USMLE Step 2 CK
The USMLE Step 2 CK (Clinical Knowledge) exam covers the clinical topics covered in the final 2 years of most medical school curricula. These subjects include:-
| Medicine | Pediatrics |
| Surgery | Psychiatry |
| Obstetrics & Gynecology | Public Health |
Time to prepare for the exam depends from person to person. Generally IMG's prepare for about 3-6 months for the exam.
Exam Registration
The application for the USMLE exams may be submitted online or via regular mail as described in the introduction.Once registered the applicant receives the Orange permit card which is used to register for the exam either by phone or online (Thomson Prometric). Along with the permit the examinee will also receive a CD containing 3 blocks of sample questions and the software tutorial.
Exam Design
Step 2 is a one day exam. The total exam duration is 9 hours. The exam consists of 8 blocks of 46 to 47 questions each which have to be finished in 1 hour. So the actual exam time is 8 hours. There is a 15 minutes tutorial to let applicants get familiar with the software and 45 minutes of break time. So the total duration of the exam totals to 9 hours.Applicants are allowed to take a break after finishing a block but not during a block. The applicant may take as many or as few breaks as he likes as long as he does not leave the exam room in the midst of a block. Also not that once a block has started, it has to be finished before the applicant may take a break. If a block is closed without completing it there is no way in which it may be opened again.
If the tutorial is finished earlier then the remaining time gets added to the break time. Similarly if a block is finished earlier then also the time gets added to the break time. This extra time cannot be used to extend the time of some other block.
As with Step 1 each block contains a mix of questions from the various subjects.
Questions on the exam
Questions are multiple choice type and may carry between 3 to 10 choices per question. Almost all questions are framed in a clinical scenario. All questions carry equal weightage and there is no negative marking.The exam concentrates heavily on making a correct diagnosis. The questions are generally very long and have a lot of unnecessary detail in them. There are some questions which test the ability of the examinee to differentiate between diseases presenting with similar signs and symptoms. These questions generally have the same set of options.
A point to note is that not all questions on the actual exam will be scored. They are there for experimental purposes to analyze if they are suitable to scored in future exams (e.g. some questions may be too tough, too easy or wrongly framed). According to the USMLE website anywhere between 10-20% of the questions on the exam may not be included in the final score. So if you are talking a long time on a particular question, you may want to select your favorite letter and move on.