This was what I wrote to my little sib after the test a year ago. Went to IU so your milage may vary.
My first comment would be that the test will be a lot more straight-forward that you think it will be. There are certainly some questions that can be a little tricky, but nothing too convoluted. There will also be some REALLY easy questions, enjoy those and remember that you have a pretty good cushion for the hard questions. Also, the ability to logic your way through questions is huge on the test. There will be a lot of things that you have never heard of, or cannot remember, but you can often work your way through a lot of the responses and rule things out.
There will be some questions that will be worded differently than we talk about things at IU so it may take a minute to figure out what they are asking. If you get to a question that is a little confusing then take a step back and figure out what it is they are actually asking before you try to answer it. That sounds like a “duh” kind of thing but a lot of people don’t pay attention to what the question is actually asking for (see test taking strategies comment).
Also, draw pictures! This is especially important for anatomy and optics.
I know a lot of that is just general test taking strategy, but it is even more important on this test than most. If you don’t feel like you are a good test taker then I would suggest looking at test taking strategies and trying to incorporate them as much as you can. This will help you a lot in physical assessment as well.
The format of the test is 4 sessions of 3.5 hours where you will have 125 questions to answer. No one can leave before 1.75 hours, but after that you can leave whenever you want. For us the questions were in little booklets and there was a scantron-like answer sheet. I wrote all over that test book and I would suggest you do too. This may change next year because they are supposedly going to computer at some point, but that is how it was for us. There are also multiple response questions that will require you to pick multiple answers. They will tell you exact how many answers to pick something like this: “Which of the following 3 structures are anterior to the cornea? [choose 3]” Make sure you are picking the correct number of responses.
As far as actually studying for the test I would highly recommend you use the KMK book as a foundation. They do a good job of giving you a structure to work off of. There are a few mistakes in it so I suggest that if something sounds fishy then look it up. Optics is taught slightly differently at every school so you may see an equation you aren’t familiar with. I would suggest you go back to your optics notes and do things the way we are used to. As far as the KMK flashcards I would suggest you read them because there is good info, but they don’t work to quiz yourself. The Optoprep flashcards are much better for quizzing yourself and they are pretty in line with how the actual boards questions will be as far as difficulty and format. I didn’t buy Optoprep myself, but if I had been further along in my studying I think I would have picked it up. They do offer a 2 day trial but it takes a few hours to get so don’t try to use that at the last minute.
As far as specific questions I cannot tell you what was on the test, but I can talk about topics. These are the areas that mattered a lot more on the test than I thought they would:
· Bv and peds had a lot more questions than I thought it would. The visual information processing stuff in particular I was underprepared for
· Low vision. I didn’t study this all that much and it came up a lot. I would say the stuff you cover in low vision will make up the bulk (or at least a large chunk) of the optics questions. Telescopes, magnifiers, VA conversions, etc. If it’s mathematical in low vision class you should probably go over it a few times.
· Know what acronyms stand for. If you don’t see “vascular endothelial growth factor” and recognize that that is “VEGF” then you will be in trouble. Most things that we abbreviate they will spell out so you need to recognize the whole thing.
· Dr. Henderson’s neuro course will answer about 3 million questions for you. Learn it, love it. Also go back over the tests from the neuro proficiency. Almost everything in that will be covered in Henderson’s class, but it is a slightly different way of thinking about things that may stick better.
· Know where things occur and what they are made of. If they say that you see a beaten metal appearance to the cornea you need to know that it is most likely Fuch’s, but you also need to know WHY it looks like that and WHERE in the cornea things are going wrong.
· Immunology-look this over 2-3 times. Definitely know what the different cell types do.
· Visual perception and color vision had way more questions on it than I expected.
· CNS stuff- know where they are, what synapses there, and what happens if they go wrong.
· Arteries and veins- know where they go and what might happen if they were blocked.
· Pharm was a lot on side effects and autonomic actions. So the question might be something like “You would like to start you patient on madeupolol, which three of the following would be relative contraindications? [select 3]” Or something like “A 23 year old patient presents with symptoms X, Y, and Z. Which of the following medications was the likely cause?” and you would have to recognize that x, y, and z were all sympathetic system things and thus you want a sympathetic agonist or parasympathetic antagonist.
These were the sections that were surprisingly large on this test but it changes from year to year so your experience may be a little different.
*As a cover my ass comment, the example questions on here are completely made up and are meant to show you the form of questions, not any particular question. Also, I cannot discuss specific test questions, but as far as I understand from **resident boards faculty member** I am being general enough in my comments here.
Good luck!