Passed with low scores
PASSED. Got the result last wednesday and after processing it, decided to write about my journey. Gave my exam on 29th July and this is is a very honest and messy account of my journey. If you’re struggling and have a messy journey, do give it a read and I hope it motivates you.
soo my journey started in November with uworld. I solved uworld system wise and very slowly. Used it to get used to the questions and learn the content. I completely adopted the UWORLD IS A LEARNING TOOL strategy and didn’t give a fuck about my score. Started dedicated in April and mostly did uworld on random and tried to do first aid. I was never able to use first aid to its real potential and every time I tried to it ended up becoming a highly time consuming task with low returns. When I started dedicated my uworld was only 35% complete, but I was familiar vaguely with all systems.
Started giving NBMEs
27 : 45%
29: 45% at this point I was so demotivated.
Didn’t give up, worked on my weak areas and systems using mehlman pdfs, first aid for some systems, biostats Randy Neil
28: 52% I was motivated coz at least my score had budged.
30: 50%. This score broke me. I was so done at this point coz this was supposed to be easier and somehow my score dropped.
Again worked on weak areas, did mehlman’s pdfs.
26: 58%. At this point I was very happy. Made real progress and still had 3 NBMEs left to reach 65
31: 62% elated. Reviewed NBME and again worked on a few weak systems
32: 61% a little disappointed but kept going
33: 58%. This was 1 week before my scheduled date. I was so disappointed and scared and I postponed my exam to 4 weeks later.
in the 4 weeks gap, I had my college exams for 2 weeks and I still revised my weak areas from either FA/ Mehlman and most importantly I did AT LEAST 1 uworld block a day.
Reviewed NBME 31, 32, 33 again.
I gave free 120 3 days before my exam. I got 61. It was definitely way lower than I wanted but at that point I didn’t know what else I could do even if I did postpone so I decided to give the exam.
Now the exam: my form wasn’t like the recent NBMEs. Even if concepts were repeated I couldn’t recognise them as repeated and that was my experience. Concepts from free 120 weren’t repeated but the way the questions are formed were like free 120 (The language, the wording, length of qstns etc).
I felt like I was on autopilot during the exam and didn’t spend too much time over processing the questions. Read the question, go with your gut feeling and move on. There were very few questions where I wasn’t confused between 2 options so I do think the exam is a lot about educated guessing or at least my form was.
Mehlman arrows is too good and makes you feel like you’re actually understanding smth and I highly recommend it. Also don’t sleep on pathoma 1-3, there’s a reason it’s high yield.
I never crossed 62 on any practice exam but the thing that helped me the most is reviewing the questions and having self confidence. I think at one point all of us should stop over preparing and look beyond the scores. I’m not saying or advising that people should give exam with scores in low 60s as I myself was aiming for 65+ but what I am saying is that the most important thing in this exam is self confidence on the day.