u/premed_pain22

Wanted to make one of these posts because I read a ton of them during dedicated and always found it helpful to see people’s score progressions/context.

Final score: 267

Practice scores:

• AMBOSS Step 2 SA: 246
• NBME 13: 245 — 4/26
• NBME 14: 247 — 5/7
• NBME 15: 254 — 5/14
• NBME 16: 258 — 5/17
• Old Free 120: 83% — 5/18
• New Free 120: 89% — 5/19
• Test day: 5/21
• Real deal: 267

For context, I was stuck in the mid-240s for a while and honestly wasn’t sure if 260+ was actually going to happen. Then things started to click more in the last couple weeks, especially once I stopped trying to learn every random detail and focused more on NBME-style reasoning.

The biggest thing for me was realizing that most of my misses were not because I had never seen the topic before. A lot of them were because I was overthinking, changing right answers to wrong ones, getting distracted by one random line in the stem, or picking the answer that sounded fancier instead of the answer the question was obviously pointing toward.

What helped most:

1. Reviewing NBMEs/CMS forms really hard

I know everyone says this, but this was probably the biggest thing. I reviewed incorrects and also questions I got right but felt shaky on. I tried to turn each miss into a short takeaway, like:

“What was the clue?”
“What was the trap?”
“What would I pick next time?”

That helped way more than just passively reading the explanations.

2. Figuring out my own dumb mistakes

My biggest issues were:

• Changing right answers
• Overcomplicating easy questions
• Ignoring the main pattern because of one distractor
• Not slowing down enough to see what the question was actually asking
• Picking the rare/cool answer instead of the obvious/common one

Toward the end I kept telling myself: if the whole stem is screaming one diagnosis, don’t let one random detail talk you out of it.

3. Free 120 close to test day

I took the old Free 120 three days before and the new Free 120 two days before. The new one felt like the best representation of where I was at the end. I got 89% on it, and looking back that was probably the biggest confidence boost before test day.

4. Day-before review

The day before, I did not try to learn a bunch of new stuff. I mostly hit things that are easy points but also easy to forget:

• Ethics
• Biostats/QI
• Vaccines
• USPSTF screenings
• OB/GYN
• Fetal heart tracings
• EKGs
• Heart failure meds
• Hep B labs
• Iron studies
• ITP/HUS/TTP
• Drug side effects

Basically the random stuff that can show up and make you mad if you haven’t looked at it recently.

Test day

The exam felt long, but not impossible. There were definitely weird questions, but there were also a lot of questions that felt very fair. The biggest challenge was staying steady and not spiraling after a weird block.

My test-day rules were basically:

• Don’t change an answer unless I clearly misread something.
• Trust the main pattern in the stem.
• If the patient is unstable, stabilize first.
• If pregnant, think pregnancy-related emergency first.
• If the question seems easy, it might actually just be easy.
• Don’t let one random detail override the entire vignette.

My advice would be: if you are close to your exam and feel like you’re not where you want to be yet, don’t panic. My biggest jump happened late, and it was mostly from reviewing smarter and fixing test-taking mistakes rather than trying to cram a million new facts.

The NBMEs teach you how the NBME wants you to think. Review them that way. Don’t just ask “why was this answer right?” Ask “why did I fall for the wrong one?”

Also, if your most recent scores are your best scores, trust that. My average was not a 267, but my trend was clearly moving up, and the real exam ended up reflecting that more than my older scores.

Good luck to everyone taking it soon. Trust your prep, don’t panic, and don’t talk yourself out of the answer the stem is handing you.