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Here's my USMLE experience and how I studied for it.
I took the test on april 16th and just got my scores back today may 7th.. I did well got a nice solid score of 227/95. In the morning of my exam I ate some oatmeal for breakfast got the center 5min early. at the center they took my picture, checked my id and took my test ticket. I was provided both foam ear plugs and those orange construction noise reducing ear muffs. My exam was exactly like an easier version of a USMLE world 50 question test. The format of the exam looked exactly like it. I only ran out of time for one section and had to rush through 2 questions in the end, every other section i would finish with about 1min left on the clock. I didn't eat much through out the test, but drank two redbulls and one double shot espresso from starbucks. I ate half a sandwich, two bananas and an apple. I did the first two sections with out any breaks, and then took 5 to 10min breaks between the other sections. Everything went smoothly it was easy to log in and out of the computer and since i did usmle world I felt like i was taking another 50question block it was that similar.
Here's how I studied. I just want to first say that I was a very bad student during basic sciences my gpa was way below 3.0. and I knew I had a lot of studying to do. I studied for almost 4 months for at least 12 hours a day..I only took new years off. I would wake up at 6am and go to bed at 10pm. I would only take breaks to eat and walked outside for 30min at like 4pm to clear my head. I am a slow reader and in that 4months I only read the kaplan notes 2 times, and watched the kaplan dvds once. I also listened to Goljan audio once and towards the end I read First Aid once. For questions through out my studying once I finished a subject I would do the two subject tests in the kaplan qbook and averaged about 75% in them. At the end I did USMLE World and I only got through 86% of the questions. I did them timed all subjects unused and had a cumulative average of 62% my last 4 or 5 tests I got 66 or 68%. about 2 weeks before my test date i took two nbme's on nbme 5 i got 245 and on nbme 3 i got 230. about a week before my test date i took the free 150 q's and got 86% correct. I felt that my test wasn't too hard. I was very lucky and I got mostly path questions fallowed by physio and pathophys quesitons. not too many obscure questions.
so this is my story, I truly feel that if I can do it you can do it too.
good luck everyone and thank you for your help and support.
RJ
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