My USMLE Step 3 Experience: First off, thanks to everyone on this page for the support and advise. Hopefully this can be useful to folks. Goal was to pass and was happy about it!
Time prep: ~1.5 months during outpatient blocks which has been really light due to COVID. Didn’t study during inpatient.
Resources Used : uworld including biostats (percentile was around 70ish?), Master the boards, First aid usmle step 1 (pharmacology and clinical biochemistry section), CCS cases/ Crush CCS cases. Online quick reference resources (when I don’t wan to flip through a book): medbullets, AAFP clinical practice guidelines and uptodate
NBME 5: 680 (2 weeks out)
FRED: 82% (3 days out)
Thoughts: Uworld is your best resource by far. I completed it and redid my incorrects. MTB is great refresher, but not a good resource if your background is poor. I really liked medbullets because it was easily searchable and succinct. Used First aid step 1 for the pharmacology stuff that everyone was warning about.
For the CCS cases, I primarily used UWorld and Crush CCS cases which I felt were sufficient. CCScases.com was not helpful and I felt like it made order unnecessary tests, though the program was more realistic than uworld. I used AAFP guidelines and uptodate primarily for algorithimic approach to outpatient things like lung nodules and masses and general complaints. It was also helpful for outpatient learning as well! My weak spots are surgery, OBGYN, peds so I spent more time reviewing those items. (watched a few OME videos for a refresher as well)
Day 1: Decent amount of biostats (at least 1 abstract or drug diagram per section). LOTS of tough pediatrics questions and genetics questions that I had no clue (honestly its probably because I am bad at peds that I felt there were so many peds Q’s). Don’t forget the step 1 pharmacology stuff (ie treatment for case is a medication that acts on X receptor)
Day 2/CCS cases: Fair amount of out of the blue prognosis questions that suck up your time debating about and which you honestly should just guess at. Lot’s of tricky questions where two answers could be correct and easily debatable in the clinical world. This section was most similar to uworld. No biostats. Vast majority of questions are of the diagnosis/management/treatment type questions so it’s not only prognosis questions. Also don’t forget to quickly review USPSTF guidelines since you will inevitably get a few Q’s about what what would you recommend for this patient given this age and comorbidity
CCS cases were a rush. the 20 minute ones were plenty of time but the 10 minute ones were tough/run out of time. I was very worried because I read online that it’s an automatic fail if you intubuate a patient since they don’t test you for ICU level care, but I ended up intubating in 2 cases because my patients kept declining. Not sure if this was the right choice, but they got better so who knows??. The delay for ordering tests wasn’t that bad maybe only 1 second delay. Most of case are similar to UW/CCS cases, just a few were odd.
Post Exam: I easily counted up to 30 dumb mistakes and probably guessed on 1/6 of all the questions (educated guess). Was worried I was the 3% who failed and started reading on reddit experiences of people who failed (anxiety much haha!). Don’t be like me and just netflix and chill.
USMLE Step 3 Score: 250.
Happy I passed. Wasn’t expecting a high score since my goal was to just get this over with and not fail, but pleased it worked out! I think i went a bit heavy on my resources and should’ve concentrated more time on a select few resources but oh well.
Also specialty is IM.