USMLE Official 2021 Step 2 CK Experiences With Scores Thread

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All right y'all, let's get this party started. Here's to a smooth sailing third year, no Prometric drama with Step 2, in-person aways and interviews, and no CS/hopefully PE.

School: bone wizard

Step 1: mid 230s
Level 1: mid 570s

Step 2 goal: 250+
Level 2 goal: 600+

Interests: EM, OB/GYN (distant second)

Rotations (in order): Peds, IM, FM, Psych, Neuro, Surgery, EM, OB/GYN and then several electives mixed in

Resources: UWorld, Online MedEd, Tzanki deck since it's shorter and the Step 1 decks burned me out, might check out B&B for Step 2 when it comes out since Dr. Ryan saved my butt on Step 1

My rotations go until the end of June and unfortunately my schedule is pretty backloaded with my final 3 rotations being EM, OB and ICU so I guess that means I'll be taking Step 2 in early July. Obviously I'm not sure how auditions/aways will be playing out next summer and if PE will be a thing so a lot up in the air right now in terms of scheduling. My school does COMATs for our shelf exams but I don't plan on using any DO-specific resources for COMATs or Level 2 as I've heard UWorld is all you need.
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Deecee2DO said:
MD or DO? reason im asking is if you are DO and take COMATs do comquest plus UWorld. If you take NBME shelves do amboss plus uworld. I did 2 banks (comquest and uworld) and honored every shelf/comat. I did like 25-30 questions per day starting day 1 of every rotation and then the last week did 50 comquest per day timed to prep for the test. Anki also works extremely well-used it for peds plus the two banks (thought was overkill but ended up getting 100th percentile on that one). A lot of people use cheesy dorian which I found very very helpful for peds when I did it so I can see how it could work well for those who love anki. Ive always been an advocate of just doing a ridiculous number of questions which worked well for me but I do see the benefit of anki if thats how you learn. However, OBGYN is a different beast (very algorithmic) and is really not medicine heavy at all so I do strongly recommend anki (like even if you dont decide to use anki all year at least do it for OB). APGO uWISE questions for OB is also the one other bank you should use during OB
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how do you go about reviewing your questions? For step, I used to make anki cards, but towards the end it got overwhelming...

And we take NBME shelves
 
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cptsam said:
how do you go about reviewing your questions? For step, I used to make anki cards, but towards the end it got overwhelming...

And we take NBME shelves
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I didnt. If you do 2 banks youll see the same important crap over and over and youll learn it just through sheer numbers. Its a finite amount of info since its not Step 1 or 2 its specialty specific information
 
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Deecee2DO said:
I didnt. If you do 2 banks youll see the same important crap over and over and youll learn it just through sheer numbers. Its a finite amount of info since its not Step 1 or 2 its specialty specific information
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Okay I see. Might make Anki for my incorrects then and try to keep up with it for the entire year so I can hit step 2 out of the park
 
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cptsam said:
so as a newly minted M3, is anki plus qbanks the formula for success? I did it for step 1 and didn't do as well as I would have liked (still got a solid score for IM), and so I'm wondering if I should change things up?
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Worked for me!

I wasn’t much for the premade decks except for one on law/ethics; I just made my own cards otherwise from whatever qbank I was using at the time. I really wish I’d started earlier because I goofed off most of the first half of the year… but I feel like I definitely knew the cards I’d made myself (and the concepts behind them) far better than I knew other topics.

I had a respectable showing for step 2 at 256 using this method.
 
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calivianya said:
Worked for me!

I wasn’t much for the premade decks except for one on law/ethics; I just made my own cards otherwise from whatever qbank I was using at the time. I really wish I’d started earlier because I goofed off most of the first half of the year… but I feel like I definitely knew the cards I’d made myself (and the concepts behind them) far better than I knew other topics.

I had a respectable showing for step 2 at 256 using this method.
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You said TurnUpToEthics wasn't sufficient enough for the exam though right? And how helpful was Amboss? My exam's in 5 days and I was going to make a new profile and do the 5-day free trial and just cram all their ethics questions.
 
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cptsam said:
so as a newly minted M3, is anki plus qbanks the formula for success? I did it for step 1 and didn't do as well as I would have liked (still got a solid score for IM), and so I'm wondering if I should change things up?
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To offer a counter, all I did was cheesy Dorian + UWorld and honored all but my very first shelf (which I didn't do UWorld for because my school hadn't decided whether they were going to buy it for us or not yet so I held off; still came within 1 point of honors). I didn't find multiple q-banks necessary, but I guess if you don't do anki it can be helpful. I have never made my own cards for anything.
 
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iforget2 said:
You said TurnUpToEthics wasn't sufficient enough for the exam though right? And how helpful was Amboss? My exam's in 5 days and I was going to make a new profile and do the 5-day free trial and just cram all their ethics questions.
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Not even close to sufficient. It’s a good start, so I would know everything in there, though. I thought Amboss was incredibly, incredibly helpful. I probably got more questions right from going through Amboss’s ethics (and quality and safety) questions than from TurnUpToEthics.

Your Amboss plan is solid!
 
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Anyone else taking their exam tomorrow and feeling like a nervous reck? I'm praying it's similar to free 120.

Also my step 1 was majority OBGYN (like 70%) and I'm hoping tomorrow's content is at least somewhat evenly spread out
 
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oh4sure said:
Anyone else taking their exam tomorrow and feeling like a nervous reck? I'm praying it's similar to free 120.

Also my step 1 was majority OBGYN (like 70%) and I'm hoping tomorrow's content is at least somewhat evenly spread out
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lol what....step 1 was obgyn?? how is that even possible....
 
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oh4sure said:
Anyone else taking their exam tomorrow and feeling like a nervous reck? I'm praying it's similar to free 120.

Also my step 1 was majority OBGYN (like 70%) and I'm hoping tomorrow's content is at least somewhat evenly spread out
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Same also taking it tomorrow. I thought I'd relax today but can't help but continue studying since there's just so much to know and there's always something new I can pick up. Definitely nervous, but nowhere near the anxiety levels of the day before Step 1.
 
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iforget2 said:
Same also taking it tomorrow. I thought I'd relax today but can't help but continue studying since there's just so much to know and there's always something new I can pick up. Definitely nervous, but nowhere near the anxiety levels of the day before Step 1.
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I hope you will get at least 10 hrs of sleep.
 
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iforget2 said:
Same also taking it tomorrow. I thought I'd relax today but can't help but continue studying since there's just so much to know and there's always something new I can pick up. Definitely nervous, but nowhere near the anxiety levels of the day before Step 1.
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Good luck!! Kill the beast.
 
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Yikes that was rough :/ Flagged around 9 per block but probably could have flagged a lot more. Anyone else feel like crap afterwards but score decently?
 
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iforget2 said:
Yea! And a lot of "what's the next best step right now? A) Reassurance B) Follow-up in 6 months" And I'm like uhh can't both be true?
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In theory, they can… but I interpreted the reassurance option as completely normal/not a thing, needs no follow up at all (I get a little short of breath after I run six miles, my two month old isn’t sleeping through the night, my kid is 13 and hasn’t started her period yet and I (mom) started mine at 15, etc), so follow up in six months must mean it’s something that’s not particularly life-threatening but is an actual medical condition that needs follow up. Idk if that helps.

I also thought all of the questions were super vague and 50/50ed a ton of them, and I still hit my goal score. Trust your practice tests!
 
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iforget2 said:
No that totally makes sense, but I guess what I meant was more along the lines of like a benign breast mass in a 60 year old woman and the answer choices were either reassurance or mammogram in 2 years (not the actual question), so it was confusing because I'd reassure her that it's nothing and benign but she's also supposed to have a mammogram in 2 years anyways.
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Oh god. Lol. Yeah, easily could have been either. I’ve definitely had questions that one was definitely the right answer over the other… but one like that is really ambiguous.

At least it’s over!
 
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iforget2 said:
Yikes that was rough :/ Flagged around 9 per block but probably could have flagged a lot more. Anyone else feel like crap afterwards but score decently?
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Yes. I flagged nearly 1/2 of every single block. Scored 1 point above predicted.
 
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Anyone take it yesterday (July 24th)? I thought it was pretty tough and exceedingly vague. I was scoring well on practice tests but I am not confident in that exam. I made so many dumb mistakes
 
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Osmosis_JonesDO said:
Anyone take it yesterday (July 24th)? I thought it was pretty tough and exceedingly vague. I was scoring well on practice tests but I am not confident in that exam. I made so many dumb mistakes
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Welcome to the club. Seems to be a pretty common theme on here and Reddit so you're definitely not alone. I know I missed questions on the exam that I would never miss on any other day and it's super frustrating.
 
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GoCards05 said:
Welcome to the club. Seems to be a pretty common theme on here and Reddit so you're definitely not alone. I know I missed questions on the exam that I would never miss on any other day and it's super frustrating.
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Yea I know I missed one bc it was one of those you had to answer first before moving to the 2nd question :(
 
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iforget2 said:
Yea I know I missed one bc it was one of those you had to answer first before moving to the 2nd question :(
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I had two two-parters and missed the first on one of them. That’s one of at least 20 I can remember that I got wrong 🙃
 
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Reason why I will sleep the day before the exam. My goal is to hammer easy and medium questions; I could care less about the hard ones !. 3 more days left!
 
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oh4sure said:
Heard some people who tested 7/14 got their scores back today -- hope everyone scored well!!
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I tested 7/12 so today would've been the 2 week mark for me and I got nothing so I'm not expecting my score until August 25th. Guess I wasn't one of the lucky few who got an old form.
 
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Osmosis_JonesDO said:
Anyone take it yesterday (July 24th)? I thought it was pretty tough and exceedingly vague. I was scoring well on practice tests but I am not confident in that exam. I made so many dumb mistakes
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Took it on the 24th. I made SO SO many dumb mistakes looking back. I feel like there were a lot of weird questions about patients with a ton of comorbidities like cirrhosis, esrd, AND CHF. Also.... mine had a lot of very graphic pictures lol
 
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Took COMLEX Thursday, felt way less secure about it than I was expecting too. Was prepared to feel totally hosed on Step today but it seemed so much more straightforward and less stressful. Maybe I was too tired to notice 🤷‍♀️
 
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Would anyone who did the amboss qbank mind sharing how their percent correct correlated with their final score? I've been using mostly amboss during dedicated since I did like 1.5 passes of uworld during M3 but can't find much out there on correlation data. Thanks!
 
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mm5869 said:
permit just disappeared today. we have same testing dates i think. yikes
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Did your eligibility period expire yesterday? A lot of people are having permits disappear because of that. Mine goes through August 31 and my permit is still there as of today.
 
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So my dedicated for CK is about 5-6 weeks. I was planning on saving 80 new UW questions per day for the last 2 weeks to get myself in testing mode which is what I did for Step 1 (scored mid 250s) but for way longer obvi. I plan on doing UWorld 1x plus incorrects. Honored 6/7 core clerkships and shelves. @MedSchoolTutors @FindersFee5
@Dr. USMLE what are your thoughts on this plan?
 
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Deecee2DO said:
So my dedicated for CK is about 5-6 weeks. I was planning on saving 80 new UW questions per day for the last 2 weeks to get myself in testing mode which is what I did for Step 1 (scored mid 250s) but for way longer obvi. I plan on doing UWorld 1x plus incorrects. Honored 6/7 core clerkships and shelves. @MedSchoolTutors @FindersFee5
@Dr. USMLE what are your thoughts on this plan?
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Sounds like you're on track for 260+. Make sure to do both UWSAs as well. I personally didn't do any NBMEs, so +/- on those. Only thing I'd add is to do the Divine Intervention risk factors podcasts (37, 97, 184, 239) and immunodeficiencies podcasts (173). I think I also looked at either an ethics podcast or anki deck that was helpful as well, but I can't remember what that was.
 
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FindersFee5 said:
Sounds like you're on track for 260+. Make sure to do both UWSAs as well. I personally didn't do any NBMEs, so +/- on those. Only thing I'd add is to do the Divine Intervention risk factors podcasts (37, 97, 184, 239) and immunodeficiencies podcasts (173). I think I also looked at either an ethics podcast or anki deck that was helpful as well, but I can't remember what that was.
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Thank you FindersFee!
 
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Deecee2DO said:
So my dedicated for CK is about 5-6 weeks. I was planning on saving 80 new UW questions per day for the last 2 weeks to get myself in testing mode which is what I did for Step 1 (scored mid 250s) but for way longer obvi. I plan on doing UWorld 1x plus incorrects. Honored 6/7 core clerkships and shelves. @MedSchoolTutors @FindersFee5
@Dr. USMLE what are your thoughts on this plan?
Click to expand...

Sounds fine.

Do all of the NBMEs, too.
 
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