bye bye bye USMLE!!!
Some of my experience as best as I can condense it :
Previous Exams: scores all in the 220 range, nothing amazing.
Step 3: final score 221 (exam date at the beginning of August, day 2 was exactly one week after day 1)
I got the results the second Wednesday after my Day 2.
UWSA 1 (1 month Prior) : 186
UWSA 2 (1 week Prior) : 213
Study Time: approx 2.5 months (last two weeks of May until the first week of August)
Study Resources: Mainly Uworld for step 3 (including biostats review) and some of First Aid. CCS - All Uworld CCS cases, both the interactive and the other ones (total 90 something I think) plus skimmed over crush CCS step 3 in-between day 1 and 2 (the book is in the links section of this group)
Day 1: I made sure to read First Aid step 1 like everyone recommended, and this definitely helped a lot. The pharmacology questions were pretty basic, I would say skim over the pharm pages at the end of each chapter in first aid. I also breezed over the Micro chapter and some of Immunology both from first aid. I went over Uworld around twice, the second time mainly focused on my incorrects and reviewed the charts. Took UWSA 1 after reviewing uworld the first time, and UWSA 2 after redoing my incorrects. I did a bit of Biostats daily to gain confidence and just kept doing them day after day. I didn’t get much time to do my drug ad questions at the end of each block on the actual exam, but the biostats that I could attempt seemed very easy, basic, and doable. Overall Day 1 was ok for me. I wouldn’t call it easy, but it was personally better than day 2, and I found similar questions to UWORLD.
Day 2 (one week after Day 1): Was a killer!!! All of the questions seemed very vague, didn’t find anything too similar to UWORLD. The multiple-choice questions on day 2 were my hardest part of the whole two-day exam, but because I passed, I guess they are doable. CCS cases all ended early for me, two patients started to feel worse, but I changed course in treatment and they got better and the case still ended early. For the 10 min cases just be super focused about your management, time will run out fast, so make sure the most important things pertaining to that case are taken care of at least. For all the cases keep in mind the main complaint the patient came in with!!! and make sure to address that. If its pain, fever, urinary incontinence, SOB etc, make sure you treat that effectively and in a timely manner. The software was not too slow, and I didn’t find it as a hindrance.
Final Thoughts:
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Make sure to look over Pharm, Micro, and Immuno from First Aid for Step 1.
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Practice, practice, practice Biostats regularly, and relentlessly.
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CCS cases from UWORLD alone were enough for me personally.
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This is all my personal experience, please take everything mentioned above with a grain of salt, everyone will have varying opinions.
Special Thanks to Dina Abdelrahman who helped calm my nerves and was ever supportive. Also, Inka Sanner who answers so many questions on this forum with such detail it makes me happy cry! You two are absolute gems. This entire step 3 group was very helpful and I hope I was able to repay a small portion of that debt with this write-up.
Please feel free to ask any questions below and I will try my best to answer, my only request is to ask all the questions in the comments so that everyone may benefit 