211/88, a genuine experience - medguy09

[ArchivalUser]

Guys, Im a poster on this forum but I'm using a different username so I can post my experience freely without NBME chasing me..

On my Step 1 and Step 2 I passed with 79 each time.

About Step 3. Took the exam in early Nov and got my score today (211/88). This was my second attempt.
Little background about me. Im a FM resident in my 2nd year. Took it the first time 2 weeks before I started internship and got 168/69, so my confidence was definitely hit.

For this attempt here's what I did:
Took about 2.5 months to study. For 2 months I studied after my shifts, so from 6p-11pm, then weekends 7am-10pm. The last 10 days before my exam I had off from rotations so I studied 5am-11pm hardcore for those last 10 days.

I did NOT use any ARCHER NOTES or Dr Red CCS or anything like that.

I used as a main book: Master the Boards (MTB): AWESOME BOOK! Everything you need is in there. I took my notes into that book.
I used mainly Step 2 CK books for everything except for Medicine, in which I used Step Up to Medicine.
I had Crush, but found it wasnt too helpful. I used Swanson's, which was very helpful for Sports Medicine, Geriatrics, Behavorial Science, and Neonatology.
I also had Premier Review which I used sparingly for Cardio and Respiratory. It's a good book, however I didnt like the format (bullet point) so I just used it to cross reference.
For a medical reference I used Up-To-Date (from the Hospital...its an online medical reference...no copies out there sorry).
I had MKSAP at the hospital, but never used it (it was beyond the scope of Step 3).

For Questions I did USMLE World which I found very similar to the exam and I also did some of the NBME questions from the forum. I didnt take the paid NBME for 2 reasons. #1 I was exposed to the questions on the forum, so I wouldve had a false elevated score. #2 the NBME would scare me if I didnt do well on it and I couldnt change my exam date because it was set.

About the exam:
Day 1:
Vague vague questions. They asked questions from ALL over the place. I had FIVE questions about RADON gas. Yeah, RADON! Mainly describing a patient who was exposed to radon all her life..what other risk factor should she avoid to decrease her risk of lung cancer? Smoking... so the questions were common sense.
Also had a lot of DM, HTN, MI, thyroid, OB/GYN and Peds. Surgery was intertwined with ER cases and they were all the run of the mill questions (pancreatitis, kidney stones, etc).
Ethics questions were kind of difficult. I'm pretty good at ethics and I found these relatively difficult on the exam.
Biostats about 5 questions.
Pics: Lyme disease, xray of distal radial fx, optho pics, acne, bullous pemphigoid, alopecia areata, and more that I forgot.

I know most of you wont believe this, but i had an ORGANIC CHEMISTRY Q on my exam. It was showing 3 different molecular formulas and added a methylation to 5' and it wanted to know what the reaction is (it was a weird biochem question.... I actually started laughing when I saw that).

Day 2:
Easier than day one. Less draining.
As far as the CCS cases go, all of my couldve ended early but I let them drag on because I took my time to make sure I got all of my orders in correctly.
Cases: Hodgkins disease, Prostatitis, MI, Renal carcinoma, Sepsis, asthma exacerbation, lung cancer, pregnancy (w/uti)

It's a doable exam. The test makers make the questions very vague, but whatever you dont know just pick an answer and move on. Time is not on your side..the blocks fly by... especially ER blocks.

You know more than you think. Anxiety and nervousness play roles during the exam, they block your train of thought. So get those to become a non issue and you should be ok.

Most important of all is I prayed to God everyday for success on this exam.

Dont use too many sources and stay away of negative people on this forum. Especially the ones who claim to work full time and study 2 hours a day and score a 99... that's BS. Stay away from people who try to sell you notes and other things online and from those who post ridiculous experiences about their exam.

Get MTB, use Usmleworld for the concepts and UW is EXCELLENT for the CCS. DONT USE ANYTHING ELSE OR WASTE YOUR MONEY ON ARCHER OR RED CCS...UW IS MORE THAN ENOUGH TO DO WELL ON IT..

I'm on call right now so I'll check back here throughout the next 2 days to answer questions. I'm NOT gonna give you exact questions, and I'm not gonna send out emails or files to anyone, so please dont ask. I'm not gonna advertise for anything either (hate those stupid "Archer miracles" that get posted the day after scores are reported)....

[ArchivalUser]

GREAT EXP WELL SAID..WISH YOU YOUR DREAM SCORE. THANK YOU FOR THE ADVICE.. MY EXAM IN 4 DAYS.. IS swanson must for the said topics ?

[ArchivalUser]

congratulations.... thats great score..

[ArchivalUser]

congrat dude!! gr8 score!!! thanks for sharing!! i am also amazed on ur residency .BIG congrat on that one also! i am freaking out this yr...a few iv calls up to now!! this yr is damn tough to get iv calss..aint knw the rest! any advise plz to improve and particularly with low scores? thanks again and all the best

[ArchivalUser]

Excellent to the point explaination and guidance. Seriously we need people like you. Thanks.
Only point I would like to ask you that there are many candidates I have found saying that they flunked step 3 and they did only UW. Moreover, people who have done both UW and Kaplan Q bank, say that Kaplan Q bank is more near to the exam (in both ways - length of Q and level of toughness). So can you please throw some light on it. Do you really think UW is enough and is it UW should be chosen in case of only 1 u need to choose ??? Thank you once again in advance.

[ArchivalUser]

hopetopass:
No Swanson's isnt a must, but it does help with understanding some of the ideas of sports meds and geriatrics. Actually any family medicine review book will probably hit those topics more than enough. I just used Swanson's because I had purchased it for my residency.

John2007: Thanks for the congrats. Well as far as getting Interviews go, i know its a tough residency season. Each year they get more and more competitive. Programs look at usmle scores and clinical experience. My advice is just nail your interviews (brush up on interview skills). Know who's interviewing you and research the heck out of the program, ie look up faculty and do a Google Scholar search on them and "mention" their research during the interview and all that kissing up stuff lol. You'll match somewhere, even with low scores. But at least you have interviews. Some people have to wait for a match season or two or three before they match, but getting and doing well on the interviews are huge.

Drtom: You asked a great question "Is UW good enough by itself? and What about Kaplan?" I only used UW, so I wasnt exposed to Kaplan's questions. I did tell myself though that if I have to repeat this exam (again) I'd register for Kaplan's Qbank. I think the consensus (and I agree) is that UW should be your primary question source. Now, how you use it is the most important thing. I used it in TUTOR mode for about 85% of the questions. Id study a topic then do ALL the questions in tutor mode. I'd write down key points in my MTB book. Some of the UW questions that were BS (too difficult, where only 9% of the people got it correct) I wouldnt even stress about because that stuff is probably too low yield to be on the exam.
More towards my exam date I would set up blocks of 40 questions just to practice my timing ( did this about 5 days before my exam). I have friends that used Kaplan and swore by it, and the thing that I liked about Kaplan for Step 1 and 2 is that they have better explanations for ALL the answer choices as compared to UW, where they dont go much into why each answer choice was wrong.
But for the CCS, UW is amazing! The cases were almost the exact same descriptions. The software is pretty much similar to the actual exam's. If i could go back in time I'd review each CCS case 2x and never again. I only was able to review the cases about 1.5 times (went through some cases twice and others only once).

Advice to all: don't look for zebras on the exam (zebras are those mysterious, very rare diseases that you see on Step 1....too low yield for Step 3). You'll use your time better studying the most common disease very very well. Thyroid is HUGE on the exam (8-10 questions), so definitely pay extra attention to the thyroid questions that you practice on.

Kaplan Step 3 videos: OUTDATED and incorrect. DONT USE THEM.
Crush: too general for most topics.
MTB: Great book! Take all your notes in there and review that book very well before your exam. It has some typos so be patient (in the hematology section, and when describing Renal tubular acidosis).
Premier Review: high yield, but quite a bit of some low yield topics. Also bullet point format without real explanations. I have the audio, but they're too long to listen to so I didnt even waste my time.
Swansons: Good book. Alot of topics are represented fairly well,but medications arent really that great. Good for Sports Med, Geriatrics, Neonatology, Adolescent medicine.
First Aid: Horrible book. Probably the worst First Aid book ever written, dont use this book at all.

[ArchivalUser]

thanks for sharing, medguy09

[ArchivalUser]

hi thr..
congrats !!
i will be giving my s3 for second time in couple of weeks..
u said u did UW for s3. Can u help me with ur UW account for CCS??
thanks in advance.
mledocz

[ArchivalUser]

Medguy09,what do you think about Blueprint for CCS?

[ArchivalUser]

superdoc09: Thanks for the congrats, but no sorry I wont be emailing anything or any files. I stated that in my original post. Buy a subscription for UW CCS it's not terribly expensive and the practice is worth it.

Marshal: I havent seen the Blueprint CCS, the only CCS that I've seen were First Aid's CCS portion (waste of time, dont even look at it) and then Usmle World's CCS (which was excellent for the actual exam).