A short apology

Bigredmed
Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:43:40 +0000

So all done - ended up taking me about 6 hours for the whole thing with two ten minute breaks and one 25 minute break.

Some thoughts…

It’s not bad, but I don’t want to have to take it over again.

It’s really easy to over-study for micro. I was pretty surprised how few micro questions I got. I’m also really glad that I didn’t study parasites at all over the last 7 weeks - didn’t touch 'em, and only had 2 questions about them, one of which was just identifying malaria.

I was super worried about pharm, but in the end it didn’t end up too bad. Not sure if I got lucky or not.

I had what seemed like a lot of neuro questions - maybe just b/c those are the ones I struggled with most.

For the most part I was pretty pleased with Kaplan - I used their inclusive WebPrep lectures which included QBank and IV QBank. The IV stood for Integrated Vignettes - that was pretty much the only worthless part as the questions were way too easy and came based on a single clinical scenario which isn’t at all like the exam. Regular QBank was a pretty fair approximation of the exam. That, along with the NBME practice exams meant for no surprises.
As far as the lectures, the Kaplan Immuno and pathology was pretty good. Path could have been better but was surprisingly sufficient.

1st Aid is a godsend, and I wish I had split my time up a little better towards the end to just focus on going through that. I also wish that i had used it in conjunction with my school work a little more - there were some great tables that I only managed to find with in the last 4 days. I’m telling all my soon-to-be M2 friends and the people I know who will be M1s in the fall to pick up 1st Aid and use it everyday.

Also, while I have books like Board Review Series for Anatomy and Neuro, and the Illustrated Review: Biochem book - they’re all way too in depth for boards review in my opinion.

I probably should have pushed myself at least once or twice in the weeks leading up to the exam to have done a full, 7 section practice exam. I knew it was going to be a grind and had planned accordingly with the stuff I was bringing (ie: gatorade, protein for breakfast, etc), and I was taking pretty frequent breaks within each section, but there were definitely some times when I caught myself not really reading the questions and letting my mind wander.

This was my first time taking a computer based test like this…I would have preferred pencil and paper I think, but it wasn’t bad. The software is pretty good at letting you highlight and cross out and so on…Being a true Gen Yer, i think meant that looking at a computer screen for 6 hours wasn’t that big of deal either…

As for how I did…I don’t care. Scores don’t come back for 6 weeks so it don’t matter. Time to start dulling the days with booze. BRM out…