Oct 1st week test takers: Let's team up - thisisonlymyusername

[ArchivalUser]

i decided to take two more weeks to push my nbme score as high as it can go, wish u luck whoever is still taking it tomorrow goodluck

[ArchivalUser]

Yes i also decided to study for a few wks . Good luck to all who are giving exam tomorrow.


Rup33 we better get going..

[ArchivalUser]

hey guys hiii took NBME 11 on last monday i scored 470/214
but i think i saw couple of Qs before i did in some random posts where they dint maek it as NBMEs
so i think thats a biased score but lil happy coz ther is some improvement from last time
and i am planning to take it by nov end whatever may happen[touch wood]
rite now working on FA/UW, plan to take another NBME/UWSA after a round of revision.
Good luck guys!! i think v r almost there but now its the WILL to push a lil bit more.
UW is scary but the more familiar u get the more happy ull feel. Try using the search in utilities section and get to see all Qs of similar concept it really helps to consolidate.
For eg lets say myeloperoxidasse jus search and ull get all the Qs which has stuff abt it.
U guys might have known abt it earlier but its totally a cool feature. i dint use it for my other step so really happy abt spending money on UW this time
@ tiomun jus dont worry ull be fine. Regards to u r mom.

[ArchivalUser]

@jyothimbbs: that is a really useful piece of info about UW, I thought you could only search qs by their IDs, not keywords. Your nbme score will improve further, I am sure, just stick to it, so that you ca test by the end of your eligibility period.

@all: Got weary of UW, stopped doing it. Have switched to reading Organ Systems from FA for a while. I had done the portions before the organ systems two months ago (i think).

[ArchivalUser]

@ jyothimbbs is it in online UW ur talking about searching in utilities? im not aware of that.. cos im doing offline UW..
@ thisisonlymyusername when is ur exam?
im not giving exam in nov.. but just wanted to tell keep this thread alive..

[ArchivalUser]

@needtopassusmle ..how was your exam????...any imput
congratulation on being done with your test...wish you great results
katy

[ArchivalUser]

hi all took the exam yesterday afternoon. by the time i was done it was night and i was so tired i just came home and passed out.

i really don't know what advise to give you all until i receive my passing scores but here is some concepts that i remember...

Anatomy -- they had very basic nerve palsy questions. one of my questions dealt with saturday night nerve palsy which is the wrist drop with the radial nerve being affected. they described a drunken college person who laid on the bench overnight lol. i also had the nerve sensations for the hand. if you actually have the 2011 FA they have a diagram in there for this. that whole musculoskeletal section in FA is money!! so make sure you review that so you can pick up a few points that way.

Histo -- i had a few questions on identifying an osteoblast, osteoclast and a chondrocyte on a EM of a piece of bone. i think i totally got that wrong b/c i had no idea what the hell i was looking at. so def look that up. i also had a question on an EM of the lung and I had to ID the alveolar macrophage. there is a good picture in FA about this. i think this is becoming a very common question b/c a few friends of mine recently had it too. on the EM the alveolar macrophage and the type II pneumocyte look the same but the key difference is the lamellar bodies which is only found in the type II pneumocytes...they look like oval things with lines going across. so make sure to look that up. those were the only two questions of histo i got.

Embryo -- the section in FA is also money for this. I got the classic cleft lip/palate question buttt they asked which mode of inheritance is it. it's multifactorial....thank God for Goljan lol. so they lead u into thinking "oo ok this is the medial and nasal process for cleft lip" and then they ask you something like that. so just be prepared. they also asked about the teratogens and how a baby was exposed to DES and what it caused. so i wouldnt bother with anything else besides FA.

Micro -- again FA was great for this. the thing with micro with me on the exam was ALL about the drugs. make sureeee you memorize the living daylights out of that pharm section for micro!! you can def pick up easy points just by knowing the mechanisms of them. i had a question on aminoglycosides and cephalosporins causing nephrotoxicity. another question that asked which one of the antimicrobials causes QT elongation...and i got this wrong b/c i just didnt know...but its fluoroquinilones! so make sure you know that....i dont think it's in FA. i also had a lot of questions on HIV drugs...but they were just basic mechanism questions. as for micro itself...there were straight forward to be honest. i know so far it seems like an easy test and i can reassure you that it's doable. there is stuff on there that u'll be very confident about and there are about some 40 questions where you just dont know what the hell they want from you. lol. but it's very doable. so please dont freak out that much...you can def do this. if you can get a hold of high yeild micro by goljan or if he goes thru it in his rapid review...def look it over again. although FA is great, some of the questions went into a little detail...like which one of the malaria species can be in the form of hypnozoites...which is ovale and vivax can relapse. there were also a ton of STD questions on my exam. so make sureee you know everything about them.

Immuno -- again FA was good for this. A couple questions on which interferon can be used to treat what. alpha - Hep B and C, Kaposi and malignant melanoma, beta - MS and delta - CGDz. theres a section in FA that lists all of the IL's...make sure u look at that..i had a few questions alone on which one of them are neutrophil chemoattractants....which is just IL-8. also be familiar with the picture of an antibody, i actually had to label my diagram. My question was kinda tricky...they presented a classic scenario of a old women who suffers from RA. so you know there's a rhematoid factor...they asked me where the IgG will bind to the IgM since in RA there's an antiIgG antibody. i marked the N-terminus...the variable portion since IgG is acting as an antigen in this case. idk...it made sense to me. also...memorize ALLLL of the immunodeficiencies!! i had like 4 questions alone on CGDz! but they did ask about Job's syndrome which deals with the macrophages. the last few pages in the immuno section in FA were awesome for this

Biostats -- omg the math is just ridiculous on these questions, im not even gonna lie! everytime i saw a ? with math, i skipped it and came back to it later...i didnt think there was a point for me to figure out the standard deviation for like 5 minutes while leaving other ?s til the end. obviously tho there were math questions that dealt with calculating the specificity and sensitivity...which were really easy and i did but for calculating the p value and all that with the Harding equation...i say just skip and ocme back later. the rest of my questions dealt with studies. they put up a scenario of one group recieving a treatment and the other receiving a placebo and they wanted you to answer case-control studies. also got a question on the types of bias...which was easy too. just stick with FA and whatever else Goljan taught you and should be suffice for biostats.

Pharm -- a lot of people overlook pharm I stuff...like graphs on agonist and antagonists. i had a few diagrams alone just on labelling the agonist and antagonist. very easy way to pick up points but a lot of people overlook it b/c they think they know it cold and then they see the diagrams on the exam and completely blank on which curve is what. so def look at those. also had a question on how to TX the OD of acetaminophen...although there was N-acetylcysteine on there...there was also activated charcoal as one of the answer choices too. it all depends on the amount that was given, so if you get that question, read it very carefully. alsoo there is this little table in the kaplan pharm book about cytochrome p450 enzymes...more specifically isoenzymes...i had a question on grapefruit juice and which isoenzyme it inhibits!! can you believe that lol. i knew it thank god on my exam but wasnt expecting that type of ?! it's isoenzyme 3A4. just memorize that kaplan chart. other than that, pharm questions were veryyy veryy straight forward...just one liners on which drug can cause this ADR or which drug has the following mechanism of action...really simple.

Path -- GOLJANNNN!! anything that man said in his audio is more than money!! lolll....he's golden for it.

Physio -- since ur reading rapid review, i think ure more than prepared for physio...Goljan does such an awesome job incorporating the two...so you're good to go! every question was physiopath...they would describe a vingette where you know exactly what the dz or condition and then they give you the diagnosis in the last sentence!...it pissed me off a couple of times...but the question wasnt what was it it was why! the boards love to ask us WHY something happened! so just prepared to answer questions like that. oo and btw...make sure ur solid on the heme/oncology section. the nbme's have simple heme/oncology questions but the real step has like a two paragraph vingette along with all these lab values that u have to interpret and then finally answer the ? all within a minute...so just train urself to quickly look at the lab values and read the vingette quickly but accurately. i know i wasted like a few minutes just b/c i was so overwhelmed by the amount of info they threw at me for the heme/oncology questions. i also had a couple questions on the cardiac function curves and i had to label which curve was what. there is a chart in FA in the cardio section for it and i know Goljan goes over it...so maybe go back to that section and memorize the curve. I also had a question on lung volumes. i had to label which volume increases if someone had emphysema...i put residual volume...b/c they have lost elasticity. ooo and endo physio is ahhh! i wanted to pull my hair out on this! they ALWAYS use arrows when testing you on endo...they will give you a scenario and give you hormones with arrows...and you have to figure out which one increases, decreases or remains the same in that certain situation. so make sure you are able to figure that out. allll of my endo physio questions were like that! and omgg reproductive physio...i think like every other patient i had was either a hermaphrodite or a baby with unambigious genitalia. so make sure you review that part of reprodcutive path and physio. goljan does a great job.

Pysch -- i had a few personality disorder questions. i had one patient who was schiziod...who "vonluntarily" withdrew himself socially. i had another question on a girl who just broke up with her bf and then went on acting like a whore with random flings...LOL...i put borderline for that b/c she has unstable emotions and relationships and a sense of emptiness. so they were really easy if you memorized which one was which. the thing that kills most people are the ethics questions...they can be tricky and i honestly dont know any book or any study aid to study or practice those from. the reason i thought they were tricky was b/c they had two similar answer choices that could seem right...so i guess at that point is a 50-50 chance.

Biochem -- NUTRITION! NUTRITION!! i had so many questions on vitamins! like sooo many! so make sure you look that over. i had this one ? on a group of people from india were on a corn diet and they all presented with some type of skin rash...which vitamin are they deficient in....i put niacin...b/c its clasically associated with the corn diet and its part of the 3 D's....dermatitis, diarrhea, and dementia. I had another question on a little kid with kwashikow syndrome...the answer was that the kid didnt produce the apoproteins for the VLDL's to be released so the kid ended up with a fatty liver. other questions i had was about purine metabolism and please make sure you memorize the rate limiting enzymes. i know a lot of people say, they barely had biochem but i just took the exam 2 weeks ago and they asked a lot of biochem questions. i was gonna listen to people but then the day right before my exam i did the vitamins sections and thank god i did...so honestly dont listen to people about that kind of stuff...anything and everything is fair game...even a simple line in FA.

Genetics -- stick with the rapid review for genetics. I had literally 4 questions on mitochondrial inheritance...i had a pedigree where all the females had it and passed it to all of their kids and they asked which. i had another pedigree where anticipation was the answer...they listed the age and as you went further down the pedigree the age of onset decreased...so you knew right away that it was triple repeat and anticipation is what they were looking for. i had another question that related to biochem about "ragged red muscle fibers"....that is the classic clue and please dont overlook it...b/c i had 3 ?s on that dz alone! i couldnt believe they asked me 3 questions on it. but it has to do with mitochondrial inheritance and how it's the mom that passes it onto the kids and it's part of the MELA syndrome.

Neuro -- a lot of CTs and MRI's. i honestly dont know how to study properly for neuro. they expect you to ID the most random-est things. i got like 5 questions on hemorrhages. there is a section in FA on subarachnoid, subdural and epidural along with their respective CT's. soo please memorize those! very easy points you can pick up on. i had vingettes that dealt with an alcoholic who fell and an old man who fell...two separate questions but one same answer...subdural hemorrhage and looking at the CT makes it so much easier. i had a question on locked-in syndrome. they actually said that the patient was diagnosed with it and which artery was involved...its the basilar artery. the rest of my neuro questions were all about the cranial nerves!! so memorize the hell out of them and also look up the picture of the brainstem and make sure you can ID where each nerve is...b/c a few of my questions were really simple...and you knew which CN was involved but then if you didnt know where it was on the brainstem...you totally lost that question.


so that was the breakdown of each subject.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE READ FA THE LAST COUPLE DAYS TO YOUR EXAM.

Well thats that. hope this helps someone. PLease pray for me i am soooooo SCARED.

Good Luck all. =)

[ArchivalUser]

wish you all the best and a great score

[ArchivalUser]

@needtopass: congrats on being done with the exam! thanx for sharing ur exam experience. hope u get a gr8 score!

[ArchivalUser]

@needtopass thanks a lot for sharing experience.. wish you a great score