step1 experience 99

发信人: Amymama (mimi), 信区: MedicalCareer
标  题: step1 experience
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Fri Feb 19 10:58:17 2010, 美东)

It took me a very long way to finally get here. I took the step1 test on Jan
26, 2010 and got the score this week, step1 99(252).

I read Kaplan Note twice for every subject except microbiology, for which I
used Clinical Microbiology Ridiculously Easy, then RRP for pathology twice.
During the reading, I went through Web Path systemically. Then I purchased
online UW for 3 months, and I could only went through it once using mixed
mode, timed, and the cumulative correctness is 63%. One month later, after I
read FA, I purchased UW again for two months. For the 2nd time the
cumulative correctness is about 86%. For the last 3 months, I focused on FA
and sim test, finished all NBME sim and UW sim. Following is the sim test
score:

UW sim1,  (3 months before the test, score 670)
UW sim2, (about 2 month before the test, score 640)
NBME form 6 (1 month before the test, 550)
NBME form5 (3 weeks before the test, 630)
NBME form 7(2 week before the test, 570)

The rest of the NBME forms, I did the downloaded form and the correctness is
bout 82-87%. During the last 10 days before test, I only read FA and
reviewed the NBME forms and discussed the form with others and I feel the
discussion was very helpful. For the form 7, we didn’t have the downloaded
questions, but I wrote down most of the questions that I could remember
after each section, and my discussion partner just finished the form 7 the
day we were discussing and her memory was still fresh. She did much better
in form 7 than I did. After the discussion with her, I figured out the
questions that I did wrong, which made difference between her score and my
score. Also I realized that I should read more about the brain stem anatomy
and brain stem injury. Therefore, I spent 4 hours summarizing the brain stem
blood supply and injuries and printed out the pictures for the sections of
brain stem sections. Guess what, I got a question on this and I think I got
it right.

During the test, I feel the question itself was kind of shorter than I
anticipated. There is always something that I never heard of just like in
NBME forms. For the question that I had no clue about, I didn’t bother to
mark it. I only marked the question that I am not sure, but I think I can
figure out given more time. I got more than 16 multimedia questions, and for
about 2 skin diseases, I still haven’t figured out the right answer after
searching on line. 3 heart sound questions, which should be all covered on
this web site (http://www.med.ucla.edu/wilkes/intro.html). My problem is that I can’t tell the difference between normal heart sound and mild murmur, but I think the web site is very helpful.  I’ve been doing molecular biology for 10 years and got a question on molecular biology that I had to spend over 2 minutes to figure out. There were few questions which are almost the same questions in NBMF forms. Of course, behavior science is the most difficult for me. Based on the score report, I performed poorly on behavior sciences. Overall, I feel that the test covering range is broad.