USMLE Official 2021 Step 2 CK Experiences With Scores Thread

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EMDoc22

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All right y'all, let's get this party started. Here's to a smooth sailing third year, no Prometric drama with Step 2, in-person aways and interviews, and no CS/hopefully PE.

School: bone wizard

Step 1: mid 230s
Level 1: mid 570s

Step 2 goal: 250+
Level 2 goal: 600+

Interests: EM, OB/GYN (distant second)

Rotations (in order): Peds, IM, FM, Psych, Neuro, Surgery, EM, OB/GYN and then several electives mixed in

Resources: UWorld, Online MedEd, Tzanki deck since it's shorter and the Step 1 decks burned me out, might check out B&B for Step 2 when it comes out since Dr. Ryan saved my butt on Step 1

My rotations go until the end of June and unfortunately my schedule is pretty backloaded with my final 3 rotations being EM, OB and ICU so I guess that means I'll be taking Step 2 in early July. Obviously I'm not sure how auditions/aways will be playing out next summer and if PE will be a thing so a lot up in the air right now in terms of scheduling. My school does COMATs for our shelf exams but I don't plan on using any DO-specific resources for COMATs or Level 2 as I've heard UWorld is all you need.
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Deecee2DO said:
Is the comquest score prediction accurate?What have you heard about it
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I tried finding out more too, some people on reddit say its within 5 or so points. 72% correct translates to 111 if that helps. I feel like it overpredicts by maybe 5
 
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UrsaQuestions said:
I tried finding out more too, some people on reddit say its within 5 or so points. 72% correct translates to 111 if that helps. I feel like it overpredicts by maybe 5
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Thats good news. I have been digging around on Reddit and a lot of people are saying underpredicts by 5 but it is usually within 5 points as you said. 108+ i think is honors?
 
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Deecee2DO said:
Thats good news. I have been digging around on Reddit and a lot of people are saying underpredicts by 5 but it is usually within 5 points as you said. 108+ i think is honors?
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fldoctorgirl said:
Each school determines what is honors. It's 112+ for us.
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For us our clinical grades is 35% our preceptor eval, 35% comats, 10% for completion of our clinical modules, 10% completion of our procedure logs, 10% completion our evaluation of our preceptor.
Honors is 90-100%, HP is 80-89%, P is 70-79%. For comats though whatever points you get, they subtract 10 from it to give you your actual percentage meaning 80 is 70%, 110+ is 100%.

For rotations without comats our preceptor evals jump to 50% of our grades.
 
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DrStephenStrange said:
For us our clinical grades is 35% our preceptor eval, 35% comats, 10% for completion of our clinical modules, 10% completion of our procedure logs, 10% completion our evaluation of our preceptor.
Honors is 90-100%, HP is 80-89%, P is 70-79%. For comats though whatever points you get, they subtract 10 from it to give you your actual percentage meaning 80 is 70%, 110+ is 100%.

For rotations without a comats our preceptor evals jump to 50% of our grades.
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Dang that means if you have a solid eval you barely need to study for your comat. My school says 111+ or the highest you can get is P! No matter how beautiful your eval is, you are Fudged.
 
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110 for us is honors. Our grade is split between our preceptor eval and our COMAT with preference given to the eval since an honors eval and pass on COMAT earns us a high pass for the rotation while an honors COMAT and a pass eval gives us a straight pass for the rotation.
 
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Lol it boggles my mind how residency programs put decent weight on M3 clerkship grades yet most of us have completely different grading scales and the grade itself is extremely subjective due to evals and who is grading you. On top of that youre comparing a COMAT grade and an NBME shelf grade aka two different exams
 
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Does anyone find the comquest questions super easy? only have done like 10% of the family med ones but still, feel like I should be struggling a bit more
 
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Deecee2DO said:
Lol it boggles my mind how residency programs put decent weight on M3 clerkship grades yet most of us have completely different grading scales and the grade itself is extremely subjective due to evals and who is grading you. On top of that youre comparing a COMAT grade and an NBME shelf grade aka two different exams
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Yup, it low-key drives me crazy because we're 100% based on our COMAT score and don't have a high pass. So I could get glowing evals but then get a 111 on the COMAT and just get a pass.
 
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I finally got my tentative schedule, subject to change... and I have IM 1 first but otherwise the beginning/middle of my year are relatively light, but then my last three rotations are surgery 1, OB, and surgery 2. May the idea that I might get some good board studying in right before dedicated rest in peace.

I hate my school right now :dead:

MDPharmDPhD’s M3 guide on reddit about taking your surgery rotation late really sums up how I feel about it: “You’re not sure which you hate more: yourself or life itself, but you’re determined to find out.”
 
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I finished my peds rotation today and take my COMAT tomorrow. I've heard the peds COMAT is difficult so I'm a little nervous. I've been using UWorld and Anki and am going to watch the Emma Holliday review tonight since it was highly recommended by the fourth years at my school. But I'm very happy to be done with peds. The attendings and residents I worked with were awesome but I just don't like the specialty. It was near the bottom of my interest list before the rotation and it remains near the bottom now that I'm done lol.
 
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Nearly done with week 1 of surgery....not a fan. The procedures are really cool and I enjoy watching, but definitely would not want to do it as my career. My brain is 100% medicine-oriented and I just don't vibe with surgery as a field. I'm constantly wanting to look at the patient's records and find out more about them but it's just like "nope, we just cut" lol (and yes I know that's a simplified view of surgery so no hate towards anyone who loves it, it's just not for me). I miss talking with patients.
 
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fldoctorgirl said:
Nearly done with week 1 of surgery....not a fan. The procedures are really cool and I enjoy watching, but definitely would not want to do it as my career. My brain is 100% medicine-oriented and I just don't vibe with surgery as a field. I'm constantly wanting to look at the patient's records and find out more about them but it's just like "nope, we just cut" lol (and yes I know that's a simplified view of surgery so no hate towards anyone who loves it, it's just not for me). I miss talking with patients.
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i’m finishing up surgery now and these are my exact feelings I’m always trying to figure out their other medical conditions and the surgeon I work with doesn’t want to talk about that stuff he just wants to cut lol im like i neeeed mental stimulation please. i just want to talk ddx talk to patients and review labs all day! The only thing i dislike more than sugery is writing notes
 
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GoCards05 said:
Omg that's so annoying! But that's still an awesome score to start off with. I'll be seriously lucky to land anywhere near that on the peds COMAT tomorrow lol *cries*
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Thank you! It's painful to be one point off though haha. I'm sure you'll do fine I felt meh after the FM one and it turned out well.
 
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fldoctorgirl said:
Thank you! It's painful to be one point off though haha. I'm sure you'll do fine I felt meh after the FM one and it turned out well.
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I totally get the disappointment but at least it wasn't in a specialty you're really interested in. And I don't think anyone ever walks out of a COMAT feeling like they aced it. I'm hoping UWorld is more than enough to prepare since that's the only question bank I've worked on and I really don't want to drop an additional couple hundred dollars on combank or comquest. Just thinking about that hurts my soul haha.
 
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Deecee2DO said:
Thats crazy because at my school honors is 108 lol a 111 is literally an amazing score. Congrats!
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This makes it worse, I hate how subjective third year grades are lol. Thank you though! I'm happy overall, just super annoying and I wish my school had HP.
 
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1 more week of FM rotation. No idea how I feel about it. on one hand I enjoyed seeing patients on my own and trying to juggle pretending to be a real doctor. On the other hand I probably spend close to 2 hours a day doing pure shadowing and its just brutal, I dread when patients are late cause it usually means I have to go and stand for 20-30 min with the visit. Also the amount of "just here for a checkup" healthy people with normal vitals can be a little draining. Just feels weird when I spend 10 min or less with a patient cause all I need is a physical if they have no CC, while the doc spends close to 20 doing the same thing but also filling out the med paperwork and what not.

My biggest personal takeaway from this rotation is how under prepared my school/Myself had me for "checkup patients". Maybe they prepared me for CS but my god after spending two years on patients where you had to collect all the info and essentially having new patients for every scenario, I found it hard to switch gears to "you only need some of that information/its already in the chart and you have to balance talking to the patient, working through a ddx, and looking for a nugget of information that may be helpful"

Getting out of multiple choice world can be difficult as well. Usually I know all the answers to pimp questions, but actually processing and answering it fast enough from pure recall can be tough.

Maybe I am just ranting to the clouds, I'm mostly upset I had to shave me beard because of COVID lol
 
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iforget2 said:
My soul hurt just reading this. Do you know what % correct a 111 is?
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No, but I do know it's 86th percentile. My soul hurts too haha.

COMAT Percentile Score Conversion Table - NBOME

COMAT Clinical Subjects | Percentile Scores The table below converts standard scores into percentile scores for COMAT Clinical subject exams. Percentile scores provide normative information […]
www.nbome.org www.nbome.org
 
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ohmanwaddup said:
Getting out of multiple choice world can be difficult as well. Usually I know all the answers to pimp questions, but actually processing and answering it fast enough from pure recall can be tough.
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Also struggling with this if it makes you feel better. Feels like my brain is in slow motion.
 
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Well that peds COMAT was interesting. Felt like a mix between stupid easy and WTF I've never heard of this before in my life. So basically a typical NBOME exam.
 
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Am i the only one that doesnt like online med ed? I think the guy sucks. he puts me to sleep and he assumes we know all of this management terminology. Step 2/shelf stuff seems like straight memorization whereas with Step 1 I could really try and grasp and understand the pathophys so I didnt have to memorize as much
 
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Deecee2DO said:
Am i the only one that doesnt like online med ed? I think the guy sucks. he puts me to sleep and he assumes we know all of this management terminology. Step 2/shelf stuff seems like straight memorization whereas with Step 1 I could really try and grasp and understand the pathophys so I didnt have to memorize as much
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I'm not that crazy about him, don't really get the hype. I watch the videos but like one a day, I didn't finish the FM ones because I felt like I wasn't getting much from them.
 
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Deecee2DO said:
Am i the only one that doesnt like online med ed? I think the guy sucks. he puts me to sleep and he assumes we know all of this management terminology. Step 2/shelf stuff seems like straight memorization whereas with Step 1 I could really try and grasp and understand the pathophys so I didnt have to memorize as much
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Planning on skipping out on OME entirely during IM for this very reason. I feel my time is much better spent with UWorld and Anki.
 
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So far I like OME. It's not B&B or Pathoma but he sets up a decent foundation for doing cards or questions imo, although not comprehensive. Plus it's free. Haven't heard any B&B reviews for Step 2 yet though
 
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Dantes said:
So far I like OME. It's not B&B or Pathoma but he sets up a decent foundation for doing cards or questions imo, although not comprehensive. Plus it's free. Haven't heard any B&B reviews for Step 2 yet though
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Yea I hate learning new cards completely cold and I found going through his videos helpful to start doing new cards. I think B&B Step 2 will absolutely explode in popularity once there is a zanki-quality deck made for it, but we are sadly a few years too early for that.
 
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Deecee2DO said:
Am i the only one that doesnt like online med ed? I think the guy sucks. he puts me to sleep and he assumes we know all of this management terminology. Step 2/shelf stuff seems like straight memorization whereas with Step 1 I could really try and grasp and understand the pathophys so I didnt have to memorize as much
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Just read the pdfs. They are very succinct. Probably too succinct but whatevs. I used google/ uptodate/ papers etc to supplement

But, yes I didn’t like him either.
 
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Maybe I’m the oddball here, but I really like the OME guy. He reminds me of a doc I used to work with, and it’s a very positive association because I liked that guy, so I can’t help but like this one.

Also I would much rather someone tell me something than read it myself the first time, so there’s that. It’s a good overview before diving deeper.
 
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HopeImakeit said:
Tzanki vs Cheesy Dorian deck. Does anyone have any input on which one to choose?
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I planned on using Tzanki but used cheesy Dorian for FM (there is no Tzanki FM deck for some reason) and have decided to stick with it. It just seems pretty comprehensive without going overboard like Anking. For example, Tzanki surgery has only like 300 cards, while cheesy Dorian has 2000. I felt more comfortable sticking with Dorian.
 
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fldoctorgirl said:
I planned on using Tzanki but used cheesy Dorian for FM (there is no Tzanki FM deck for some reason) and have decided to stick with it. It just seems pretty comprehensive without going overboard like Anking. For example, Tzanki surgery has only like 300 cards, while cheesy Dorian has 2000. I felt more comfortable sticking with Dorian.
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Thank you!
 
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lol its official, step 1 broke me. Struggling to get through 300 dorian reviews, during step I would get through 2000 plus no problem. I'm done studying all day, until maybe my IM rotation. Now I'm lucky to get 6 hours of studying a day on the weekend.
 
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