Early in the morning (at least on the West Coast), you get an email stating that your "Score Report Is Now Available." I didn't sleep the night before I got my results. Results always come on the third Wednesday after you take your test. Then I waited for three agonizing weeks for the results. I drove to the exam center, but with the way my heart was racing, I might as well have jogged there. With all the courage I could muster, and all the knowledge that I could cram into my head, I took this test last month. I've seen lots and lots of tears over this test. I've met people who vomit at the thought of taking an NBME, let alone the real test. I've met people who can't speak English well enough to understand the questions being asked, let alone have a shot of actually getting the right answer. As bad a situation as I was in, I've met people who have it worse than me. I just want the underdogs out there to know that you're not alone. I'm not going to even bother telling you how well I did on the NBMEs, and how I studied for this test. I couldn't stand seeing my friends and family get married, and have kids, and go on vacations, and have careers, and have lives, all while I was stuck with nothing except the burden of this test. I don't even have a Facebook profile, because I couldn't stand the thought of seeing happy pictures of people I know. I stopped talking to many of my friends and classmates because I was too embarrassed to tell them that I was stuck in this hole and I just couldn't get out. I've wished that I had cancer or some other disease so that people would feel sorry for me so I wouldn't have to take this test anymore. I've had far far more nightmares in the past year than I have experienced in all the rest of my life put together. I spent months waking up in the middle of the night drenched in a cold sweat. I went through all the Kaplan books, took the live Kaplan class, watched every Kaplan video twice, went to the Pass Program, watched the Doctors In Training videos four times, went through the USMLE World question bank three times, went through the Kaplan question bank twice, did the USMLE Consult question bank, did the USMLERx question bank, cried, prayed, cried, prayed, vomited frequently, drank up to five cans of diet soda per day to stay alert, spent over a thousand hours at libraries and coffee shops, and spent thousands more sitting here at my desk in my room staring at books. That's what I got when I was actually TRYING. If you take the test and not answer a single question right, you'll get a 200. My first score on an NBME was 200, which is the lowest possible score you can get.
The first time I went though the USMLE World qbank, I averaged 27%. I'm here for the underdogs.the ones who went to medical school in weird places around the world because they had a dream and weren't going to take no for an answer. And if you're telling the truth about your score in the first place (which I doubt) then you're doing it for your own ego. If you got a 260 on your exam, you have no use for a forum like this.
Only once in a blue moon does someone get a 260 on this exam, but on this forum it seems like the "average" score. Most of the people who post their scores on these forums are LYING!! If you read this forum often enough, you'll start to think that 240 is the lowest score that anyone gets on this test. Let me start by saying that I've been reading this forum, the USMLE World forum, and other threads like these for a long time as I studied for this exam.