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Yes, I am trying to get caught back up with it after doing the step. After 100% completion a few months ago, my cards are down to about 100/day. This takes about 1/2 hour and is very manageable 3rd year (I'm not that fast, I've just done the cards so many times I don't have to think too hard).Any experiences with using GT for 3rd year rotations? Never used GT before but after reading this sit I wish I had. Greatly appreciate it.
All I know is that last time they had website problems, a lot of us got a free monthis anyone else having trouble loading their daily schedule? I was able to do it until noon today but keeps saying the server is down....is the great migration happening?
GT is absolutely draining. Devoting 2 hours a day to bank 1st year material plus review questions(another 1.5hours). And its only the 1st week
I hear ya. I'm relatively new too, and my memory is getting WORKED. Though I like the feeling of keeping on top of my reviews with these facts and the progress works great as an incentive (liking the feeling of completing a subject by seeing that green bar fill up ). It's too early to tell how well facts are sticking, but I hope I can keep it up when I get deep into MS2 work. But I reeeeeally hope Firecracker's daily cap on questions works to some effect, in terms of not simply just DELAYING your workload and having it build up anyway. Maybe combine concepts into a USMLE-type question instead that covers multiple cards? *hint hint*
I'm at about 5.9/2.8 right now, lol. How are you personally progressing on 1st year stuff? Because it took me around 4 whole days to get through most of Biochem metabolism lol. I didn't realized how much I've forgotten...
Phelps,
On average how many daily review Qs do you have? Do you even have time to bank any more cards if youve got 400-500 daily review Qs?
Why would they sell to Carribean students? I mean its hard enough for a US allo med student to go through...
So please tell your classmates that Firecracker isn't only for the super-hardcore med student! We can't wait until we get our 1,000+ USMLE style questions hooked up to all their relevant concepts.
I can't wait for you guys to see our USMLE style questions. They are authored by some of the top residents in the country and they are really really good. In concert with the rest of our program, they will really make things efficient and effective for any and everyone. Thanks!!!
We will likely increase our prices down the road but when we do it will be after we integrate at least the 500+ USMLE style questions we currently have and possibly after we provide an option to pay the same for the program without USMLE style questions (if you guys like this idea let us know; we see pros and cons. Con is that we believe in desirable difficulties and think USMLE style questions intertwined with your review sooner than most people typically do is a good idea.
They have tons of time to prepare for Step 1. One IMG is taking a full year and probably has purchased every possible Step 1 product (pholston)... others can take 3-6 months off to study, most AMGs only get 4-6 weeks. Imagine if you had 3 months dedicated time to study Step 1, too long but it'd be nice, no?
Most people who stop using GT do so because it takes too much time. Most of the "new features" that GT is implementing that people are excited about are things to make GT take less time. There is not a lot of free time during M2.
Time.
Seriously, nobody's answered my question about that, though.
If a cap is placed, how will that help you? I don't know how it's being implemented but if it's simply just delaying the 100-200 extra questions you get for another day, is that not interfering with the timing of the repetitions and backing everything else up down the line?
If that's the case you might as well just stop at a set number and let everything back up on it's own.
How is GT for M1? I was thinking about buying it to start medical school with in order to keep all those factoids in my head until Step 1. I tend to forget things I have not seen for months so figured this was a good plan. Is the $230/yr worth it for M1?
I really would like to see the number of people whove banked 100% compared to those who start the program.
How is GT for M1? I was thinking about buying it to start medical school with in order to keep all those factoids in my head until Step 1. I tend to forget things I have not seen for months so figured this was a good plan. Is the $230/yr worth it for M1?
Yeah, I'm wondering the same thing. I'm considering it.
@bluv1212, thanks to your and everyone else's great feedback, we decided to keep our pricing the same for a while longer (even when Firecracker is ready for prime-time and the Firecracker payment system replaces GT's payment system). To keep things simple, however, were going to remove the recurring subscription plan that cost $29/month as well as the 3-month plan option.
We thought a lot about what you guys said and changed our plans accordingly. We want to reward people who want to sign up for a year in advance and keep our prices down as long as possible. We will consider raising them after we integrate 1,000+ USMLE style questions. When we are full replacement for FA and UWorld we figure we can justify charging more to pay back our investors.
And, we always want to show you guys love! Our SDN Firecrackers are the bomb! To that end, I thought I'd tell you guys first that, someday in Aug. 7th, we're going to be posting a free month coupon on the Firecracker fan page. The catch is that the coupon will only be valid for a day or two so we recommend you like the page to make sure you see the code in your Facebook newsfeed. We thought this would help atone for our suggesting that we may be increasing our prices.
Truth is if we can get more than just all of you super smart and forward-thinking med students and IMGs to use Firecracker, we can more easily keep our prices down. So please tell your classmates that Firecracker isn't only for the super-hardcore med student! We can't wait until we get our 1,000+ USMLE style questions hooked up to all their relevant concepts. That way you guys will be able to review, say, 500 concepts with 50 questions as opposed to 500... and be able to practice applying your knowledge on USMLE- and Shelf-like questions at the same time! Kinda like killing 10 birds with 1 stone.
But I reeeeeally hope Firecracker's daily cap on questions works to some effect, in terms of not simply just DELAYING your workload and having it build up anyway. Maybe combine concepts into a USMLE-type question instead that covers multiple cards? *hint hint*
Yah I think so. But at least I won't say fml and curse the owners of gt everytime I see 400 qs when I wake up in the morning
I'm not worried about repetition because I'm banking gt at a consistent rate. I'll be done by the end of feb. that's enough time to repeat things. And the reason my daily qs are so high right now is because I'm rating things so low. Especially cardio and neuro since we actually haven't covered these organ systems in school yet. Maybe I shouldn't have banked them
O well
@Bchandler, so do you have a tentative ETA for the "cap Q's" feature? September? December? I've literally put GT on the back burner for now, waiting for this feature to come out. If it's not gonna come out for months, then I'll stop holding my breath and get back to doing Q's.
Doing the questions you have now will actually help reduce the review burden once we launch the USMLE like questions (and other integrative questions) since we are likely to initially implement a system wherein we show you an integrative question after you've reached a minimum level of proficiency (i.e. rated yourself a 3, 4 or 5) on at least 80% of the related concepts.
GTP, it sounds like you are going to class every day on top of doing GT review and course review. Are you limiting your board review material to GT only?
Good to hear that GT is coming in handy for your course exams. That was my biggest hope heading into M2 because the time we're putting into GT should have some immediate benefits as far as course exams go. Are people who are currently in M2 finding that GT cards are overlapping with current course material well? Again, the hope is that we won't have to spend too much extra time studying the course syllabi if GT is providing that knowledge. So with that, how much extra time are people giving to studying M2 material beyond GT?
M2 is demanding and my plan is to limit my resources to Pathoma and GT. I hope to be able to effectively learn most of what I need to know for exams through these 2 resources and study from course syllabi as needed.
@Brotato, before we consider adding "caps" to daily review, we're going to see how much we can reduce the number of review questions you see by asking you 1 integrative question instead of, say, 10+ recall questions. We want to do this first because all caps would do without a substitution of integrative questions for multiple recall questions, is push questions into the future. Other members here have rightly pointed this out.
Doing the questions you have now will actually help reduce the review burden once we launch the USMLE like questions (and other integrative questions) since we are likely to initially implement a system wherein we show you an integrative question after you've reached a minimum level of proficiency (i.e. rated yourself a 3, 4 or 5) on at least 80% of the related concepts. We will then look at the data and adjust accordingly (i.e. if we find that they questions are still too hard, we will increase the bar (i.e. you may have to score a 4 or a 5 on 100% of the related concepts). Then we will build an artificially intelligent algorithm to do this in real time so that we can further personalize learning on the individual level.
What do you think?
Guys, if we gave you the ability to add topics, concepts, images, questions, etc. would you use it to add content that is high yield for your courses but not necessarily for the USMLE or shelfs? We have this planned but want to know how much a priority it should be. If you have any thoughts let us know! We are all about killing multiple birds with one stone (even though we like birds, we like the analogy more!) and studying for the USMLE/Shelf/Clerkships AND classes at the same time would be awesome!
The next is the media issue...hopefully, what would be incredible is if you can upload images/videos or even better type in the hyperlinks for .jpegs, youtube video hyperlinks that automatically appear in the FC media interface without having to click on it (i.e.- kind of like watching a vid or viewing an image on someone's fbook wall without actually having to go to the website)...just some food for thought. That would make FC a very interactive, all-in-one platform.
if you do decide to do it as a package deal with firecracker, I implore you to offer the integrative questions and step-style questions either entirely separately from the spaced repetition/daily review q's (i.e. in the "exam section," where you could do a block of them whenever you felt like) or at bare minimum as an option for the daily review q's.
I'm not sure if this has already been suggested but would it be possible to add a notes/annotate section on each of the review question cards? I know there is a notes section for when we initially study a topic but it would be nice to be able to add some personal notes/mnemonics/links to images and videos for a particular review question (ie: difficult concepts/pathways/mechanisms involved) as I do the daily reviews!
Minwoo you can already do this. When you're doing quizzes, press "S" and then click the little notepad square button at the top of the screen ---> voila! you can edit/view your notes & annotations. And yes this isn't perfect, because it's based on you remembering whether you have notes for a question or not. If this is what you meant, then I agree. They should add an indicator that you have notes.
bchandler, I made a new account just to respond to this idea. Spaced repetition is not amenable to eliminating several questions testing individual concepts/facts by grouping those multiple concepts/facts into a single question. The 1st time the integrative question comes up, yes, it will help integrate the information. As it comes up again, the answer will be memorized without necessarily recalling all the concepts that went into first arriving at the answer. It will be very difficult for students to actively slow their review down and make sure they recall all the little concepts that were supposed to be known by knowing that integrative question. This will lead to a) poorer recall of the grouped facts and/or b) comparably slow review to just doing the facts in separate questions.
I recognize that firecracker is trying to increase their competitiveness in the step prep market by a) decreasing the daily time commitment and b) offering step 1 style questions. I think the best way to do the former is a "super high yield" only format (maybe lite mode offers that, I don't know, I just do comprehensive). For the latter, my personal preference would be to offer the question bank as an entirely separate subscription. I will admit that this is because there are other solid/well established question banks already on the market and don't personally have the interest in working through an "unproven bank." However, if you do decide to do it as a package deal with firecracker, I implore you to offer the integrative questions and step-style questions either entirely separately from the spaced repetition/daily review q's (i.e. in the "exam section," where you could do a block of them whenever you felt like) or at bare minimum as an option for the daily review q's.
The step-style questions that are already in the daily review bank are just a slight hindrance, and I'd rather they not be there. It messes up the flow of knocking out review questions and isn't a style of question that benefits from spaced repetition. However, the replacement of multiple fact-recall cards with integrative cards would be a greater detriment to the efficacy of the program. I'm quite sure you're firm in your decision to implement step-style questions in some form, and if you choose for business reasons to offer these questions as a package deal with the spaced review elements of firecracker, fine. I think you would be making a big mistake though in implementing the program the way you propose - you would end up with a lower quality spaced repetition program, and really, that's where firecracker has it's niche. Don't lose that.
I have a test in a week, so I didn't proofread that and will only be monitoring this thread intermittently, but I'd be more than happy to further discuss this as I see replies.
bchandler, I made a new account just to respond to this idea. Spaced repetition is not amenable to eliminating several questions testing individual concepts/facts by grouping those multiple concepts/facts into a single question. The 1st time the integrative question comes up, yes, it will help integrate the information. As it comes up again, the answer will be memorized without necessarily recalling all the concepts that went into first arriving at the answer. It will be very difficult for students to actively slow their review down and make sure they recall all the little concepts that were supposed to be known by knowing that integrative question. This will lead to a) poorer recall of the grouped facts and/or b) comparably slow review to just doing the facts in separate questions.
bchandler, I made a new account just to respond to this idea. Spaced repetition is not amenable to eliminating several questions testing individual concepts/facts by grouping those multiple concepts/facts into a single question. The 1st time the integrative question comes up, yes, it will help integrate the information. As it comes up again, the answer will be memorized without necessarily recalling all the concepts that went into first arriving at the answer. It will be very difficult for students to actively slow their review down and make sure they recall all the little concepts that were supposed to be known by knowing that integrative question. This will lead to a) poorer recall of the grouped facts and/or b) comparably slow review to just doing the facts in separate questions.
I recognize that firecracker is trying to increase their competitiveness in the step prep market by a) decreasing the daily time commitment and b) offering step 1 style questions. I think the best way to do the former is a "super high yield" only format (maybe lite mode offers that, I don't know, I just do comprehensive). For the latter, my personal preference would be to offer the question bank as an entirely separate subscription. I will admit that this is because there are other solid/well established question banks already on the market and don't personally have the interest in working through an "unproven bank." However, if you do decide to do it as a package deal with firecracker, I implore you to offer the integrative questions and step-style questions either entirely separately from the spaced repetition/daily review q's (i.e. in the "exam section," where you could do a block of them whenever you felt like) or at bare minimum as an option for the daily review q's.
The step-style questions that are already in the daily review bank are just a slight hindrance, and I'd rather they not be there. It messes up the flow of knocking out review questions and isn't a style of question that benefits from spaced repetition. However, the replacement of multiple fact-recall cards with integrative cards would be a greater detriment to the efficacy of the program. I'm quite sure you're firm in your decision to implement step-style questions in some form, and if you choose for business reasons to offer these questions as a package deal with the spaced review elements of firecracker, fine. I think you would be making a big mistake though in implementing the program the way you propose - you would end up with a lower quality spaced repetition program, and really, that's where firecracker has it's niche. Don't lose that.
I have a test in a week, so I didn't proofread that and will only be monitoring this thread intermittently, but I'd be more than happy to further discuss this as I see replies.
@thawundonly - you hit the nail on the head! Although we love the idea of caps, the main way we think we can best increase the efficiency of your study time is to ask you 1 integrative question rather than, say, 10 questions (1 for each concept).
Although we will initially launch Firecracker without caps or the hundreds of USMLE style questions our authors have already written, it's the first thing we are working right after launch since we think it will be the highest value to you guys! If we think about GT/FC as a tutor, what we have now is a slave driver that isn't always in touch with what you really need. But, by integrating the hundreds of USMLE like integrative questions we have (along with recall questions that also integrate material between and across topics), we will make FC a really awesome and smart tutor and not simply a spaced learning system. Spaced learning is great but adaptive spaced learning that shows you integrative questions when you're ready is much more efficient.
We will have the migration feature working later this week and will invite current beta testers at that time. Then when we're sure it works, we will invite everyone else! Sorry for the delay guys!
@loveoforganic2, please please stay on SDN. This is GREAT feedback. Totally agree with your concerns.
Your awesome feedback is making me think we should instead: 1) create a high yield option to reduce review burden for new users and 2) initially implement the USMLE style questions as a stand-alone question bank and then 3) include USMLE style questions into the review ONLY when you have achieved mastery of all related concepts (i.e. raise the bar for "unlocking" these USMLE style questions). Moreover, if we know your exam date, we can time the USMLE style questions for 2-3 months prior to your test. And, just so you know, we plan on having many thousands of USMLE style questions so the likelihood of repeating the same question will be lessened. And, once you've reached mastery of all related concepts and have unlocked a USMLE style question, we will still ask you recall questions that our system predicts you may forget (based on your performance and the performance of your peers on that related concept).
Since you brought up the high-yield option, I'd love you and other's feedback on how to best achieve this. We've actually already gone through our content and tagged things that we think are high yield (based on the insight of our authors who have scored 273, for example). But in the new world of a computerized USMLE, we worry that there may be some bias here since everyone's test is different these days (and likely to get increasingly so, we believe). Then again, we have so many authors/editors who scored really high so collectively what they believe is high yield is likely to really be HY. We also have many top residents writing content for us who are at places like MGH and BWH. They can provide their insight into what is HY as well, particularly for Step 2 / Shelfs / Clerkships.
Any opportunity for user feedback here? Any other ideas? Thanks for the awesome feedback guys! Let's figure this USMLE style question thing out together. I promise when you see them you will be impressed. Our guys (admittedly a little biased! ) say they are better than UWorld or Kaplan Qbank questions so we're really excited to get them to you no matter how we (FC + you guys!) end up choosing to do so!