Hey everybody—I hope you’re all surviving the near start of Match 2023 season.

I took my Level 2 exam in late July, and like many others have posted/commented about, I had tons of technical issues. Every question had a time lag of at least 15 seconds (some randomly more without any clock stoppage), the screen went blank white on multiple occasions, and answer bubbles wouldn’t fill in when I clicked them. Anyway, I reported this to NBOME and Prometric the day of my test. Prometric can’t do anything and they also couldn’t see any of these issues I was having in my exam report. They told me to reach out to NBOME, which I did, and sent them several follow up emails after officially submitting an Adverse Testing Condition. The month went by, I was doing a Sub-I, and still no responses or calls back from NBOME. I finally received an automated email from NBOME about a month after my test saying they would get back to me in 2-3 weeks. Problem was that my score was due to come out the following week. I then started another Sub-I a week ago, and when the date rolled around, my score was not released at all. I called NBOME and talked to someone named Peggy, who was admittedly kind but very unhelpful. She told me she had no access to my score, but she had access to my raw score percentage. She stated that she couldn’t give me any of this information, which I honestly think is BS. As a background, I have dyslexia and struggle with standardized testing. I am never looking for a miracle 600 score—just want to pass. I told this to Peggy and she still was unable to give me exact information, but sort of told me “I just think you should retake it, but it’s not my call.” Anyway, I told her I would think about it, and then the next day received an email from NBOME ATC saying that my score was voided and I would need to retake. At least NBOME was able to give me a voucher to retake so I don’t have to pay again (how generous lol).

Any med student applying this match would probably understand, but I have a lot of frustrations. A) I have to take this beast of an exam again and don’t even have any score or score report to let me know where I stood on the one last month and to direct me to reviewing/studying again. Even with this, an 8 hour exam is a nightmare for a dyslexic and honestly to everyone, so going through this hell again is awful. B) My score won’t come out until after residency PD’s will be able to open our apps. So I’ll probably be screwed over on a handful of programs. C) I have to leave my current inpatient Sub-I early and use personal vacation time to re-review for Level 2. Doesn’t look good to the program, and also jeopardizes my Sub-I opportunity.

Anyway, I have kind of accepted this situation and looked on the positive end of things, which is that everything happens for a reason and I can hopefully use this reviewing time to strengthen any knowledge gaps. I know it’ll all be okay, so I was overall looking to vent about the NBOME and its shit software and staffing issue. They knew where I stood the day I took my exam, but they chose to wait over a month to let me know I needed to take it again. Plus, they didn’t even give me the decency of knowing my score before choosing on their own for my exam to be voided. They really need some more staff as well, among many other changes. It’s not fair to do this to students who have absolutely zero control over these situations.

Now that I’m taking Level 2 2.0, I was hoping people would be able to give me some advice as I only have a couple of weeks to re-review and do questions. I want to throw up/punch a wall thinking about wasting time doing COMSAE’s again, but if anyone has had good experience or predictability, please let me know.

Thank you everyone in advance—stay strong out there future DO’s!