I keep telling myself, I'm going to be fine. And I am dutifully studying and doing QBank - though I'd like my QBank percentage to be higher. But man I am getting sick of looking at this stuff. And what is scary is that the stuff I covered LAST week seems foreign to me now. Fellow sufferers, please chime in!
… and yes I KNOW that writing about it is procrastinating and that I need to get back to studying! I have actually gotten fairly disciplined about taking “internet study breaks” only a few times a day, but I’ll confess that this morning I am having a reaaaaaal hard time punching in the URL for QBank! Okay, okay, I’m going…
Mary,
When are you taking the USMLE?
I take the COMLEX on June 4th & 5th. I am still debating on taking the USMLE also; that is scheduled for the 15th.
I had friends take the USMLE yesterday, their comments:
ALOT of physio and biochem
Moderate amount of path & micro
Little pharm (know interactions, toxicities, and side effects)
Little anatomy (more nuero) very little histo & embryo (1 question)
Their advise was do ALOT of questions.
I too, can't get motivated. I can't wait to brain dump this info & get on with real medicine.
Another reason for me to not take the USMLE is that we start rotations the day after the COMLEX & I will have to focus on rotations (I start with OB/GYN), which will be alot more fun then reviewing for the USMLE.
Ok enough procrastinating (I too am an expert in that field)
. Back to path questions
Rachel
| Quote (Mary Renard @ May 30 2002,09:23) |
| I keep telling myself, I'm going to be fine. And I am dutifully studying and doing QBank - though I'd like my QBank percentage to be higher. But man I am getting sick of looking at this stuff. And what is scary is that the stuff I covered LAST week seems foreign to me now. Fellow sufferers, please chime in! |
Hey Mary,
You are exactly on track. You are hating looking at the study materials (been there done that) and you keep finding little things that you haven't seen or worse have seen and dumped. I so totally remember being at this point. That creeping fear overwhelms you and you will beat up on yourself for procrastination.
You are going to do just fine. You can take a few hours off and read something fun and still be all right. You can hate your Q-Bank scores and still do great on that exam! I hated mine so much, I wanted to shoot the computer screen but how would I fly Stealth missions if I did that?
Seriously, Q-Bank gives you plenty of practice reading long and involved questions from a computer screen. This is its greatest utility. If you read all of the answers and understand why the wrong answers are wrong and the right answers are correct, you actually learn a couple of things. You can also have a few Aha! moments when you are in the zone and you actually see the point behind the questions. At this time, you are truly on your way to busting the 90th percentile.
All you are doing at this point is practicing for the real thing. I can't tell you how great it was to sit at that computer and look at the same type of questions that I had been doing on Q-Bank. I immediately relaxed and could pace myself well. While I was studying, I kept a log of formulas that I spent the last couple of hours memorizing so I could write them on my board and immediately dump them on test day.
For Mary: I know that your Introduction to Medicine (that beastly class!)has really prepared you well for the actual exam. Look at your progress in terms of scores on Q-Bank but don't put too much stock in the actual numbers. Remember that Kaplan wants you to panic and buy more of their stuff. You are going to bust a huge score on that exam and on Step II. While that class was a huge pain during the last year, you will totally appreciate it during these board exams.
Take some cue cards of stuff that just doesn't stick in your head, go to the local Starbucks or my favorite, the end of the runway at National Airport and study in a strange and foreign locale. I found these hour study vacations were pretty useful. I even tore pages out of my First Aid and took them on my little day journeys. You can't memorize and relearn everything and fortunately you don't have to.
Finally, reward yourself with some little thing after you have put in your study time. This is a good time to be good to yourself. I have total confidence that you are going to do very well with this exam if you don't talk yourself out of it. As you read each question on the actual exam, you are going to see the point and get to the correct answer. There is a pretty good amount of material on the exam, that is just common sense. Just remember to sleep well the night before the exam so your emotions are not too edgy. When you finally sit in front of the computer, you can settle down and get the thing done.
Another word of caution: When you finish the exam, you may feel pretty letdown. Normal reaction! I kept having flashes of failing and not starting rotations on time. These feelings were not helped when I went to check which rotation I had gotten first and found that a couple of folks who had dutifully studied every day and did the group thing had failed. When I got my score from my dean, I had to go into the ladies room and cry (mostly from relief). When I got my actual score report in the mail a week later and saw the two digit number, I was elated. You will be there too!
Thanks, Nat! That helped some… I did take most of today off to spend time with my mom and sisters (belated Mother's Day dinner) and with your pep talk feel ready to tackle more stuff tomorrow.
Question: how DO you get your score? You talk about getting it from the Dean - how does that work exactly? How long does that take? There doesn't seem to be much info on this at NBME.
| Quote (Mary Renard @ May 31 2002,22:07) |
| Thanks, Nat! That helped some.... I did take most of today off to spend time with my mom and sisters (belated Mother's Day dinner) and with your pep talk feel ready to tackle more stuff tomorrow. Question: how DO you get your score? You talk about getting it from the Dean - how does that work exactly? How long does that take? There doesn't seem to be much info on this at NBME. |
Hey Mary,
The scores are released to the Deans on Wednesdays. They come in every Wednesday until everyone's score is reported. Since most people take the exam in June, the June scores come into the Deans offices about the third or fourth Wednesday in July if you took the exam before June 15th. If after June 15th, your score may come in about the first or second week of August.
The score reports are mailed to your home on the Friday of the Wednesday that your Dean receives them. Keep that score report handy because you are going to need some numbers off that report for your ERAS and NRMP applications. I almost threw mine out until I rememberd that it is good to keep every piece of material that pertains to any score related to medical school.
You will get a three digit score and a two digit score that is not a percentile. If 183 is the minimum three digit score to pass, that will be a 75 two-digit score. Since the scores have been going up, you may need more than 183. (When I took the test, 179 was a passing score) Anyway, generally, if you score above 240, you get a two digit score of 99. The mean for US grads is about 215 and is roughly equivalent to an 85. There is some kind of normalization process that USMLE does but I have yet to figure out how this works. I just know that scoring above 200 is pretty good for most residencies and scoring above the mean will put you into the competitive range and higher.
You also have a breakdown of how you did on each subject which is meaningless because you generally don't remember specific things about the exam. I just remember that all of my subject scores were pretty much the same. If you pass, you are certainly not going to re-take the thing and Step II tests different material.
I will reinterate, you are going to be fine. If you get the point of Q-Bank, you will get the point of the actual exam. You have to take your basic pre-clinical science and apply it to a clinical situation. There is always a point to each question. If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it is a duck on USMLE. They are not out to try to trick you or seduce you into making an incorrect choice. You will be able to clearly pick out a right answer if you know what they are asking for. There are 50 questions that are not even scored so they don't count toward your score. We just don't know which fifty they are!