Step II Timing

I'm only an MS3 myself but one thing to consider, in addition to having your score available early, is how taking the dedicated time in october might affect your aways. Not sure how many aways you were planning on doing but it seems that you would basically be eliminating september and october as potential months for aways. Perhaps you are doing aways in June, July, and August instead? These seem to be harder months to get aways, however, because many institutions are preferentially giving these time slots to their home rotators first.

Also, have you taken a self assessment for step 2 ck yet (either UW or NBME)? With your test taking history (i.e. step 1 and obviously crushing shelf exams), you might already be sitting in a relatively high score range and you may not need 5 weeks to study. Clearly you don't need any help prepping for major exams but I just thought I'd throw out the suggestion of taking a practice test before you get too worried about the necessary amount of prep time.

Great idea to take a practice test early to see where I'm at. Its been 9 months since I finished my IM rotation and I feel I have lost a lot of medicine knowledge since then, but who knows? Thanks for the advice.

As for aways I am planning on doing 2 aways: 1 in late july-august the other from late august-september. June/October can be a study month or outpatient ortho clinic at my home program.

You should be fine with studying for 2 or 3 weeks. Step 2 is essentially a rehashing of your shelf exams, and I assume you have been doing well on those given your clinical grades. Clearly you are a good test taker, and I think that test-taking ability is a huge component of CK, with less emphasis on fact memorization than Step 1.

I think that Step 2 still has limited importance in orthopaedics, since not all applicants take it by the time ERAS is due, so it can't used for screening like Step 1 is. It's probably more on par with clinical grades, class rank and research. A poor score can hurt you, but it won't derail your application or get you screened out.

Keep in mind that the average on Step 2 is 240, compared to 230 for Step 1, so you are basically getting a 10 point bonus to start. From my experience, I don't think program directors know this, so 250 is considered a "good" score for both tests. Therefore, if your target minimum is 250, you only need to perform at a 240-Step 1 level, and that is 20 points below where you have traditionally performed. Even if you have a bad test performance, you should still have an average to above-average score, which should minimal impact on your application.

I was in a similar situation to you in regards to Step 1 and clinical grades, and I had also taken medicine and surgery early in the year. Ultimately, I decided to take CK during the spring, with 2 weeks of prep using UWorld and Step 2 Secrets. In the end, I outscored my Step 1. During my interviews, I had a few commendations on my Step 1 score (~260), but my Step 2 performance never came up.

Hope this helps.