Took it mid-May and got it back today. 260, will have a write up later.
EDIT:
Study time: 21 days or so
Resources used: Master the Boards, UWorld, Practice NBME: #7 (took it 10 days in) - 279, #6 (took it 16 days in) - 271. Nothing else.
Shelf grades: two in 70s, rest mid-high 80s
Step 1: 230s
UWorld 1st pass (done during 3rd year): 74%?
UWorld 2nd pass (during dedicated 21 days): 91-92%
Books I read during 3rd year: Blueprints OBGYN, Pestana/NMS Casebook (only parts of NMS), BRS Peds, Family Med Case Files, Step-Up to Medicine (all of it), First Aid for Psych, school-issued Neurology review document
My schedule
8-9AM to 1-2PM: 3 blocks of UWorld. Tutor, all categories, untimed. Annotate notes and facts into a word document where I was also taking notes from Master the Boards.
Break for lunch, usually 1hr or so.
2PM-4-5PM or so: read Master the Boards. 1 chapter per day, annotating into my word document where I also had UWorld facts. Integrate the two together into one seamless study guide that I could reference and organize as I saw fit.
Evening: Go to the gym, relax, watch TV, etc. Based on the above schedule I studied at most 9-10 hours per day. My NBME days I considered "flex" days so those were only half days where I took the NBME exam in the morning and gave myself the afternoon off.
Some thoughts:
I didn't feel great leaving the exam. It felt harder than the practice NBMEs by virtue of incredibly long question stems, which others have addressed (lots of "classic" details that intentionally confuse you into being stuck between two possible diagnoses, and an answer list that could apply to both). I did, however have two or three blocks where I ended the block early because I felt so confident in my answer choices and did not want to give myself the opportunity to second-guess myself.
Lots of second-line treatments/answers were tested (eg there is a classical treatment for a condition HOWEVER that treatment would not be listed as an answer choice whatsoever).
Ethics questions seemed harder. I wonder if some were experimental.
Biostats was straightforward, IMO. I had some calculations but nothing ridiculous.
As you can see, my practice NBMEs were not insignificantly higher than my actual score. Looking back, I felt REALLY good when I was taking those exams, because I could nail every single diagnosis for each question and thus gave me a good chance at either ruling answers out or feeling confident in my answers in general. On the real thing I felt the confusing part of diagnosing things definitely did throw a wrench in things however I probably only marked 4-6 questions per block, and was quite certain that the remainder of my answers were correct.
I do recall changing my answer last-second on several questions and looking things up later to discover I was wrong. Things turned out OK, I guess.
Lots of images and media on the exam. However in most cases you could answer the question without needing to interpret or know the image cold.
Practice, practice, practice. I could probably do blocks of UWorld in my sleep by the time I took the exam. With very few exceptions, the NBME is not out to trick you or trap you. The patients you see have certain "buzzwords" and reasons for physical exam findings, labs, travel, history and the only way to develop your intuition for these is to do questions and organize these associations. This also saves you SO much time because you can trust yourself to ballpark a correct answer when presented with a strange presentation or an incomplete classical picture.
It's 8 blocks. This is a long-ass exam. By block 5 I was ready to get out of there, so be aware of test fatigue once you get to it. I probably slowed to half my normal speed by the time Block 8 rolled around, so bring caffeine/caffeine pills or whatever works for you accordingly.
I'm pretty happy about my result. It was a tough 21 days (but I did give myself some breaks and made sure I didn't burn out) but totally worth it.
I've been trying to decide if I want to spend the time going through my FA CK book again but in all likelihood I'll just go over my notes from uworld and doing marked/incorrects.
-jk
. Took the exam mid May, got the result exactly 3 weeks after.
: UW, OME and FA (not kidding). I just skimmed the FA 2 days before the test, still got me many questions right. It is up to date (guidelines, screening, etc.).
