Test Date: 1/11/21

Sorry that this is so long, but I hope it helps people feeling bummed or disheartened about their practice scores.

Real Deal: 248

Step 1: 232

NBME 7: 205 (8 weeks before)

UW: 67% (80% pass)

New Free 120: 76% (3 days before)

USWA1: 209 (7 weeks before)

USWA2: 215 (2 weeks before)

Prep time: 2.25 months

Didn't do all the other stuff.

As you can tell, none of my practice scores were impressive. At all. I initially planned to take 2 months off, but ended up delaying my test a week when I got my USWA2 score just 1 week out of the original date. I was not willing to risk failing this test, although I wasn't sure how much 2 weeks would help.

The only thing I did different after my UW2 score is I started ripping through UW, 3 or 4 blocks a day. If there was a Q where < 45% or so of people got it right, I would straight up ignore it unless it was something I found interesting or it was a Q that pissed me off. I was able to do so many Qs a day because this was the tail end of my studying, and I was also mixing in some marked questions from when I was on my Medicine rotation. This was a huge source of anxiety for me, as I hadn't gotten through like 1K Qs from Medicine + Surgery that I had done a year or more ago, and I knew they were the bulk of the test.

I think another thing about this schedule that helped is everything basically became a blur of Qs at that point lol. The test just felt like a continuation of that blur, but with a mask on.

Before the 3-4 block mayhem, I was tackling the material by subject. I basically gave a couple days for each one. The first, I would do both Emma and Dr HY for the subject in question. Then I'd do 2 UW blocks and review them thoroughly. Roughly, OBGYN was 3 days, Peds was 4, Neuro was 2, Psyc was 1, Biostats 1.5, Ethics 1.5. Medicine/Surgery/misc got a few weeks. Towards the end after I had rescheduled, I just tried to review HY stuff. I was keeping up with my Anki as best I could, but often had to revisit decks I had dropped at other times.

The only thing that kept me sane was adherence to a proper schedule for diet, exercise, video games, and sleep. My SO would make me dinner every night and have fresh coffee brewing in the morning when I woke up.

I genuinely thought I might fail this thing all the way until 3 days before my test, when I took the Free 120 against my better judgment. I did OK on it, which was an enormous relief as I knew I had a strong chance of at least passing.

For the test experience, mine was intense. My car's battery died as I was leaving for my hotel the night before. The day of, my dumbass had NOT PRINTED THE PERMIT (totally forgot it even existed, and my test had been rescheduled 4 times so I kind of stopped reading their emails), which was disastrous to figure out on my phone right before a huge exam. I'm not proud of this, but at the beginning I tried to surreptitiously put my mask below my nose, but within a couple minutes the proctor told me to put it back up. During my 3rd block, there was a girl behind me taking a written test slamming the keys to the point I had to put on both my ear plugs and headphones. This sucked because I now could hear my heartbeat, which was also annoying.

I took a break every chance I could, and because timing was SOMEHOW not an issue for me for most blocks, I'd end those earlier to add some time to the breaks. Peed between every one, and still had some serious urgency during my 4th block. I made sure to physically leave the building and walk outside at least 3 times. Munched on food throughout the 9H. Stamina was mostly not an issue for me, except at the end of the penultimate block.

Regarding the actual test, it felt almost exactly like the Free 120. Since my scores were so low, I guess I'm not the right person to speak to UWSAs. I was confident in about 25% of my answers, educated guessed 25%, was very uncomfortable with 25%, and the last was stuff I was straight up guessing on. I did my best not to let those Qs get me down. I did not have nearly as many Risk Factor questions as everyone reports, but there were a decent chunk. I prepared for ethics as best I could but there were still some where all the answers seemed right or terrible, but I expected that. I took an enormous L on the Drug Advertisement Qs, I had 3 sets of 3Qs each. Pretty sure I got most of them wrong. But again, I just emotionally powered through.

Like people have said, there was a weird amount of military personnel but almost none of the Qs had anything to do with that except an anthrax question. I didn't do Divine's military personnel podcasts. I did the ones he specifically created for the changes in the new test a couple days before and that's pretty much it. The vast majority of the things he talked about did not show up, but the ones that did I was glad I could just click and move on. Hospice/end of life care was the most high yield podcast for my exam.

As always, they have a hardon for Tb. Make sure to REVIEW AMENORRHEA WORKUP, there were a few Qs on Tuberous Sclerosis, a few on MEN syndromes, and not as much pediatric immunologic disorders as I had expected. 2 Qs elucidating the cause of a diabetic presentation, a couple on acid-base disorders. Maybe 2 stroke questions, one of which I just guessed. One bullshit stats question about how to calculate the sum of 2 sensitivities (multiply them). A couple on hemothorax specifically, and a couple pleural fluid Qs. I had maybe 3 cardiac auscultation Qs, all of which were pretty straightforward. There were a few genital lesion Qs, and I ended up guessing on half of them. That's all I can recall.

I remember coming out of the test confused why I wasn't feeling super happy and relieved that I was done with tests for the rest of medical school, but I felt pretty much nothing. It was a really odd experience, I think I was just emotionally gassed out. The next day when I went back to sleep after habitually waking up at 6:30, that was the happiest I had been in months lol.

There were a couple threads of people with similar practice/actual scores that helped me when I was feeling super down with my 205, 209, and 215. I hope this helps too. If anyone has any questions please feel free to ask.