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MY USMLE STEP 1 SCORE 252 : Dr Harika’s experience

  • September 28, 2016
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MY USMLE STEP 1 SCORE 252 : Dr Harika’s experience
Firstly a big thanks to my family , friends and most importantly to this group for making my dream of 250s. Basically I am writing my experience for all those people who freak out just by getting low scores in NBMEs and decide their final performance solely based on NBME. Yes! NMBEs are highly predictive but not the sole predictors. It’s one’s own confidence that makes you ready for the exam. There are times when people close to me discouraged me indirectly that i may not achieve the score i dreamed about. Well today the score shows. So these were my scores!
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NBME 15-224 – This was the time i postponed my exam . I was completely shattered and lost hope . Then I read ONLY FA for about a week gave NBME 17-237 and my hope was back !
UWSA 1 -251- 6weeks before
NBME 16-241 ( felt i was improving)- 5 weeks before
UWSA 2 -258 – 3 weeks before
NBME 18-243 -10 days before.( I came to a conclusion that ill be getting score between 230 – 240 . Last 10 days I gave my best hoping to still improve and finally it was my exam day, happened to be my birthday!! I was very cool on my exam day throughout 8 hrs surprisingly!.
I did the following offline NBMEs – 5,6,7,11,12,13. I paired few offline with online exam to simulate the real exam and few other offline i used to do 2 blocks daily before i started my day.
About the exam: The questions were between NBME and UW. 80% of the ques were with pictures / few graphs/ecg/audios.
The materials I followed were the same like anyone else would do.
Kaplan except pathology.
Pathology- Goljan(great book where it fills all the gaps in our concept, i actually read the side points in the last month which helped alot) and pathoma videos and pictures.
BRS physiology
First Aid -this book helped me increase my score from 224 to 237(most important book).
UWorld- i did it twice. first time subject wise for 2 n half months. second time time random mode for 16 days.
And 100 cases by Conrad Fisher
My suggestions:
Do write notes for UW separately and stop wasting time to write every point in FA which makes it worst by the end.
Make sure to catogerise ur mistakes aft each nbme or uwsa.( This is how i improved )
stop freaking out by reading everyone’s experience. Everyone has their own style n plan ur way.
Gain confidence everyday by improving ur concept rather than counting how many times u shd read FA or do UW .
THE MOST IMPORTANT: try to be as cool as possible on the ur exam day and give ur best.
my total preparation time : 6 months effectively!
ALL THE BEST to the people who are preparing . Hope my experience helped and happy to help:) yeah be best.
Experience Shared by
Dr HARIKA KANDLAKUNTA
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