long in my opinion, I'm a slow reader but managed so don't worry. So glad to have that done!

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Congrats to you as well! Now enjoy as much as you can before rotations! I found the biochem okay until I encountered the vitamins. It is crazy how much variability there is in the questions. They literally make it impossible to gauge performance. Just gotta wait a month

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Ok, done with practice exams before the real thing on Monday.

NBME 13 - 215
NBME 15 - 225
NBME 16 - 250
UWSA 1 - 256
NBME 17 - 250
UWSA 2 - 240
NBME 19 - 230
Free 120 - 92%
NBME 18 - 260

My goal was 260, hopefully I get lucky with a good form.
 
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a little advice please,
So i took NBME 16 on friday june 2nd and got a 175 lololol
took UWSA 1 today and got a 222, i don't know how much of an improvement that is since uworld tends to over predict, especially the first one, test is scheduled for july 5th as of now, any advice on what to do next????
 
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I took the exam today and felt like I got blindsided. It was for the most part all clinical and had maybe ~10-15 gimmes per block vs NBMEs where I felt ~35/50 per block were gimmes (except 18).

I took the free120 3 days out (87% correct) and was finishing each block with ~20 minutes left, on the real thing I had maybe 2-3 minutes at the end of each block. Exam rocked me.
 
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Brorthopedic said:
I took the exam today and felt like I got blindsided. It was for the most part all clinical and had maybe ~10-15 gimmes per block vs NBMEs where I felt ~35/50 per block were gimmes (except 18).

I took the free120 3 days out (87% correct) and was finishing each block with ~20 minutes left, on the real thing I had maybe 2-3 minutes at the end of each block. Exam rocked me.
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10-15 gimmes per block still sounds better than no gimmes per block.
 
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Brorthopedic said:
I took the exam today and felt like I got blindsided. It was for the most part all clinical and had maybe ~10-15 gimmes per block vs NBMEs where I felt ~35/50 per block were gimmes (except 18).

I took the free120 3 days out (87% correct) and was finishing each block with ~20 minutes left, on the real thing I had maybe 2-3 minutes at the end of each block. Exam rocked me.
Click to expand...

Congrats on being done, anything you feel that could have helped a few days out?
 
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KingD said:
Just took it today and man it was a doozy. Questions stems were kinda long in my opinion, I'm a slow reader but managed so don't worry. So glad to have that done!

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AthleteDoc7 said:
also took it today! never been happier to be done with this, wow. literally no clue how I did. much harder than practice tests, but felt fair for the most part? idk at all. all i can say is pharm and micro were just, ridiculous a lot of the time. sketchy was not enough for my micro but whatever. it's over!
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Brorthopedic said:
I took the exam today and felt like I got blindsided. It was for the most part all clinical and had maybe ~10-15 gimmes per block vs NBMEs where I felt ~35/50 per block were gimmes (except 18).

I took the free120 3 days out (87% correct) and was finishing each block with ~20 minutes left, on the real thing I had maybe 2-3 minutes at the end of each block. Exam rocked me.
Click to expand...

Congrats on being done! I am sure you guys did better than you feel. Enjoy being done with Step 1!
 
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Brorthopedic said:
I took the exam today and felt like I got blindsided. It was for the most part all clinical and had maybe ~10-15 gimmes per block vs NBMEs where I felt ~35/50 per block were gimmes (except 18).

I took the free120 3 days out (87% correct) and was finishing each block with ~20 minutes left, on the real thing I had maybe 2-3 minutes at the end of each block. Exam rocked me.
Click to expand...
Now let the long wait begin
 
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upload_2017-6-15_20-8-39.png

To everyone that took the test today
 
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Brorthopedic said:
I took the exam today and felt like I got blindsided. It was for the most part all clinical and had maybe ~10-15 gimmes per block vs NBMEs where I felt ~35/50 per block were gimmes (except 18).

I took the free120 3 days out (87% correct) and was finishing each block with ~20 minutes left, on the real thing I had maybe 2-3 minutes at the end of each block. Exam rocked me.
Click to expand...

Congrats on being done!! My exam felt very similar to yours last month, even my free120 was in your neighborhood... how were your NBMEs?
 
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AthleteDoc7 said:
also took it today! never been happier to be done with this, wow. literally no clue how I did. much harder than practice tests, but felt fair for the most part? idk at all. all i can say is pharm and micro were just, ridiculous a lot of the time. sketchy was not enough for my micro but whatever. it's over!
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A lot of people keep saying that sketchy wasn't enough for micro and pharm. I know you can't give specific details, but in what way did sketchy lack information that you needed for the exam? Side effects? Drugs you've never heard of? Indications? (As I go back to sketchy pharm to review drugs...)
 
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AthleteDoc7 said:
mix of all. way different presentations for the bugs that are in sketchy. different bugs and drugs than are in sketchy. some minutia from FA for pharm, others no where to be found. overall just have to do ur best to reason it out and hope u guess right. definitely sucked given micro and pharm were two of my best classes ever and i don't think i did well on them at all

EDIT: don't get me wrong sketchy is still great for a foundation and you WILL get at least a bunch of questions right bc of it, it just isn't an end all be all anymore IMO
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Thanks for clarifying. Micro and pharm were two of my best classes as well, so sketchy has just been used as a big review of mostly the side effects and some MOA's. I plan to do a full run through of first aid the week before my test so hopefully that'll help.
 
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Sketchy was perfect for my Step experience, I'm surprised to hear some people had odd bugs. During my dedicated I followed along in FA and there's actually very little in there that's not mentioned in sketchy, while there are a few things mentioned in sketchy that's not in FA. The two together should be more than enough for the majority of Step 1 questions, it was probably overkill for my exam actually. My step was very biochem heavy.
 
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Gorne said:
Congrats on being done, anything you feel that could have helped a few days out?
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Honestly I reviewed all of pathoma/sketchy/weak areas in the last week and felt like it didn't really help. I think with a test like this, leading up to it, you just study to stay busy. The knowledge that you've built over the last ~6 months is what will truly be tested.
 
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Brorthopedic said:
Honestly I reviewed all of pathoma/sketchy/weak areas in the last week and felt like it didn't really help. I think with a test like this, leading up to it, you just study to stay busy. The knowledge that you've built over the last ~6 months is what will truly be tested.
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It didn't help at all? Was it because they were just not testing those points or that the questions were too vague?


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AlteredScale said:
It didn't help at all? Was it because they were just not testing those points or that the questions were too vague?


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its such a **** storm. You dont know which version you will get so its best to be prepared for everything. Including ethics which everyone always over looks
 
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AlteredScale said:
It didn't help at all? Was it because they were just not testing those points or that the questions were too vague?


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It's because this test requires logical reasoning and knowledge application, something you can't honestly learn in the last week. Sure there are a few factoid questions where I was like "oh wow I'm glad I reviewed this recently" but chances are I would have gotten them anyways regardless.
 
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Brorthopedic said:
Honestly I reviewed all of pathoma/sketchy/weak areas in the last week and felt like it didn't really help. I think with a test like this, leading up to it, you just study to stay busy. The knowledge that you've built over the last ~6 months is what will truly be tested.
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100% same feeling as you posted earlier. This is also very similar to how I felt. I felt like a majority of my questions that I remembered post-exam I got right had nothing to do with my six weeks of busting ass in dedicated. Although mine had a lot of factoid recall that felt like minutiae things, but for the ones that weren't, you really had to think about what they're even talking about.
 
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Quick question for those who have taken the test.

Look away now if you don't want to see an NBME 18 question spoiler! I'm still going to make it as vague as possible.

So I've noticed that I outthink the **** out of myself but low and behold, at least with the NBME's, the dumbest answer is always right. A question I got wrong this morning had a patient who had been hospitalized and given an antibiotic for whatever reason and then came down with diarrhea. This screams C. Diff. I was surprised when the typical antibiotic to cause it wasn't the antibiotic used, even though other AB's can definitely cause it. Well, turns out one of the main side effects of this antibiotic is GI DISTRESS, and for those of us that happened to know that, it made the answer choice "Wait 3 days after AB discontinuation and re-assess", very appealing. I was battling with whether or not they wanted you to think C. diff since its so damn classic and get you with the antibiotic side effect, or just pick the damn easy no brainer and move on with life.

Well, of course, as it usually tends to be on the NBME's, dumb answer was right. Not the sneaky AB with the diarrhea side effect.

So now my question is does the real test do the same thing? Is the obvious answer the way to go?
 
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Gorne said:
Quick question for those who have taken the test.

Look away now if you don't want to see an NBME 18 question spoiler! I'm still going to make it as vague as possible.

So I've noticed that I outthink the **** out of myself but low and behold, at least with the NBME's, the dumbest answer is always right. A question I got wrong this morning had a patient who had been hospitalized and given an antibiotic for whatever reason and then came down with diarrhea. This screams C. Diff. I was surprised when the typical antibiotic to cause it wasn't the antibiotic used, even though other AB's can definitely cause it. Well, turns out one of the main side effects of this antibiotic is GI DISTRESS, and for those of us that happened to know that, it made the answer choice "Wait 3 days after AB discontinuation and re-assess", very appealing. I was battling with whether or not they wanted you to think C. diff since its so damn classic and get you with the antibiotic side effect, or just pick the damn easy no brainer and move on with life.

Well, of course, as it usually tends to be on the NBME's, dumb answer was right. Not the sneaky AB with the diarrhea side effect.

So now my question is does the real test do the same thing? Is the obvious answer the way to go?
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I remember that question. I went with the classic presentation (cuz I didn't know that specific antibiotic caused GI distress lol). You should go with the classic presentation EVERY TIME. Don't overthink anything. If it looks like C. diff, smells like C. diff, walks like C. diff, quacks like C. diff...it's probably C. diff.
 
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Folks will also mention at this time that the NBME asked you what the most likely answer was.

The side effect is likely less common than C. diff.

Also, NBME exams have retired questions. That may well be a reason that this particular question was dropped.
 
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Ace Khalifa said:
I remember that question. I went with the classic presentation (cuz I didn't know that specific antibiotic caused GI distress lol). You should go with the classic presentation EVERY TIME. Don't overthink anything. If it looks like C. diff, smells like C. diff, walks like C. diff, quacks like C. diff...it's probably C. diff.
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That question was definitely quackin like C diff. Though, when you hear a quack is it a duck? Or is it confused goose with laryngeal carcinoma and C. diff?
 
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Brorthopedic said:
Honestly I reviewed all of pathoma/sketchy/weak areas in the last week and felt like it didn't really help. I think with a test like this, leading up to it, you just study to stay busy. The knowledge that you've built over the last ~6 months is what will truly be tested.
Click to expand...

this is so spot on. i could've not studied the past two weeks and done the same
 
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Ace Khalifa said:
I remember that question. I went with the classic presentation (cuz I didn't know that specific antibiotic caused GI distress lol). You should go with the classic presentation EVERY TIME. Don't overthink anything. If it looks like C. diff, smells like C. diff, walks like C. diff, quacks like C. diff...it's probably C. diff.
Click to expand...

Careful, I had quite a bit of "normal" answers or answers that were the least invasive, on my exam, assuming it was the right choice that is.
 
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