1/27/2024 0 Comments Prometric usmle practice testThis notebook became my equivalent of a flashcard deck or an Anki deck. I would complete about 200-250 questions in a 14-hour day, and then I would write down 1-3 sentences of notes for questions I got wrong in a giant notebook. At the end of April, I took one of the NBME practice tests and got 225, a good passing score, albeit several points below the US average of 244.Īfter my first practice test, I turned to UWorld in earnest. There are five main practice tests for the USMLE Step 2-three provided by the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) and two given by UWorld. I finished reading First Aid for Step 2 CK at the end of April, and I took my first practice test after that. With that, Step 2 studying began in earnest. In this way, I would be prepared to take any opportunity that Prometric gave me. If Prometric was giving out test dates on a week-by-week basis to those who were prepared, then I could study for Step 2 as if I had a test date in 6 or so weeks, and then in the fifth week I would look and see what test dates were available for the next week. The next Sunday, after watching a church service, my mother and I sat upstairs talking about Step 2, and the idea all of a sudden came alive. I carried that thought with me into the next week as I studied. He lamented that there was simply no way to be prepared to take a major exam such as Step 2 with only a week’s notice. He said that Prometric was opening up testing center spots week by week, so that people who were ready to take their standardized test within the next week could go in and take their test. In the midst of students throwing questions that the administration were all but powerless to answer, one student made a comment that lit up in my mind. Even though I was at home, I could feel the tension through my screen-it was absolutely awful. I remember attending a virtual town hall held by my school for our entire class. With no clinical rotations scheduled and no standardized tests to study for, many of my classmates became very stressed and almost hopeless. Students who had had their standardized test dates planned since last year all of a sudden had their appointments cancelled with seemingly no hope of rescheduling. In late April, Prometric, the company that runs most of the major standardized tests for graduate school (including the MCAT, USMLE, GMAT and LSAT), cancelled half of all their scheduled testing appointments through the summer without warning. So I started reading roughly 30 pages of First Aid a day and doing maybe 40-80 questions in UWorld, along with my virtual elective provided by my school (which had nothing to do with Step 2). I had been using UWorld throughout my third year of medical school but I hadn’t really retained too much information, and I figured that I should do UWorld again and do it well. In mid-April, about a week after I started reading First Aid, I decided to reset my UWorld question bank. At first, I didn’t read too many pages per day my Step 2 test, after all was scheduled for late July, and it was only the beginning of April. I stopped crying every day, and I was able to clear my head and start thinking straight.Īfter virtual surgery ended, with not much else to do, I took out my First Aid for Step 2 CK book and started reading it from front to back. I started really getting back into God about a month into quarantine, and immediately I noticed a difference. Crises have a way of turning people back to Him and that’s what happened to me. In retrospect, I had definitely become too busy for God. It wasn’t like I had run away from God during my third year, but my time was occupied with rotations, friends, and studying. What rescued me was getting back into my faith again. I spent the first month at home completing surgery virtually and honestly crying a lot because I didn’t know what to do and I felt like my world had crumbled. I only packed for two weeks because I thought I would come back for my surgery shelf. I worked on March 15, and as states put in stay at home orders, I caught an emergent flight home the next night. My USMLE Step 2 story basically began when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the US.
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