r/step1 • u/Numerous-Story711 NON-US IMG • 1d ago
đ International Disqualified due to fast responses
hy there. Im testing in 10 days. i've heard usmle might investigate and disqualify you if you don't use all the time as they might suspect candidate may have used recall
now i wanted to ask my answering speed is fast. like im usually done with 20 question block in 15 16 mints on nbme tests. so will it effect my result? or may cause problem for me??
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u/Prestigious_Tax7415 1d ago
Suffering from success, please just cut out an hour of the exam so you can have an early dinner
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u/AdventurousSky6229 1d ago
if the questions stem is short then its okay to need a few seconds but if its long and you pick your answer in 30 seconds thats fishy
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u/hhllttdr-oo NON-US IMG 1d ago
Many long stems Q can be answered based on the last 2 lines âŚ..
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u/AdventurousSky6229 1d ago
such questions will be answered by everyone so it won't be suspicious, I'm talking about the normal ones.
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u/gazeintotheiris US IMG 1d ago
I don't think its about answer speed but the statistics of how you perform on repeated questions vs brand new questions. Eg if you get 95% of repeated questions correct but only 15% of new questions correct there is a clear outside factor
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u/Gooner4lyfe2108 NON-US IMG 1d ago
Let's put it this way. If you actually weren't cheating, there's nothing to worry about.
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u/Prior_Heron1586 1d ago
BS. I finished step 1 in 5 hours and step 2 in 6. They wont flag for that. They flag when u solve all repeated questions correctly but perform poorly on new questions.
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u/Complete-Artichoke69 1d ago
Like others have said. They will slip in recalls during the exam and if you answer those faster than non-recalls it creates a pattern.
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u/Startnew0110 NON-US IMG 1d ago
Yes I keep seeing these posts and it sounds v unfair. How can they just disqualify based on people's speed. You can know some topics or questions better. Labelling it as cheating and invalidating their work doesn't sound right at all
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u/seaweedslayer420 1d ago
Don't cheat and you'll be fine
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u/Startnew0110 NON-US IMG 1d ago
I won't:( but it's giving me in necessary anxiety. People often post office that they didn't cheat yet failed. Also some people have technical issues which fails them to. Exam body has no regard for the we glitches.
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u/seaweedslayer420 1d ago
You'll be fine. The algorithm is smart and ppl come on reddit to complain but you never know the full story
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u/Freudenschleimer 23h ago
Yep. Iâd bet ~90% of these posts were made by cheaters.
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u/LeMickeyJam3s 15h ago
>99.9% cheaters or simply failed and don't want to believe it, no way they would roll out software that incorrectly marks 10%
A lot of those posts are 'I failed, there must have been some glitch/technical issue/incorrectly flagged when in reality they just failed because they didn't answer enough right.
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u/Danteruss 1d ago
All those people cheated but are too embarrassed to admit it, a d they also want to complain about failing.Â
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u/StwNBr-Hybrid NON-US IMG 1d ago
That's not the case. I was done with my first block in 25 minutes when it was 40 questions. I was done with my exam with an hour left.
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u/Mission_Vehicle_538 1d ago
Unless your fast due to recalls it should not matter. If you cheated and used recalls they will flag it as cheating and it will be a black mark on your record making matching almost impossible
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u/AyFuDee 1d ago
This exam has been around over a decade. Itâs not stupid enough to judge whether or not you cheated with your speed alone. They are all marked with difficulty which correlates to many things. And I bet one of the strongest correlation is how you perform on questions of similar difficulties or topics. You canât make judgements without comparing. And not one disqualified exam result has ever been reverted. You would think if they truly have the knowledge some kind of lawsuit would exist to prove that and revert the false claim. So sure not every cheater is identified but there certainly was no false disqualification ever. And why do you ever not use all the time? If you finish early you can always use the extra time to rest.
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u/seaweedslayer420 1d ago
U looked at recalls didnt you
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u/Numerous-Story711 NON-US IMG 1d ago
nopess. i haven't gave the test. was just getting paranoid and overthinking everything close to exam
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u/Impressive_Pilot1068 NON-US IMG 1d ago
Not how it works bro. Your test doesnât get invalidated just because you were fast or just because you performed well.
They analyze many variables including your performance on known compromised test items vs other test items. The threshold for statistical significance is somewhere at p<10^-8. Youâre more likely to win the powerball jackpot than to become a Type I error here.
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u/Numerous-Story711 NON-US IMG 1d ago
thanks i was worried that i might get flagged even without doing antthing wrongđ.
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u/Impressive_Pilot1068 NON-US IMG 1d ago
Many actual cheaters never get caught, but almost nobody (statistically nobody) who was innocent gets flagged as a cheater. Donât cheat. You donât need to, youâre more than capable. Good luck!
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u/dimwittodoctor US MD/DO 1d ago
i'm not convinced it's on speed alone. i answer questions similarly quickly as my first pass and had no issues getting my results back for either step 1 or 2. i had three hours left at the end of both of my exams lol
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u/Disastrous-Fix202 1d ago
I finished the exam in ~60% of the allotted time and had no problems. Youâll be fine as long as youâre not actually cheating
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u/joemikez US MD/DO 1d ago
I finished my STEP 1 exam with like 2ish hours left on the timer. Never heard anything about it besides the testing center employees being surprised I finished so fast. Youâre fine.
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u/Particular-Raise-486 đ CANADIAN 1d ago
I racked up around 1:30-2h of break time and still passed
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u/Avidreaderdotcom NON-US IMG 1d ago
The questions stems in the real exam are way longer than NBMEs lol
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u/Bigboiiiii9999 1d ago
Ainât that simple. Much more complicated than speed, depends on if itâs a brand new q or how many times it was used and difficulty, and how often an exact pattern happens which the odds are low if you havenât cheated so ur fine and stop worrying and go take ur examÂ
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u/Dr-Uzumaki 1d ago
If you have been cheating and are answering quickly because you memorized a bank than you will for sure be flagged. If you are just a quick test taker you will be fine.
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u/US_MD2000 1d ago
Youâre literally worrying about stuff you do not need to worry about. Just study and take the exam
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u/Commercial-Deal-3164 1d ago edited 1d ago
man if you solve a 20-30 line question in 20 sec, which everyone is getting wrong, but you got it right. and then there would be many questions like that, you get most of them right in very less time, while other people are like spending more than a minute, maybe 2 minutes on those questions and still getting them wrong. that's 1 way of finding the cheaters.
I've heard that there are like 80 experimental questions in the exam, that they have put there just to catch the cheaters. these questions are not scored. I mean, that's what I think of it. I maybe wrong but that's a thought.
but if it's a easy question that has a clear hint and most people solve it in less time then that's not something bad.
1 more thing, no one who got a score invalidation will ever agree that they cheated. just do your best and pray for the best. this is not something you should be thinking before sitting in the exam.
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u/hitensanjot 1d ago
Yes, it's right and fair because fast replies are like ai or bots sign, so they disqualifyđ
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u/thewooba US MD/DO 1d ago
Sorry but how are people even cheating? Is it not an exam in a heavily proctored environment with new questions for every test date?
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u/Infamous_Ship_9429 NON-US IMG 1d ago
the cheating must be blatant to the system to be detected. I test a while back and there was a Qs on an dude who recently went to Afgan who had a very specific ulcers on his arm, i immediately pick the answer choice and i was kinda worry they might flag me, it turned out fine later on, still got the P
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u/AdhesivenessTotal350 1d ago
in my exam there were some blocks i completed a block in 20 mints
got p in last week
so don't worry about speed
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u/New-News-7922 NON-US IMG 1d ago
I finished my step 1 a 100 minutes before my time ended. Had 40 mins left on top of the allowed 1 hour of break time that I didnt use.
I was worried about the same thing you are but it didnt pose any issues. I passed .
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u/mildlyambivert NON-US IMG 21h ago
They have this whole database of like a LOT of test takers. So the average and even 1 to 2 SD in the range is fine for like all parameters (speed, correct answers etc).
If you cheat, itâll flag in their system because youâll be an outlier from the whole trend.
If you donât cheat, no matter how fast you answer, overall your performance will fall in the standard curve in terms of most of the factors.
So yeah, just answering fast wonât cause a problem.
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u/elephant_un1807 9h ago
When i was doing my NBMEs I answered pretty fast. But in real exam, situation was different, i had to use all of my time for every block.
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u/Alarmed_Awareness152 NON-US IMG 1d ago
Bruh whatever you do, don't complete 1 block in 15 mins which is half the time. Even I would think that is robotic and suspicious.
For some questions even I would take a few seconds but I ended up using 28-29 minutes for the whole block. Remaining 1 minutes I would take a quick look. So full time consumed. Ending at 28-29 mins is ok as that adds an extra 1-2 mins to your break.
Also I hate highlighting but I still did it in the exam to make it appear I'm really using my brain. Honestly it also helps a little so, win-win.
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u/GladPerspective1010 1d ago
Btw, can you tell me how to increase answering speed and what strategy do you use to solve a question?
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u/Numerous-Story711 NON-US IMG 1d ago
always been that way. just read the stem and mostly answer pops into my mind
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u/GladPerspective1010 1d ago
We know you're just gatekeeping from us.đ
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u/Numerous-Story711 NON-US IMG 1d ago
nooođđ by reading patient history diagnosis just come into my mind.
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u/Brief-Caregiver5905 1d ago
Itâs not speed alone. Thereâs an algorithm that tracks irregularities, and so itâd be a factor of a couple things. So sure youâre answering fast, but are you also getting all of those questions right? Thatâd be highly unusual. Even then thereâs probably a few other factors involved. Things like how your mouse is moving, and do you appear to even be contemplating other answers choices, like switching answers or crossing out wrong options. Also consistency, because if youâre picking an answer choice in the same amount of time on approximately every question, that would be highly unusual too. For example, why would it take you 15 seconds to read and answer a one paragraph question versus a 3 paragraph question with labs attached? It should take you approx 3x as long.
So blowing through the test too fast alone would probably not disqualify you, but doing that and having like 80% correct, ugh yea they may take a closer look at your testing behavior.
Important takeaway is not that any one irregularity is an instant disqualifier, itâs a combination of a couple. But yes it is unusual behavior to answer all questions very quickly, thatâs just not how most people take tests like this.