Is my COM the exception or the rule?

[sancus3]

Recently finished M1 year and found our curriculum often diverges from FA and DIT. 3/5 of the professors are horrible lecturers. They don't explain material well, are poorly organized, and often appear disinterested. To boot, the notes we're given are often poorly written and organized.

All this has made it difficult to study board material (FA, DIT, FC) during M1 year while staying on top of class material, and I'm wondering: Is my school the exception or the rule?

Do any schools out there have a majority of great professors who focus on board relevant material as found in FA, DIT, Kaplan, UWORLD, or FC?

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[Stagg737]

Let me just start by saying if your professors are teaching to the material in FA or DIT, they're not doing you a favor. Those are resources that are meant to summarize and review the material your professors have presented, not actually teach you the subject. I personally didn't like FA because I felt like it was way too "bare-bones" in a lot of areas. I don't think any of my professors "taught to" FA or any review resource, and I'm personally glad they didn't.

However, that's a completely different issue from professors being disorganized, disinterested, and providing poor powerpoints or notes. The vast majority of my professors were great, or at the very least enthusiastic. Several of them went into some crazy detail that probably won't be relevant to my career unless I pursue that specific field on a molecular or anatomic level, but at the same time most would be sure to say when they felt something was "high yield" or say "Past students often tell me they saw this on the boards". We have a couple professors that actually take the boards themselves every few years so they have an idea about what's important. Your professors' jobs are to teach you the foundational knowledge you'll need for clinical years. Yes, they should be teaching you almost everything you'll need to do well on boards, as boards is the test of that foundation, but I've only ever heard of one school/professor that teaches to a review source and I don't consider that to be a particularly good school.

 

[sancus3]

Let me just start by saying if your professors are teaching to the material in FA or DIT, they're not doing you a favor. Those are resources that are meant to summarize and review the material your professors have presented, not actually teach you the subject. I personally didn't like FA because I felt like it was way too "bare-bones" in a lot of areas. I don't think any of my professors "taught to" FA or any review resource, and I'm personally glad they didn't.

However, that's a completely different issue from professors being disorganized, disinterested, and providing poor powerpoints or notes. The vast majority of my professors were great, or at the very least enthusiastic. Several of them went into some crazy detail that probably won't be relevant to my career unless I pursue that specific field on a molecular or anatomic level, but at the same time most would be sure to say when they felt something was "high yield" or say "Past students often tell me they saw this on the boards". We have a couple professors that actually take the boards themselves every few years so they have an idea about what's important. Your professors' jobs are to teach you the foundational knowledge you'll need for clinical years. Yes, they should be teaching you almost everything you'll need to do well on boards, as boards is the test of that foundation, but I've only ever heard of one school/professor that teaches to a review source and I don't consider that to be a particularly good school.

FA is "bare-bones," and I'm not suggesting that's all professors teach but at the very least, those discrete bits of information should be covered in our curriculum. I often found there was information in FA not covered in lecture. DIT and firecracker provide more detail, and our classes diverged from those resources too. I want to learn what's necessary to be a competent doctor. I assume Step 1 is an objective assessment of competency and that FA, Firecracker, and DIT actively review the material tested in Step1 and relay it to students.

 

[acapnial]

FA is "bare-bones," and I'm not suggesting that's all professors teach but at the very least, those discrete bits of information should be covered in our curriculum. I often found there was information in FA not covered in lecture. DIT and firecracker provide more detail, and our classes diverged from those resources too. I want to learn what's necessary to be a competent doctor. I assume Step 1 is an objective assessment of competency and that FA, Firecracker, and DIT actively review the material tested in Step1 and relay it to students.

You should ask your school why they stray from first aid and firecracker when they teach you. It'll be funny.

 

[Mad Jack]

FA is "bare-bones," and I'm not suggesting that's all professors teach but at the very least, those discrete bits of information should be covered in our curriculum. I often found there was information in FA not covered in lecture. DIT and firecracker provide more detail, and our classes diverged from those resources too. I want to learn what's necessary to be a competent doctor. I assume Step 1 is an objective assessment of competency and that FA, Firecracker, and DIT actively review the material tested in Step1 and relay it to students.

The argument could be made that their time is better spent focusing on the stuff you won't learn via FA, Pathoma, or DIT, as you will learn that material on your own. Rather, they should focus on higher-level, lower yield material that will be the difference between you scoring a 230 and a 260. They only get 3-4 hours a week, they may as well teach you the stuff you won't learn on your own during that time so that you're not just going, "Why are we even here when we could be reading FA right now?"

 

[prettylittlebird]

Dude you just finished M1 year, there is still a ton of information you're going to learn M2 that will be more relevant for Step 1. You aren't supposed to feel like you're prepared to take the exam at this point. Also most schools have some professors who are difficult, rambling or present confusing notes. I would suggest doing a really thorough job on evaluations and hoping your school takes them seriously.

 

[sancus3]

The argument could be made that their time is better spent focusing on the stuff you won't learn via FA, Pathoma, or DIT, as you will learn that material on your own. Rather, they should focus on higher-level, lower yield material that will be the difference between you scoring a 230 and a 260. They only get 3-4 hours a week, they may as well teach you the stuff you won't learn on your own during that time so that you're not just going, "Why are we even here when we could be reading FA right now?"

In an ideal world that sounds great, but the reality is: the lecturers aren't great... actually a fair amount of them are bad. For example 2 of the professors we had for biochem just used scratch paper and a projector and jotted down parts of pathways they thought we should know. They barely gave any background information or really explained the topics. Our path class deviated substantially from pathoma and one of the professors had completely disorganized ppt/lecture/notes and went off on countless self-aggrandizing tangents. There are numerous other examples I could give.

So because the material isn't presented well in class and the notes often aren't great, it normally takes an obscene amount of time to go through them and decipher what's important or what they're attempting to say. I love using firecracker because it presents all the information in a clear way, but it's difficult to stay on top of while also covering the class material. If I don't study for 12hrs/day, I can't cover both. Even studying from 8am-10pm with two 40 min breaks for lunch and dinner, I have difficulty keeping up and often have to neglect FC or board materials. Realistically, I don't think I'll be able to memorize all the material in FA in the 6 weeks we get for board prep and do Qbanks. I need to learn the material as I go and just review in the end. When I cross reference FA and our notes there is some overlap but I normally feel like our lecture didn't explain it that well. Then there is a good amount of stuff we just didn't cover. FC normally helps me to make better sense of FA topics and often explains them in more detail than lecture.

 

[sancus3]

Dude you just finished M1 year, there is still a ton of information you're going to learn M2 that will be more relevant for Step 1. You aren't supposed to feel like you're prepared to take the exam at this point. Also most schools have some professors who are difficult, rambling or present confusing notes. I would suggest doing a really thorough job on evaluations and hoping your school takes them seriously.

As far as I know, our school doesn't even do evaluations.

 

[Mad Jack]

In an ideal world that sounds great, but the reality is: the lecturers aren't great... actually a fair amount of them are bad. For example 2 of the professors we had for biochem just used scratch paper and a projector and jotted down parts of pathways they thought we should know. They barely gave any background information or really explained the topics. Our path class deviated substantially from pathoma and one of the professors had completely disorganized ppt/lecture/notes and went off on countless self-aggrandizing tangents. There are numerous other examples I could give.

So because the material isn't presented well in class and the notes often aren't great, it normally takes an obscene amount of time to go through them and decipher what's important or what they're attempting to say. I love using firecracker because it presents all the information in a clear way, but it's difficult to stay on top of while also covering the class material. If I don't study for 12hrs/day, I can't cover both. Even studying from 8am-10pm with two 40 min breaks for lunch and dinner, I have difficulty keeping up and often have to neglect FC or board materials. Realistically, I don't think I'll be able to memorize all the material in FA in the 6 weeks we get for board prep and do Qbanks. I need to learn the material as I go and just review in the end. When I cross reference FA and our notes there is some overlap but I normally feel like our lecture didn't explain it that well. Then there is a good amount of stuff we just didn't cover. FC normally helps me to make better sense of FA topics and often explains them in more detail than lecture.

What year are you? Because if you're just starting second year, wow, uh... You're going all out with that board study, aren't ya...

Sounds like your professors suck though- I can count the number of lectures I had that were that awful on two hands in all of my first two years combined.

 

[zeppelinpage4]

Recently finished M1 year and found our curriculum often diverges from FA and DIT. 3/5 of the professors are horrible lecturers. They don't explain material well, are poorly organized, and often appear disinterested. To boot, the notes we're given are often poorly written and organized.

All this has made it difficult to study board material (FA, DIT, FC) during M1 year while staying on top of class material, and I'm wondering: Is my school the exception or the rule?

Do any schools out there have a majority of great professors who focus on board relevant material as found in FA, DIT, Kaplan, UWORLD, or FC?

That's the case at my school as well.
However, M1 none of us thought about boards, we just used class material. Occasionally they were good, most times meh, and sometimes absolute ****.

By M2 our finals were NBME exams, and most of the lectures were not done well or even prepared us for that final NBME. So most of us skipped class, read some class notes for details, and relied on FA, Pathoma, and Uworld to learn material throughout second year.

Again, most lecturers, despite meaning well, were over complicated, disorganized, and generally did not know how to present the material. Even when they did a decent job, unless the professor was exceptionally good at teaching, the lectures were not an efficient way for many of us to learn the large volume of material. Also, with a few exceptions, most of the professors did not teach us to boards either...I think that's the case from most programs, at least from what I hear from friends at other schools. I'm fine with that, as long as they teach it well and it's useful knowledge...but that wasn't always the case.

 

[doczebra]

Let me just start by saying if your professors are teaching to the material in FA or DIT, they're not doing you a favor. Those are resources that are meant to summarize and review the material your professors have presented, not actually teach you the subject. I personally didn't like FA because I felt like it was way too "bare-bones" in a lot of areas. I don't think any of my professors "taught to" FA or any review resource, and I'm personally glad they didn't.

However, that's a completely different issue from professors being disorganized, disinterested, and providing poor powerpoints or notes. The vast majority of my professors were great, or at the very least enthusiastic. Several of them went into some crazy detail that probably won't be relevant to my career unless I pursue that specific field on a molecular or anatomic level, but at the same time most would be sure to say when they felt something was "high yield" or say "Past students often tell me they saw this on the boards". We have a couple professors that actually take the boards themselves every few years so they have an idea about what's important. Your professors' jobs are to teach you the foundational knowledge you'll need for clinical years. Yes, they should be teaching you almost everything you'll need to do well on boards, as boards is the test of that foundation, but I've only ever heard of one school/professor that teaches to a review source and I don't consider that to be a particularly good school.

This this this.

My school teaches straight out of FA and Kaplan. The school actually pays kaplan 2k/student every year to license the material to use in class. As a result the material is 100% memorizing with little actual learning.

It shows in the outcomes. ~215 usmle average after doing kaplan review content as our primary learning source. When you memorize board review books for 2 years, 70% will be forgetten by board time and you'll just be left with little understanding of the material and a bunch of random factoids in your head. When you actually learn the systems, come dedicated time you can open FA to cram whatever you need to memorize for 4 weeks and that with good foundation understanding will land you closer to the national average of 229.

 

[Stagg737]

In an ideal world that sounds great, but the reality is: the lecturers aren't great... actually a fair amount of them are bad. For example 2 of the professors we had for biochem just used scratch paper and a projector and jotted down parts of pathways they thought we should know. They barely gave any background information or really explained the topics. Our path class deviated substantially from pathoma and one of the professors had completely disorganized ppt/lecture/notes and went off on countless self-aggrandizing tangents. There are numerous other examples I could give.

So because the material isn't presented well in class and the notes often aren't great, it normally takes an obscene amount of time to go through them and decipher what's important or what they're attempting to say. I love using firecracker because it presents all the information in a clear way, but it's difficult to stay on top of while also covering the class material. If I don't study for 12hrs/day, I can't cover both. Even studying from 8am-10pm with two 40 min breaks for lunch and dinner, I have difficulty keeping up and often have to neglect FC or board materials. Realistically, I don't think I'll be able to memorize all the material in FA in the 6 weeks we get for board prep and do Qbanks. I need to learn the material as I go and just review in the end. When I cross reference FA and our notes there is some overlap but I normally feel like our lecture didn't explain it that well. Then there is a good amount of stuff we just didn't cover. FC normally helps me to make better sense of FA topics and often explains them in more detail than lecture.

A few points, Pathoma is like FA specifically for path. Slightly better than bare-bones, but not comprehensive by any means. I saw A LOT of material that Pathoma didn't touch that I knew because our professors covered it (and our textbook is big Robbins). FA shouldn't be teaching you anything, it should be reviewing everything you've already learned plus a few high yield topics that might not be emphasized. If you're really seeing that much new info in FA then it sounds like your curriculum is genuinely lacking.

This this this.

My school teaches straight out of FA and Kaplan. The school actually pays kaplan 2k/student every year to license the material to use in class. As a result the material is 100% memorizing with little actual learning.

It shows in the outcomes. ~215 usmle average after doing kaplan review content as our primary learning source. When you memorize board review books for 2 years, 70% will be forgetten by board time and you'll just be left with little understanding of the material and a bunch of random factoids in your head. When you actually learn the systems, come dedicated time you can open FA to cram whatever you need to memorize for 4 weeks and that with good foundation understanding will land you closer to the national average of 229.

Wtf. Is this an MD school? I'm at a DO school and our average has never even been close to that low for Step 1. Heck, our average this year is a 228...

 

[mehc012]

That's the case at my school as well.
However, M1 none of us thought about boards, we just used class material. Occasionally they were good, most times meh, and sometimes absolute ****.

By M2 our finals were NBME exams, and most of the lectures were not done well or even prepared us for that final NBME. So most of us skipped class, read some class notes for details, and relied on FA, Pathoma, and Uworld to learn material throughout second year.

Again, most lecturers, despite meaning well, were over complicated, disorganized, and generally did not know how to present the material. Even when they did a decent job, unless the professor was exceptionally good at teaching, the lectures were not an efficient way for many of us to learn the large volume of material. Also, with a few exceptions, most of the professors did not teach us to boards either...I think that's the case from most programs, at least from what I hear from friends at other schools. I'm fine with that, as long as they teach it well and it's useful knowledge...but that wasn't always the case.

We have an integrated curriculum, so they include NBME exams from the get-go...but not for your grade. It's required, and you see your score, but it doesn't factor into your academic standing. The real exam is based on the class materials and is not MC. The NBME exam basically gives the profs a chance to pick out questions that they think are relevant so that we can track how we're doing as we go, or so they say. I'm curious to see how it goes...seems to me that if the profs are picking out relevant NBME questions, perhaps it will remind them to stay mostly on track (though in greater detail, as everyone in this thread has pointed out.)

 

[Redpancreas]

Recently finished M1 year and found our curriculum often diverges from FA and DIT. 3/5 of the professors are horrible lecturers. They don't explain material well, are poorly organized, and often appear disinterested. To boot, the notes we're given are often poorly written and organized.

All this has made it difficult to study board material (FA, DIT, FC) during M1 year while staying on top of class material, and I'm wondering: Is my school the exception or the rule?

Do any schools out there have a majority of great professors who focus on board relevant material as found in FA, DIT, Kaplan, UWORLD, or FC?

Wow...you're upset because you don't have time to do DIT?!?

Ok, well at my school because of the curriculum we don't have any opportunity to touch any of the review material first year. Then second year, only super dedicated people can get through UWorld. Most just use Pathoma and glance at FA.

 

[sancus3]

Wow...you're upset because you don't have time to do DIT?!?

Ok, well at my school because of the curriculum we don't have any opportunity to touch any of the review material first year. Then second year, only super dedicated people can get through UWorld. Most just use Pathoma and glance at FA.

that sucks. What about the curriculum makes it like that?