01-16-2007, 12:25 PM
Finally after an endless wait I received my score report today and was happy to know that I passed. I scored a 77 which was very good for the little preparation that I did for it. Whatever it is, I am happy that I am done with all the USMLE's.
I studied for 20 days. My preparation was basically doing questions and then reviewing the answers and notes simultaneously.
I used UW for questions. I could only complete half of the questions. While reading the answers to the questions I simultaneously read the Kaplan Step2 notes.
For the CCS part, I used UW material. I just read through the first 60 cases of the list. I practised the first five cases on the Usmle software and the remaining I just skimmed through.
The day1 of the exam was ok as I think I did ok on the office settings but the inpatient block had very very long questions and I just had to read the last line of the question and then quickly try to answer the question. It was so bad with regard to time management on that block.
Day2 was ok with regard to the questions. They were shorter than Day1 but again the Inpatient block had the longer questions than others.
My main problem was with the CCS. I totally messed up one case. did bad on 2 cases, did ok on 4 cases and did really well on 2 cases.
If I look back I think I should have practised the CCS more and should have done usmlesteps123 CCS. I wanted to it but didnt have the time. If I did so I think it would have made a big difference on the score.
I did not have time for the NBME nor any other pre-evaluation questions. On the Usmle CD my scores on the four blocks were 32, 35, 19, 18.
The Step3 is a very easy exam to PASS and ALSO a very easy exam to FAIL!! So my advice to anyone just starting their preparation is to do UW for questions, UW and Usmlesteps123 for CCS.
Regarding correlations btw the real exam and other scores like UW and others like NBME and all that.... there are so many threads about this already on the forum. But personally I dont believe all that for this exam as all those correlations may work for the MCQs part of the exam but the actual passing or failing of this exam depends on the CCS for which there is no evaluation tool as yet at present. So to overcome this the only thing one could do is prepare even better for the CCS and not take it easy.
I hope my experience helps and goodluck to u guys still in preparation.
I studied for 20 days. My preparation was basically doing questions and then reviewing the answers and notes simultaneously.
I used UW for questions. I could only complete half of the questions. While reading the answers to the questions I simultaneously read the Kaplan Step2 notes.
For the CCS part, I used UW material. I just read through the first 60 cases of the list. I practised the first five cases on the Usmle software and the remaining I just skimmed through.
The day1 of the exam was ok as I think I did ok on the office settings but the inpatient block had very very long questions and I just had to read the last line of the question and then quickly try to answer the question. It was so bad with regard to time management on that block.
Day2 was ok with regard to the questions. They were shorter than Day1 but again the Inpatient block had the longer questions than others.
My main problem was with the CCS. I totally messed up one case. did bad on 2 cases, did ok on 4 cases and did really well on 2 cases.
If I look back I think I should have practised the CCS more and should have done usmlesteps123 CCS. I wanted to it but didnt have the time. If I did so I think it would have made a big difference on the score.
I did not have time for the NBME nor any other pre-evaluation questions. On the Usmle CD my scores on the four blocks were 32, 35, 19, 18.
The Step3 is a very easy exam to PASS and ALSO a very easy exam to FAIL!! So my advice to anyone just starting their preparation is to do UW for questions, UW and Usmlesteps123 for CCS.
Regarding correlations btw the real exam and other scores like UW and others like NBME and all that.... there are so many threads about this already on the forum. But personally I dont believe all that for this exam as all those correlations may work for the MCQs part of the exam but the actual passing or failing of this exam depends on the CCS for which there is no evaluation tool as yet at present. So to overcome this the only thing one could do is prepare even better for the CCS and not take it easy.
I hope my experience helps and goodluck to u guys still in preparation.
