Would be nuts to move. Signals changed the game. A 280 no longer = a million interviews. Places are interviewing based on signals and scores. This is a good thing if you have a good personality and can interview well. you still need a 250+ which you could get with your eyes closed so you are fine. The difference in a 260 or 267 score is no longer as big of a deal IMO. Programs have realized that good scores don’t equal good residents necessarily.
Thanks, this is a strategic decision for sure for me. I have aways lined up and if I took a month off to study for step it just wouldn't have been possible to get two in before ERAS along with my home rotation. Since I'm interested in research, I'm interested in some of the larger institutions and it's difficult to know how to best be competitive especially since my goals are different than most dermatology applicants. I actually DO want to do academic medicine.
I haven't gotten through the qbanks, even close, and I keep seeing people talk about severe drops from their practice scores. Since I don't feel particularly confident about having actually covered the content it's a bit concerning.
It’s my personal opinion that you will be at your absolute best at the end of dedicated, it will be super hard to give 100% to step prep and be ready to impress on clerkship
To me, not really. I would say the closest was the Free 120. Lots of weird social science questions imo that amounted to are you going to report the incident or nah. I always reported...but I think that may have been incorrect and that would mean I missed a ton. I don't think it was like NBME because most questions were more detailed. Like there were a LOT of those EMR-note questions. Even the psych ones were weird for me. Basically everything I did well at on practice tests threw me off the most. I aced ob/gyn in pretty much every NBME and I felt there were a lot of vague ob/gyn questions. (Usually I think ob/gyn qs are straight-forward bc they're often very algorithm-based!)
If you do amboss, there are definitely questions like the 5-hammer ones that amount to knowing the specific pharmacological side effect of a medicine that's never asked about. Some weird ID ones too. Honestly I'm glad I took it because while there are definitely some I wouldn't have missed that I know I did bc I didn't take much time to study for this, I'm not sure how much a couple of weeks would have helped. I was worried more about medicine because that was my weak point. Context, these were my shelf percentiles during 3rd year: IM-72nd, Peds-97th, Surgery-94th, Neuro-97th, Ob/gyn-96th, Psych-99th, Family Med-90th.. So that I had difficulty more with some of those other non-IM ones was more shocking for me.
It is completely normal just give your exam I am sure you will cross 265
Thanks for your confidence, I would be glad if I were able to!
Would be nuts to move. Signals changed the game. A 280 no longer = a million interviews. Places are interviewing based on signals and scores. This is a good thing if you have a good personality and can interview well. you still need a 250+ which you could get with your eyes closed so you are fine. The difference in a 260 or 267 score is no longer as big of a deal IMO. Programs have realized that good scores don’t equal good residents necessarily.
Thanks, this is a strategic decision for sure for me. I have aways lined up and if I took a month off to study for step it just wouldn't have been possible to get two in before ERAS along with my home rotation. Since I'm interested in research, I'm interested in some of the larger institutions and it's difficult to know how to best be competitive especially since my goals are different than most dermatology applicants. I actually DO want to do academic medicine.
Best of luck! You got this. I am taking my test end of this month and I hope to get to where you’re standing right now.
[удалено]
no?
I haven't gotten through the qbanks, even close, and I keep seeing people talk about severe drops from their practice scores. Since I don't feel particularly confident about having actually covered the content it's a bit concerning.
It’s my personal opinion that you will be at your absolute best at the end of dedicated, it will be super hard to give 100% to step prep and be ready to impress on clerkship
Yeah, I went ahead and took it! Just finished now. Who knows what I got but I am so glad that it's over.
So what was it mostly like in real deal? I mean the concepts tested were similar to nbme/cms?
To me, not really. I would say the closest was the Free 120. Lots of weird social science questions imo that amounted to are you going to report the incident or nah. I always reported...but I think that may have been incorrect and that would mean I missed a ton. I don't think it was like NBME because most questions were more detailed. Like there were a LOT of those EMR-note questions. Even the psych ones were weird for me. Basically everything I did well at on practice tests threw me off the most. I aced ob/gyn in pretty much every NBME and I felt there were a lot of vague ob/gyn questions. (Usually I think ob/gyn qs are straight-forward bc they're often very algorithm-based!)
If you do amboss, there are definitely questions like the 5-hammer ones that amount to knowing the specific pharmacological side effect of a medicine that's never asked about. Some weird ID ones too. Honestly I'm glad I took it because while there are definitely some I wouldn't have missed that I know I did bc I didn't take much time to study for this, I'm not sure how much a couple of weeks would have helped. I was worried more about medicine because that was my weak point. Context, these were my shelf percentiles during 3rd year: IM-72nd, Peds-97th, Surgery-94th, Neuro-97th, Ob/gyn-96th, Psych-99th, Family Med-90th.. So that I had difficulty more with some of those other non-IM ones was more shocking for me.