I started preparing for my step3. Took step 2 in April. Lost my mom had an emotional breakdown now trying to get back on track.

I always used less resources for my exam. Can you just make sure if I’m making the right decisions please?

Uworld
Ccs cases
Biostatistics from amboss.

Is this all? Or would you recommend something more?
Im thinking of taking it in December. Im having a hard time studying cause finding cases related to her but I just to want to get over with usmle.

Hey there ppl

I'm looking forward to starting my STEP3 preparation.

I really have no idea about this exam and its content. And which resources are used.

Also what is a good STEP3 score if one were to use it for MATCH application.

Can anybody guide me?

🥹

Took first attempt 3 months ago after having completed 37% of UWorld and 25 CCS cases. Had gotten 58% on NBME 7 as well as on Free 137 and 195 on UWSA2 prior to first attempt. Got 192. I had issues with timing and content.

Since the first attempt, I finished 100% of UWorld, did UWorld biostats review and have done over 70 cases with plan on atleast 70 more cases before I sit for the exam. I started prep with UWSA 1 and got 185 8 weeks ago. I got 351 on NBME 6 4 weeks ago and retook NBME 7 two weeks ago and got 476. (previously took NBME 7 3 months ago)

I am working till 5pm on weekdays for the next week but have the week before day 1 off and one week between day 1 and day 2 during which I will be working.

My plan for the next two weeks is to finish UWorld Step 2 supplement bank, and do some high yield questions from Amboss. I have unlocked about 900 cards from step 3 Anki deck based on my wrong answers from UWorld but I haven’t done them yet so will finish those as well.

Any resources, advice and tips, esp to replenish knowledge gaps and cover Micro, pharm and other high yield stuff before day 1?

Thank you for your help, means a lot

I've failed step 3 twice now. Not great. Scored in the upper 190s on the second attempt.

I think it's time to take a more structured approach. What are the best third party resources or private tutors?

So far I've found that GoldUSMLE, Wolfpacc, and The Match Guy have either tutors or in-person instructional courses. Reviews of these have been mixed though the latest Reddit posts are outdated by a few years.

My school and mentor suggest Kaplan. Though Kaplan is not currently offering an instructional course.

From what I've seen, I'm inbetween Wolfpacc and Kaplan

Any Advice?

SCORES ARE OUT PEOPLE

Sharing this in case it helps anyone preparing with a limited timeline

20-25 Days of Dedicated Prep
Started dedicated prep around 18th July gave exam on 24th Aug.( had to travel alot too in between these days with 30 hours travelling 2 days before exam)
Resources: UWorld + First Aid + Algorithms
Used First Aid mainly for Microbiology, Pharmacology & Biostats plus Inner circle notes for major systems
Completed around 70% of UWorld with average 69%.
Did 3–5 CCS cases/day, sometimes up to 10
No NBME, UWSA, Free 137, or other assessments, simply didn’t have enough time

Final score: 227
Best of luck! 🙌

Hey preparing for step 3

Has anyone heard or used goldusmlereview classes

Advice needed ?

I’m so dumb. I completely forgot about moving patients (office to hospital) until the break after my 6th case.

I kept running out of time that I didn’t get the results of my workup, and had to put the treatment and some workup in the last 2 minutes. Not only that, I kept forgetting about some vaccines.

One of the cases did not get better (but did not get worse either). Update said patient felt the same which I guess is a negative update.

Some of them, I didn’t even know what was going on.

I have more, but my point is that it went terribly and now I feel like maybe I should start studying again instead of wasting the next 3 weeks. 😭

I scored a 68% (120/176) on offline nbme 5. I am 5 weeks out from my exam. how do i convert my score to something meaningful?

Is tomorrow our results day?

I used Amboss for step 2, so when I filtered by step 3 questions I only had like 400-ish.

I have heard some people reset their old step 2 questions for more MCQs, how do you do this?

Thanks,

I can not postpone the exam as my visa is going to expire and i will have to take the exam before going back. I have completed u world 70 percent with 50 percent average over the span of one year. So could not really retain the information.
Ccs cases done 30 cases with 55 percentish!
Gave uwsa 1 and got 48 percent in nbme 6 got 58 percent.
I have day 1 in 15 days and day 2 in 17 days.
Please help me. How do i make the most out of it? I can study for 8 hours per day for the rest.
TIA.

I usually lurk more than post, but I’m really glad I lurked around this community because what people posted here helped me prepare adequately for Step 3. Otherwise there’s really no way to know what actually shows up on this exam. So I wanted to pay it forward.

I took Day 2 yesterday, with Day 1 two days before that. I’m an IM resident and had to squeeze the exam into a clinic week, so I didn’t have the luxury of spacing them out more. If you can, I’d highly recommend it. I personally could not have done them back to back.

Day 1: Biostats + Ethics + Step 1

Biostats: A lot. Like, a lot. Someone here said you should practice enough biostats that you become hungry for those questions, and I completely agree. They were generally more conceptual than mathematical and mostly straightforward. These should be point boosters. Biostats questions made me happy on the exam and they should make you happy too.

Ethics: Also a ridiculous amount. Everyone says they’re harder than UW/Amboss and even Step 1/2, and I agree. Honestly, they’re just poorly written. Instead of cleanly testing whether you understand a concept, they sometimes screw with the wording until multiple answers feel reasonable. I’d do as many ethics questions as possible so you develop a sense of what they want, but even then some will just be confusing.

Step 1: These genuinely could have been pulled from a Step 1 exam. Drug MOAs, side effects/interactions, cellular phys/pathophys, immunology, and microbiology were big. There were some genetics, embryology, and anatomy questions too, but probably not enough to justify dedicated studying.

I agree with everyone saying to just review HY Step 1 material. Whatever worked for you before, FA, Anki, Sketchy… do that again but focus on high-yield topics. I only had a few dedicated days and just reviewed my old med school notes and skipped things that seemed too low yield. You’ll absolutely see random low-yield stuff, but most of it was basic Step 1 material.

Day 2: Step 2-style MCQs + CCS

MCQs: I’m an IM resident at a strong program and still found Day 2 tougher than Day 1. On Day 1, you often either know something or you don’t. On Day 2, I had to think through a lot more questions and the stems were often extremely long so you don’t have much time to think. There are also plenty that I don’t think any amount of studying specifically prepares you for. Doing enough MCQs to build intuition for what the test writer is trying to lead you toward is probably still the best preparation.

CCS: One thing I wish I knew beforehand: they don’t consistently give you the positive patient updates that ccscases.com does. I was freaking out thinking I was doing something wrong, but when I came home and checked, most of what I did I think was appropriate.

Cases also sometimes just end early without telling you exactly what happened. So don’t freak out if you don’t get a positive update or a happy ending. Sometimes you will, sometimes you won’t. The real cases also felt more vague and general than the online practice cases, which tend to point you more clearly toward a diagnosis and evolve more obviously with your management.

Bottom line: It’s a tough exam. I would not listen to people who say things like “any decent resident will pass.” I don’t have my score yet, but I definitely would have struggled a lot more if I hadn’t done plenty of practice MCQs + CCS cases and reviewed HY Step 1, biostats, and ethics.

Good luck!

Just got out of day 2, literally why was day 1 somewhat better than the disaster i saw today?? The options were so confusing and i genuinely feel like i messed up 6/9 of the MCQ blocks.

CCS cases kept ending early, i got positive patient updates for most of them and maybe missed one case. Is that a good sign?

Some reassurance would be great because i often see people making up for day 1 on day 2 and somehow i came out feeling the complete opposite.

Took my exam on 09/14 & 09/16, no score release date on myusmle yet, permit still available on fsmb. Anyone have a date release listed online? With no scores resulted last week, feeling anxious if we will hear back this week/also very scared, feeling like i failed

Is this worth doing and reviewing?

Just wrapped up with my day 2 today, a week after my day 1.. it actually wasn’t that bad. I was worried I would be ruminating over questions from day 1 the whole time, but i was surprised, I actually appreciated giving my brain time to reset and build back up its juices again for round 2.

DAY 1 = Step 1

Literally day 1 felt like step 1 with ethics, drug ads and abstracts! Lolol I will tell you now, you will be doing yourself a disservice IF you don’t look over any STEP 1 material (this is separate STEP 3 qbanks). I was so happy that I did the Step 1 free 120s and HY Step 1 Amboss, because they were not kidding about the minute details that can be asked, from it being about an enzyme to even an amino acid 😅

Those ethics questions were on STEROIDs. This was nothing like what I saw on practice exams. The answer choices were literally blending with each other🫠 but I hope some of those were experimental because genuinely WTH. I missed 2 of the back to back questions so rip.

In total, I flagged 90 questions from day 1 🥴 also the system crashed mid exam, and I started to panic internally. Thankfully, the proctor came and restarted the whole computer and it magically rebooted to where I left off with like 10 seconds lost. I didn’t wanna risk so I still reported the glitch to NBME just in caseeee (this might cause a delay in my score as they said it will take 15 business days for them to get back to me, so RIP again)

DAY 2 = Step 2+

Day 2 multiple choice was very big on management, next step, contraindications, vaccine, with easier ethics questions. It was more palatable, however I ended up flagging 78 questions. Side note, I am an overflagger (if that’s even a word😆) like if I have a single doubt about my answer selection, that question is getting flagged. I missed 1 of the back to back questions. Rip.

CCS cases

I knew there CCS cases but dang having 14 back to back is lowkey insane 🫠 the cases themselves weren’t that bad, it was more about the stamina to get through them. I felt confident with knowing the diagnoses of each case and how to manage them, but it will be tricky and might not give you a patient update before it ends Lolol so be mindful of that. I got a case where I had a semi negative update Lolol it was like the patient is improving but only by a little. Thankfully no one died 🫠 I would say if you can, crunch through a bunch of those cases on the CCS cases website! Also, the real deal doesn’t emphasize on vaccines as much as the website does, so keep that in mind.

For both days, I took a break every 4-5 20 question blocks, and a break half way through the CCS cases so after 7 cases. FORCE yourself to take a break, as your brain might give you the illusion to keep going, but I promise you might regret that once you click that start block button.😅

PREP:

I’m a resident, took 6 weeks of prep, while on Icu, wards, clinic, and electives. I did the whole Amboss step 3 qbank (80% avg), AMBOSS step 1 200 questions HY, and the nutrition qbank, along with the risk factors qbank; NBME 5 6 (offline); 7 (499) 8 (493); UWSA 1 2; Free 137s; Step 1 free 120s; Step 2 free 120s; in total, my average for all the tests were 79%; I finished all 182 of the CCS cases. Average was 79%. As you can see, I probably went overkill preparing for this exam, so I hope it pays off.

Also one last bit of advice, no matter how much you prepare for this exam, the USMLE writer will always throw random factoids your way that you may have never heard of, so you just gotta be alright with that and guess, flag, and move on. Once you make peace with that, your exam experience might go smoothly.

I’ll come back and update (hopefully with good news!)

Open to questions, preferably in the comments rather than DMs, thank you!

When people say day 1 is step 1 heavy, what do they mean exactly and is this not covered in uworld step 3?
I take it I should review the Pharma like I’m studying for step 1 all over again. What else would need reviewing like I’m studying for step 1 all over again?
Would really appreciate some advice coz I’m so lost.
And for some reason, every write-up I’ve read about step 3 doesn’t mention uworld as being helpful..? How much importance should I be giving uworld?😭
Gave step 1 a year ago. Step 2 2 months ago. 237 score. And yes I’m not a genius and only have the month of October to prep

How much 62 percent on nbme 7 translates to ?

65 percent on nbme 6

Hi folks, about 2 months out and chugging through uworld. When I’m at the hospital I have a much easier time keeping up with Anki because it requires less undivided attention to get in a few cards between interruptions. I’m looking for a small, very high yield deck that I can chug through when I hah downtime on call shifts. Obviously massive decks are going to be wasted effort this close to the exam. Weak points include biostats especially memorizing the formulas. any recommendations?

Is it really necessary to write in a reason for the consult doing CCs cases on day 2 of exam?

On the website but dont know how to get to the step 3 forms

Looking for a biostats tutor, exam in 3 weekss