- Joined
- Jan 18, 2012
- Messages
- 3,882
- Reaction score
- 1,675
I just finished the Kaplan QBook (~100 Qs/day x 8 days).
Prior to this, with respect to the bigger-name resources, I've only already covered USMLE Rx and FA Q&A. I have not yet touched Kaplan QBank or UWorld.
With the thousands of posts I've read on SDN, Kaplan has definitely taken on a reputation of catering to the minutiae, although I've also read some posts where people have said that Kaplan QBank is not excessively low-yield at all and that it is in fact very helpful. Needless to say, Kaplan did uphold its reputation of testing the minutiae via this book. This isn't even just in an absolute sense; this is also relative to Rx and FA Q&A.
I had completed one 50-question block from Kaplan QBook last year, but had never gotten around to finishing the remaining 800 Qs until just now. In relation to Rx and FA Q&A, the difficulty of the questions in Kaplan QBook is substantially greater. I found that Kaplan has many more one-step questions that test smaller details, rather than 4-step twisters that assess the bigger picture. USMLE Rx and FA Q&A's questions were better for learning how to bypass the indirect or tacit "tricks" that the USMLE might throw at us, but Kaplan QBook was superior for the actual depth of knowledge that it tested. As opposed to FA Q&A, where most of the explanations had been relatively vague, Kaplan QBook's explanations were very strong ~80% of the time (although there were a few occasions where the explanations fell short for Qs that certainly required a bit more discussion). That being said, I read all of the Kaplan explanations, as I had for Rx. I hadn't particularly bothered with FA Q&A's.
I performed 84% on Kaplan QBook (85 and 94 on Rx and FA Q&A, respectively), however the questions I had missed surprisingly weren't in relation to information that I had merely glossed over in FA; Kaplan had a lot of wtf-questions with info I had simply never heard of before. I definitely learned a ton of extra stuff going through the book, and I highly recommend it for the sake of pumping up your FA with annotations. I feel that my future Step score has probably been augmented 3-5 points by having gone through just this text alone. Considering it's only 850 questions, that's a fairly good protein for total calorie ratio.
Hope that helps,
Prior to this, with respect to the bigger-name resources, I've only already covered USMLE Rx and FA Q&A. I have not yet touched Kaplan QBank or UWorld.
With the thousands of posts I've read on SDN, Kaplan has definitely taken on a reputation of catering to the minutiae, although I've also read some posts where people have said that Kaplan QBank is not excessively low-yield at all and that it is in fact very helpful. Needless to say, Kaplan did uphold its reputation of testing the minutiae via this book. This isn't even just in an absolute sense; this is also relative to Rx and FA Q&A.
I had completed one 50-question block from Kaplan QBook last year, but had never gotten around to finishing the remaining 800 Qs until just now. In relation to Rx and FA Q&A, the difficulty of the questions in Kaplan QBook is substantially greater. I found that Kaplan has many more one-step questions that test smaller details, rather than 4-step twisters that assess the bigger picture. USMLE Rx and FA Q&A's questions were better for learning how to bypass the indirect or tacit "tricks" that the USMLE might throw at us, but Kaplan QBook was superior for the actual depth of knowledge that it tested. As opposed to FA Q&A, where most of the explanations had been relatively vague, Kaplan QBook's explanations were very strong ~80% of the time (although there were a few occasions where the explanations fell short for Qs that certainly required a bit more discussion). That being said, I read all of the Kaplan explanations, as I had for Rx. I hadn't particularly bothered with FA Q&A's.
I performed 84% on Kaplan QBook (85 and 94 on Rx and FA Q&A, respectively), however the questions I had missed surprisingly weren't in relation to information that I had merely glossed over in FA; Kaplan had a lot of wtf-questions with info I had simply never heard of before. I definitely learned a ton of extra stuff going through the book, and I highly recommend it for the sake of pumping up your FA with annotations. I feel that my future Step score has probably been augmented 3-5 points by having gone through just this text alone. Considering it's only 850 questions, that's a fairly good protein for total calorie ratio.
Hope that helps,
