NBME 14 destroyed me (228) → One week later NBME 15 = 255. Looking for opinions.
I’m trying to understand what happened here because honestly I’m confused.
My recent scores:
- NBME 11: 236 (4 weeks ago)
- NBME 12: 259 (3 weeks ago
- NBME 13: 243 (2 weeks ago)
- NBME 14: 228 (1 week ago)
The NBME 14 score absolutely destroyed my confidence.
What made it worse was that I didn’t feel particularly tired or distracted. The questions just felt much longer, more vague, more ambiguous, and I struggled to extract the diagnosis. I also ran out of time and left 6 questions unanswered. After the exam I did those 6 questions and got all 6 correct, but obviously I don’t count them because in the real exam they would have been wrong.
After NBME 14 I was mentally exhausted and honestly did almost nothing this week.
My “study plan” after that disaster was basically:
- Watch FIFA World Cup matches.
- Go to the beach.
- Do Anki cards for about 1.5 hours per day.
- Very superficial review of NBME 14.
- No major content review.
- No heavy UWorld.
- No intensive studying.
Today I took NBME 15.
Result: 255 (42 incorrect).
So I improved from 228 to 255 in one week while essentially not studying.
That makes me think the difference is not knowledge. My medical knowledge simply cannot increase that much in seven days doing almost nothing.
My current hypothesis is that my score is extremely sensitive to question style. Whenever questions become very long, vague, and diagnosis extraction becomes difficult, my score drops dramatically.
Has anyone experienced something similar?
How would you interpret a sequence like:
236 → 259 → 243 → 228 → 255
Three weeks out from Step 2.
I’d appreciate any honest feedback.