u/Fine_Environment9214

Took step today and the first thing I wanna say is NBME 32 and 33 were way harder in my opinion. I originally delayed my exam bc I let Reddit fear mongers get to me with them saying 32&33 were most representative of the real thing. I felt like it was more on free120 level of difficulty. If anything, the only thing I struggled with was some questions just didn’t have enough info for me to go off of to really help me pick between two close answer choices. Not even in a “we’re gonna be vague to purposely test ur strength“ way. But in a “hey, here‘s some info about the pt, the med student that interviewed them couldve asked them another question to be more specific/sure, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out uwu” kinda way lol. That and I feel like some of the questions that they chose I personally didn’t deem as “high yield” content from NBMEs. This isn’t to say NBME questions are unhelpful content wise, I’m sure i was able to get thru the majority of the exam bc of the NBMEs, im just saying that there were def a few questions i didnt think would be on there bc it just didn’t seem HY enough to me, so i didnt bother to learn it for the sake of the greater good. Other things i struggled with was timing. Some questions are just unnecessarily long and ur gonna have to sift thru a lot of the unnecessary bs.

Overall thoughts: It wasnt as bad as NBME 32&33 (I would rather take step again than NBME 32 if imma be real)

Its Uworld format, with Free120 difficulty/amount of given info, and NBME topics

Majority of questions are a lot more direct, and for the ones that aren’t it’s just that I feel they couldve thrown in at least another lil fun fact to help me differentiate between Choice A vs Choice B.

Every now and then ur gonna get a question that makes u think “bruh, out of all the other HY stuff u could’ve asked, u chose this?” And ur just gonna have to take the L and hope it’s experimental.

Obviously my experience isn’t gonna speak for everyone since we all have different tests/experiences. But when I was balls deep in step stress and wondering if I should just bite the bullet and take it, I wish someone would have told me step is a lil more direct and isnt as purposefully ambiguous like NBME 32. anyways, take what u will from this and best of luck to everyone. There‘s a light at the end of the tunnel that I honestly never thought I would see at times

Does anybody else feel like NBME 32 & 33 are very different stylistically compared to the previous NBME’s? I personally feel like the questions and answer choices are a bit more vague. Or that they have an alternative way of saying some answer choices compared their usual name/presentation. Before 32 &33, I was seeing consistent score increases and got a 68 on NBME 29, and 69 on NBME 31. I saw a drop in my scores for 32&33 and it’s making me nervous that real exam is going to have this more vague presentation. Does anyone have any advice on how to combat this? Even after I reviewed 32 and then took 33, I feel like I didn’t get that much better at combatting vague questions. Any advice would be greatly appreciated especially since I’m scheduled to take step next week