TL;DR
Pre-dedicated: Finish Uworld and Divine Intervention Shelf Videos on YouTube
Dedicated: Do Uworld incorrects, Finish Randy Neil, Uworld Biostats Review, and Complete CCSCases. Listen to a lot of Divine Step 2 CK Review
Pre-Dedicated
Salam, everyone! I hope you are doing well and in the best of health! It has been a loooong time since I posted here. 😭 I have been trying to survive intern year, and I am so grateful that, alhamdulillah, it is almost over.
Anyway, I wanted to talk about Step 3! As you all know, Step 1 was the bane of my existence. It held me back from progressing into my third year, and I was so close to not graduating on time because of it. From my experience of Step 1, I wanted to make sure that Step 2 and 3 were relatively painless.
I knew that based on my Step 1 and Step 2 experience, I had to start early for Step 3, like a year in advance. Because my specialty is internal medicine, some people decide to take Step 3 at the end of the second year. However, after talking with a mentor, she recommended that I take Step 3 at the end of the first year, as the second year of residency is challenging in its own way.
Registration for the exam is pretty challenging. It is on a different website called the FSMB, not the NBME. You have to be certified, and the total cost of the exam once you get accepted is around $1,000 😱.
I bought a year-long UWorld subscription in August and made a timeline to complete it before my dedicated period. In residency, you do not have a true dedicated period like in medical school; therefore, I wanted to take it at a time that I had at least two months of chiller rotations with weekends off. I had a three-month stretch of clinic, consults, and then clinic; therefore, I wanted to take my exam at the end of the last clinic block, which was the end of May.
I did about 10-20 questions a day. It was hard sometimes. Sometimes I would have to delay doing questions, and the number of questions I needed to do piled up. My brain would be mush after a challenging rotation, and then coming home to do questions would be the worst. But I knew it would be worth it.
For content review, I watched all the Divine Intervention shelf videos on YouTube. It was more than 10 hours (which I 2x sped of course), and it was worth it. I also watched Randy Neil’s Biostats video, which was helpful. I reviewed the Uworld Biostats questions as well, which I highly recommend doing.
Dedicated
Finally, Uworld was complete. That was honestly the hardest part of this whole process. A lot of people do not complete Uworld for Step 3, but I knew that I wanted to, so that when I did my incorrects, it would be a much smoother ordeal.
I also wanted to use dedicated to study the cccases. Y’all take your time and figure out how these cases work. Do not, and I repeat, do not do the Uworld cases. There is a website for the cases I recommend: https://ccscases.com/
Here’s a video that describes how to do it that is helpful:
Go to the 8-minute mark to see how he does the cases. It is super helpful.
I decided that I wanted to finish all of the cases. It was hard doing it with the UWorld questions. I would go to the library after my shifts and complete them all. As time progressed, they got easier.
I also made sure to live my life. Studying for step 3 is annoying and residency is hard so I really tried hard to see friends, eat good food, and enjoy the wins life had to offer.
For this exam, I wanted to make sure I did all of the practice exams. I did NBME 6 and 7, Uworld 1 and 2, and the free 120. Here are my scores below:
NBME 6: 351, which converts to a score of 205
NBME 7: 369, which converts to a score of 207
Uworld 1: 185
Uworld 2: 207
Free 120: 67%
I actually took the free 120 at the testing center a week before my exam. This really helped calm my nerves down before taking the exam in person. When I saw the 67% after taking it, I was kind of bummed because I thought getting above a 70% would be better. However, I knew I did everything I could to prepare for this exam and that I needed to get over it.
Exam Days
Some of y’all probably do not know this, but Step 3 is a two-day exam. The first day is 7 hours long with 6 blocks of 38-39 questions, and the second day is 9 hours long with 6 blocks of 30 questions and 13 Cases.
The first day is known to be harder than the second day. It has A LOT of Biostats and Ethics. There is also some Step One content in there. I spent the day prior preparing by doing Biostats review and listening to a lot of Divine Intervention.
On the first exam day, I made sure after every question block that I took a break. I felt that I had enough time to complete my blocks, so my break time would be extended. The first day, I was able to complete the exam 1-2 hours early.
I decided to take a day in between before my next exam date. I highly recommend this! Don’t try to take both together back to back, and don’t extend the dates in between. Anyways, I used the day in between to do as many cases as I could and listen to as much Divine Intervention as possible.
Highly recommend these episodes and the Quizlet is: https://quizlet.com/511924440/divine-intervention-episode-37-risk-factors-flash-cards/ and https://quizlet.com/988394185/divine-intervention-episode-97-most-important-flash-cards/
The second day was fine as well. The questions were more Step 2-related content. And because each question block was 30 questions, I felt that I had so much time to complete them. After each question block, I took a 5-minute break.
But yall the best part of the exam was the ccscases! 🙌🏾 For each case, I was given 10-20 minutes to complete it. Because I knew all of the cases from the back of my hand, I was able to complete the cases in about 1-5 minutes. Because of that, I finished my exam 2 hours early!
The waiting game
Waiting for my exam score was not as bad compared to Step 1 and 2. This was because I knew I passed. Taking Step 3 was not a stressful experience because I am already a doctor, and I am already in the program I wanted to be in. All I needed was a 200 to pass, and I did well on my practice exams. I felt this sense of calmness and peace, and I was not anxious. This doctor explains it pretty well:
I only had to wait 11 days to get my score back. I was rounding on patients in the ICU when I got the email: Your score report is available.
After rounds, I immediately left to go into a quiet room and signed into a computer to view my score. I was nervous, but I knew I passed. I just knew it. I waited for the score to load, and I screamed out in excitement:
Passs Score: 227!!!!
Alhamdudillah!!!!!!!!!
And that is it, everyone. I am officially done with the Steps, alhamdullah, and I can finally apply for my licenses. I am truly grateful to Allah swt for getting me through this experience and for allowing me to get to this point. For all you incoming interns, you got this, and you will be ok. Be on the lookout for a blog about how my intern year went. And please pray for our brothers and sisters suffering across the world in Palestine, Sudan, and Congo, and even here. May Allah swt grant justice to the oppressed.
Oumou Fofana
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