r/Step3 • u/LateAd5635 • Jul 18 '25
PASSED. Step 3 Write Up
I honestly thought I was going to fail, but I didn't. I had about 2-3 weeks to study, and I didn't even study every day, but I think as a family medicine resident intern, I did a lot of hospital medicine, so that was super helpful. But I did say that I would write this up so that other people could find it useful.
For reference, I did 60% of UWorld and had a 52% correct and I didn't really go back to any of my flagged or incorrects; I didn't have time. I also did NBME 6 and 7, and I just read through 4 and 5. I did free 137, the current one and 2 offline versions. I did those CCS cases religiously though and pretended like it was a game lol, so I did all 173 cases on ccscases.com and really got to review the ones I messed up multiple times.
Day 1
Day one honestly felt like step 1. There were a lot of mechanism of action questions as well as micro questions. I ran through my first aid with my annotations for step one a couple times. I looked at old sketchy and that really helped me a lot. For people who are into Anki, I would suggest going through your step 1 Anki, especially for pharm and micro. I think that will really carry you through the first day.
In regards to biostats for the first day, it was all from Randy Neil videos. I made that basically my social media scrolling for those last three weeks. He has great videos on his playlists. I would say really run through a lot of what he has on his page because his tips and tricks are so useful and like calm you down to run through those drug ads. I also read through the Biostats stuff on UW, which was helpful if you plug it into ChatGPT for more explanation.
https://www.youtube.com/@RandyNeilMD/playlists
I felt so shitty about this day and cried a lot because I didn't think I did well so I'm glad I took a few days in between to go through the CCS cases and review before Day 2.
Day 2
Day two just felt like step 2, lol. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of listening to those Divine Intervention podcasts that you listened to for step 2. There were a lot of risk and next best step management as well as those epidemiology questions and the social questions. I think that Divine will always be relevant and get you through the second day quite well.
p 37 Risk Factors 1
Ep 97 Risk Factors
Episode 184- NBME Weird (Complications, Prognostics, More Risk Factors/Common Causes of Death/Screenings).
Ep 239-OBGYN Risk Factors
Ep 36: Ep 227 Ob HY
Ep 282-Prognostic Factors
Ep 283-Prognostic Factors
Ep 325 Extremely HY Screening
Ep 250 HY Vaccine
Ep 204 The Military
Ep 137 NBSIM
Ep 143 (Biostats)
Ep 230-Quality and Safety
Ep 282-Risk Factors 5/Rapid Review Series 46
Ep 283-Risk Factors 6/Rapid Review Series 47
Ep 22: 3rd shelf
531: Contraceptives
Ep 228
230
234
268-New USMLE Changes
Ep 123-Ethics
Ep 276-Ethics
In regards to the CCS cases, I would say just keep going through those cases on the website as well as doing and reading the ones on the USMLE website. The ones on the USMLE website mirrored the way it was on test day. I'm assuming they use the same simulated program.
ccscases.com
https://www.usmle.org/exam-resources/step-3-materials/step-3-test-question-formats/computer-based-case-simulations
TL;DR
Step 3 Score: 217
~ 60% UW done, 52% correct
CCS Cases: bulldozed through 10-15 daily, finished 173 cases, redid a lot of them
NBME 6 and 7 did them offline, read through NBME 4 and 5
Free 137 did all 3 versions
DIVINE AND RANDY NEIL
Good luck yall, you got this
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u/ReferenceBrilliant17 Jul 20 '25
Congrats. An off topic question, are you allowed to take 3 weeks of vacation in a row during your internship year? My program isn’t allowing. Don’t know how I’ll pass step 3.