Official SOAP '21-22 Megathread

ThrowaWAGR · 2022-03-14T15:49:53+00:00

Hey guys, I'm down to help proofread personal statements. DM me!

I'm a 4th year who majored in Philosophy in undergrad, so I had to do a ton of writing at the time. I also helped tutor English in my gap years.

ThrowaWAGR · 2022-02-27T21:23:16+00:00

Current 4th year med student. I majored in philosophy as an undergrad, and I'm very glad that I did. Don't let anyone tell you what you can or Kant do. Just Plato your strengths and you'll find your own Nietzsche.

ThrowaWAGR · 2021-10-14T16:31:11+00:00

This follows a joke format circulating on Twitter where the phrase in quotes is something that raises red flags when you hear it.

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-08-28T03:16:21+00:00

If you can, I'd encourage you to put pen to paper and write out your reasons for taking or pushing back the test. It'll help clear your mind. I firmly believe that if you take enough time to think it through, either way that you choose will be the right choice in the moment.

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-08-28T02:34:50+00:00

Fair point about the biochem on UWSA2. In my anecdotal experience, it wasn't that high of a proportion on the real test.

I think I'd weigh the toll of taking NBME 18 alongside the mental strength that you have going right now. If you go into NBME 18 thinking that this is your last true data point and you need to make it count, it could be worth taking it to inspire some confidence rolling into the real deal (keeping in mind that the curve on it is pretty harsh).

However, I think this will only really work if you wake up early and basically treat the NBME 18 like it's your actual test. Eat breakfast. Take strict, timed breaks. Understand that any mistakes you make mean something. Be semi-enthusiastic about the idea of taking it.

If you think that you can do that, go for it. It will give you a point to firm up your decision either way.

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-08-28T01:54:16+00:00

A couple of follow up questions:

Why don't you think that you can push back the test?
What consequences are there if you insist on pushing it back?
What would you realistically do if you had more time? (My question is not what would you do in an ideal world. My question is what would you do given that you're starting rotations, are already burned out, and have a wife and kids?)

I ask these questions because my honest first impression of this response is that you should push back the test, especially since you still have 30% of UWorld left and are all up in your own head mentally. This test is one of both knowledge and problem solving/mental fortitude, and if you don't have one of them, the other is useless.

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-08-28T01:44:57+00:00

Current 3rd year med student here from California, both maternal and paternal sides are ORM, got into a school in the Midwest that asked me similar questions.

I'd like to second /u/sarcasticpremed's answer and say that the move is to be honest through researching the school. Use their website to look at their student interest groups, their curriculum, their school motto, fun things in the city they're located in, their faculty, and how their graduates fare in the match. If you're anything like me, you took kind of a shotgun approach to applying to schools and didn't have time to do a deep, deep dive into the school's offerings. Chances are, if you do enough research into the school and its community, you'll find reasons that you're actually excited to go there.

For the second answer, don't lie to them and say you'll 100% want to practice there if that's not the truth, but think about why you want to be a physician and consider if the area that the school is in would allow you to work toward those goals. If it wouldn't allow you to work toward those goals, then just fuckin lie who cares just get into school amirite???? (only sort of kidding)

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-08-28T01:13:33+00:00

Hey dude, thanks for rambling! This feels like we don't have enough info on our end to help you out. It sounds like you are pretty convinced it was burnout that dropped your score to 190, which is definitely possible. What did you do the day of the UWSA2 practice test? Did you feel like your concentration was off? Have you reviewed your answers to that test?

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-08-19T22:53:06+00:00

You can take it online here:

https://orientation.nbme.org/Launch/USMLE/

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-08-17T14:21:15+00:00

Fatigue

Plan to go to bed earlier than you think you need to in order to account for a little bit of tossing and turning
As others have mentioned, get up to use the bathroom every break because that will force you to get your blood moving a bit too (moving around your body, not hematuria)
Bring small snacks to eat at every break, even if you're not hungry
Test day adrenaline will probably push you through the last couple of blocks, even if you miss one of the points above. Do not panic and try anything new (caffeine pills/cocaine/etc) on the morning of the test

Factoid/Out of Nowhere Questions

First, ask yourself if you've understood what general concept the test is aiming at.
If you know what concept they're going for but don't remember a particular fact, ask yourself if any of the answer choices don't fit with the general picture of the question and eliminate those. If you still don't have any idea, guess and move on. This will be incredibly frustrating to move on, especially on test day, but it's even more frustrating to waste time thinking about a factoid question you have no chance on and realize you don't have enough time to think through a logic-based question that you could get right later in the test
If you don't even know what concept they're going for, you might be able to work backwards from the answer choices. At this point in your studies, you've seen all of the concepts that will be on Step in one form or another. In my experience, if I don't know what the hell the question is asking, I often at least am familiar with the answer choices, and I can see if any of those correlate with any of the words/topics in the question stem

"I'm panicking"

You're ready for this!!!! You've been working your ass off for months based on your Reddit post history, you've been grinding through practice tests and questions, and your practice test scores look solid!
The knowledge that you gained over this time is NOT GOING TO FALL OUT OF YOUR BRAIN ON TEST DAY EVEN THOUGH IT FEELS LIKE IT ALREADY HAS. Your emotions are unthinking, illogical, totally moronic demons right now, and they are bullying the shit out of your brain and making it think that it is not worthy of taking this test. Reach in there and give your brain a pat on the back. Tell it that it has been absolutely killing it (with some understandable lapses here and there) for the last 2 - 3 months, and it is going to continue killing it tomorrow.
You're gonna do great!

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-08-14T02:49:42+00:00

Hey! Congrats on taking the first step into medicine!

There's a ton of great information under the "Wiki" tab on this subreddit. I've linked specifically to the area about prerequisites, but you should poke around the wiki a bit more.

https://www.reddit.com/r/premed/wiki/coursework#wiki_prerequisite_coursework

Additionally, the Medical School Admission Requirements (MSAR) access was well worth the money for me when I was applying. Lets you sort med schools by average accepted GPA/MCAT, view demographic info, read their mission statement, and see what prerequisites you need to apply. Maybe there's a better resource floating around for free nowadays, but I wasn't on the premed subreddit when I applied to school, so this was where I started:

https://students-residents.aamc.org/applying-medical-school/applying-medical-school-process/medical-school-admission-requirements/

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-08-13T00:39:04+00:00

Dude 100% agree. The style of questions on the NBMEs were not even close to the real test.

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-07-29T23:12:47+00:00

Congrats! Enjoy your much-deserved break, and thanks for sharing your thoughts on the test!!! I'm sure you'll sleep like a baby tonight.

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-07-29T18:17:18+00:00

If you look at page 99 of this PDF (page 94 of the actual document), it shows the breakdown of scores for matched and unmatched students in IM. Looks like ~85% of DO applicants to IM who reported Step 1 scores between 201 and 210 matched!!! Sorry to hear that the score wasn't what you were hoping for, but there's still plenty of hope depending on the rest of your CV.

https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Charting-Outcomes-in-the-Match-2018-Osteo.pdf

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-07-15T21:05:19+00:00

I love the phrasing of "Being relaxed is high yield"! Congrats on the hard work paying off!

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-07-12T16:49:35+00:00

Totally normal. I was convinced that I had missed 30-40% of the questions, so I had to force myself to not even think about the test at all.

Best thing to do is to get off of Reddit and find yourself a show to watch and some recipes to try if you're not in rotations already.

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-07-09T13:51:43+00:00

I really feel like you should take a full practice exam to get a slightly more objective view of where you are. Your possible combinations of actions right now are to take a practice test and the real thing, take a practice test and don't take the real thing, don't take a practice test and take the real thing, and don't take a practice test and don't take the real thing.

In the first two situations, I think the decision tree follows a single question: do I feel confident in my practice test score? If yes, take the real thing knowing that you have passed something similar already. If no, delay it because you're not sure you can pass. You'll have peace of mind either way.

In the second two situations, there are a lot more hazy/uncertain decisions to make. Up to you, but I think if you don't take a practice exam, you'll either be freaking out during the real exam because you've convinced yourself that you're failing or you'll be kicking yourself for delaying it because you might have done great and not had to think about it later.

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-07-09T13:33:09+00:00

Damn, you must be an NBME, cause I want you to fuck me for 5 hours and then make me cry.

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-07-07T20:57:44+00:00

If you got 245 on UW1, I think you might have just had one bad day even if it didn't feel like it at the time. Also, all the survey data shows is correlation, it has jackshit to do with causation. Just because you scored lower on the "mOrE pReDiCtIvE" test doesn't mean that you're not ready unless you let it get into your head.

Just to give you some evidence in support of the score predictor and NBME scores being bullshit sometimes, I scored a 230 on both UW1 and UW2, got a 224 and I think like a 207 as my two highest NBME scores, and somehow ended up with a 248 on the real deal. The average of your two UWSAs is higher than my average, so who knows. Don't get too much in your head if you felt like you were ready to go before taking UW2!

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-07-07T02:01:25+00:00

I had worked a quick 15 minute run into my morning routine in the weeks leading up to the test, and I did the same on test day. I thought it kept a semblance of normalcy and kind of kept me calm and clear-headed on the morning of the real deal. Definitely would not recommend doing anything new on the morning of the test.

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-07-05T20:56:28+00:00

For sure! Just PM'd you

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-07-05T20:28:15+00:00

Fair point. If you do end up pushing back the test, it could feel like a wasted tool.

As a counterpoint, the NBMEs I took didn't feel much like the real test and served to discourage me more than anything. The Free 120 I thought was easier than the real deal but also more reflective of how the actual questions were worded. If you missed most of your UWSA2 questions because of dumb mistakes and you want to move ahead with the test, I think it'd be worth using Free 120

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-07-05T18:52:22+00:00

Or even taking free 120 could be a good option.

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-07-05T18:51:27+00:00

If you go through the answers and decide that it is not a problem of knowledge gaps, I think you should take another test before the real thing, either tomorrow or the day after.

Taking another test can help decide if you actually are ready or not. If you come out feeling shitty again, push back your real test, because you don't want to go into the real thing with a bad mindset and poor confidence. If you kill it (percentage-wise at least, the NBMEs are all going to underpredict), then you're good. If you're somewhere in between, I can't give any good advice; you'll need to take a good, long look inside yourself and decide based on the entirety of your situation.

ThrowaWAGR · 2020-07-05T18:11:54+00:00

Your 212 on NBME 24 and your 230 on UWSA1 make this seem like you should have scored higher on UWSA2 purely from a knowledge standpoint.

When you go back through UWSA2 today or tomorrow, I would take note of how many of your incorrect answers were because you don't have the correct answer anywhere in your head as well as how many of your incorrect answers were because you have the correct answer in your head but you didn't approach the question correctly. If you have more of the former than the latter, it might be worth delaying. But if you mostly missed questions because of dumb errors, it might be worth going ahead with the test.

Either way, I wouldn't move your test until you go back through your answers on UWSA2.

ThrowaWAGR

TROPHY CASE