Yesterday, we took the NBME Med Micro/Immunology shelf. Although I am confident that I did awful (we were told not to study for it and I didn't even bother doing questions 80-125), it was a good experience. It does not count as part of our grade (hence the lack of studying), but it was nice to see what kind of questions we can expect on the USMLE, as well as give us a good idea of how useful our professors were.I am happy to announce that, despite the regular complaining of people in my class (myself included), the stuff that Dr. Shupe taught us was right on and her style of exam questions were almost identical. In fact, that shelf exam would have made a very fair final exam for the course, minus probably about 5 questions. There was really nothing on there that I wouldn't have known if I had studied for the final already. I've heard rumors that Dr. Shupe used to write USMLE questions and I'm not sure if it's true, but I'd believe it. For those who have yet to take the shelf, I will tell you that it's very heavy on respiratory and GI bugs and places little emphasis on skin or neuro. They are also big into virulence factors and various toxins. They are also definitely not above asking whether a particular virus is ssRNA, dsRNA, ssDNA, dsDNA, etc. Most commonly, they will give you a scenario, you have to already know the bug, and they'll ask you a question about a toxin or something. Very rarely do they just ask you what you think the bug is.
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