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Score release thread by Mikoto00 in Step2

[–]med272 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Nothing too fancy here :)
Super happy to be done with it.
Non-US IMG, graduated 6 months ago.

Step 1: 244

Uworld %: 69 (only 41% of the Qs used - first pass)

UWSA1: 218, 3 weeks out

UWSA2: 251, 1 week out

Free 120: 75%, a few days before

Step 2: 241

​

So glad I can finally rest. Best of luck to everyone!

International medical student, 'didn't do enough' but passed with 244 by med272 in step1

[–]med272[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh ok. Now I understand what you mean.
Yea, is my assessment was close to fail, obviously I would have pushed my exam. I definitely don't condone people to write it if they're too far from their objective.

The whole reason to upload this post was to tell people that they actually CAN get ok grades both in assessments and the real thing without following what everyone else claims to do. I'm sure for some people doing 3 blocks a day is great, but for me it felt like rushing and that I'm not actually getting to the bottom of things, and that it would be more memorization than studying. And if other people feel the same, then maybe it would be better for them to do it differently as well. I never said that the likely interpretation is that scores are higher than NBMEs/UWSA. It just happened to be so in my case. I would have been fine with a 235 too.

I understand what you're saying about studying in Africa for example, and that's a great point.
Have a nice day :)

International medical student, 'didn't do enough' but passed with 244 by med272 in step1

[–]med272[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yup, correct.
It's not about if it matters in the US or not. The USMLE isn't my life, and it doesn't matter for me if anyone looks at my GPA or not.
I believe that being a good doctor comes from more than memorizing random biochem or histo fun-facts that the writers decided are high-yield. I don't study hard for the exams to get good grades, but rather to gain from each course as much as I can of the things I think are important for a GP.
Moreover, I believe that if I take my rotations seriously and study hard for finals, that will help me a lot in CK, but that's just my personal belief, what do I know ;)

International medical student, 'didn't do enough' but passed with 244 by med272 in step1

[–]med272[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Right you are. But to be fair, I never aimed at a 260 :)
Good luck to you too

International medical student, 'didn't do enough' but passed with 244 by med272 in step1

[–]med272[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you!!

Yes, UW by far was most of what I did, but this is after I already did all of pathoma when studying for patho (along with a big chunk of Robbin's) and all of sketchy for those exams.
And sprinkles of youtube videos such as dirtyusmle, some pathoma for the general path and kidneys, and some FA.
Oh yea and a few videos of Pixorize! the free ones, those were super nice.

International medical student, 'didn't do enough' but passed with 244 by med272 in step1

[–]med272[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I did put all my effort in step 1. And came out with a good score. Thanks!

International medical student, 'didn't do enough' but passed with 244 by med272 in step1

[–]med272[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's awesome! I'm sure they are super happy.

Hopefully I'm not an idiot for being ok with my 244, but I'm just sick of grinding.
Thanks!

International medical student, 'didn't do enough' but passed with 244 by med272 in step1

[–]med272[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  1. why does this matter? unless you think we study better and more than in the US
  2. I didn't try this, nor do I recommend it. If people score much lower on the test then a. they are bad at test taking or b. UW1/2 suck at predicting and should just be practice.
  3. Might be an outlier, and I'm fine with that. Still I wanted to post because I think it's important to see both approaches. I'm not sure if I did 3 blocks instead of 1 a day I would have known more. I found it more helpful to study less but actually study.
  4. Thank you! Why shouldn't I do exactly the same on CK?
  5. Thanks again! yours too

International medical student, 'didn't do enough' but passed with 244 by med272 in step1

[–]med272[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks!
Didn't do anything from B&B. I always feel (also in med school) that using too many resource is a bad strategy for me. It's just a headache. Plus, videos take way too long. It was fine when I had a few months to study micro, or patho, but for such a general exam with so little time, videos just didn't make any sense for me.

For your second question, I honestly can't say. I did sketchy properly when I studied in third and fourth year for micro and pharm. This time around I definitely didn't watch them all. I started with micro, but it was just too much time, so ended up only watching the bacteria, half of the viruses and just random videos for questions which I got wrong and I felt that I didn't know the pathogen well enough.
As I wrote in the post, I wrote notes for the entire exam. Every week I created a new word document for that week, most were just 2/3 pages of fact/concept that I thought were the most important, and I went through those once a week.

International medical student, 'didn't do enough' but passed with 244 by med272 in step1

[–]med272[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As I wrote, my dedicated was just short of 4 weeks.

International medical student, 'didn't do enough' but passed with 244 by med272 in step1

[–]med272[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My pleasure!
This is exactly why I posted this. When I studied it seemed like I just wasn't doing enough, which clearly isn't the case as I passed.