Please don’t stress :)
Hey everyone,
I took Step a couple of weeks ago and just found out I passed today hamdoullillah. Figured I’d drop my scores and thoughts here because this sub completely warps expectations of what studying has to look like. (I used ai to write this btw)
To give you some honest background: I did the bare minimum during my preclinical years. I was a good student overall and I definitely studied, but I was realistic about my time—I would routinely skip classes, entire lectures, and even full blocks of content. I also would go back home in the middle of a semester, meaning I barely studied for certain blocks (quite literally a few hours the night before/day of the weekly quizzes)
Dedicated started for me in mid-March, and I did not study 12 hours a day. Not even close. There were weeks where I barely scraped together 8 hours of total studying. I didn't even study at a desk most of the time, and I almost always had a show running in the background while I worked.
I also completely skipped the typical starter pack. No Pathoma, no Mehlman, and I hate Anki with a passion. Just first aid, bootcamp and uworld. I didn't have elaborate spreadsheets or color-coded tracking either. I kept it simple: I redid questions, read through my practice exams, and wrote short explanations down in a notebook when I was feeling like it. That's it. I would occasionally do uworld questions/bootcamp step 1 related to that particular topic and read through first aid if I wasn’t too familiar with the topic.
My Scores + Timeline:
End of January: School CBSE (Baseline) — 51% I was genuinely so nervous before that exam. I also made the mistake of taking old free 120 before.
End of February: NBME 27 — 51% (was so disappointed that my score didn’t improve but I was like whatever, I was fasting/stressed to see my score, took half the time and just wanted to get it over with.
03/21 NBME 26 — 59%
03/29 NBME 28 — 62%
04/09 NBME 29 - 63%
Mid April: School CBSE — 73% (genuinely was shocked to see this score, thought it went vpoorly)
April 18 NBME 30 (Offline/PDF) — 67% took it over 2 days randomly with a show in the background
Apr 20: NBME 31 — 68%
Apr 26 NBME 32 (offline pdf) - 63.5% took it over 2 days randomly with a show in the background, made me tweak a little but also made dumb mistakes
Apr 30 NBME 33 — 67%
May 3 Free 120 (New) — 77%
UWorld Strategy:
Completion & Score: 100% completed, sitting at a 62% average.
I did a single pass but redid both corrects and incorrects multiple times which probably inflated my score.
Test Day Experience:
The Lead Up: I walked to the center the day before just to look at it, which helped ease the anxiety. By test morning, I was definitely a little nervous, but overall okay and sane.
Pacing & Breaks: I took the full time and literally went on break after every single block. I changed scratchboards whenever I needed a fresh start (quite literally before every block to have a clear page and clear thoughts)
Stamina & Food: I brought little snacks but honestly barely ate—just some walnuts, chocolate, some quadratinis and a mandarin orange. Bring stuff you like!!
The Mindset & Pacing: The exam felt like Free 120 and the later NBMEs (31/33), just with longer stems at time. I ended up flagging about 12 to 15 questions per block. Honestly, whenever a question was ridiculously hard, I just brushed it off as an experimental question and moved on.
My Advice:
The absolute biggest key to surviving test day is mental resilience: you have to believe that one bad block doesn’t define your exam, and genuinely believe that the next block will be better.
Trust your practice scores and that upward trajectory. If you’re consistently hitting passing brackets on your later NBMEs and Free 120, your brain knows the material. You’ll never feel like you know everything, you just need to know about 60% of it :)
Feel free to ask any questions, happy to help!