Physics & Radbio

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Pointless

Pointless

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For those of you about to take this monster, what is everyone doing at this point? Frantically reading all of Khan and Hall?

I've taken to flipping through reviews and reading the associated sections in the aforementioned books for the questions I don't understand. That and trying to cram all of the necessary formulae somewhere into my brain. Somehow I don't feel as though I'm doing enough...

Stupid p53. :laugh:
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I never looked at any recalls last year, so can't speak to those. But this close to the exam I would concentrate on question-based review with Raphex and ASTRO study guides for radbio. I think if you're in the 70% range on those you should be ok.
 
Napoleon Dynamite-- I remember reading your posts after physics/rad bio last year, and I've been scared about this exam since then! There seems to be a wide variation with the raphex exams....the old ones seem very basic, and the more recent ones are more therapy based. Are the new ones at least representative?
 
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Yeah, I think last year was an abberration. Everyone talked to thought the exam was horrific for physics. But luckily that meant we all did equally horrible. I was 100% convinced I failed it. It was such a demoralizing exam b/c I don't think there is any way that you can prep for the squirrly questions they asked (I still don't know what the hell a circulator is despite asking multiple physicists who don't even know!).

However, for the 50% of the exam that tested concepts we should be familiar with, I think Raphex questions prepare you ok conceptually (however the questions on the exam may be a tad harder..but similar concepts).

Who knows, maybe if I would have cracked Khan I'd feel different, but I just can't stomach the thought of anyone really snuggling up with Khan to prep for the exam. My hat is off to those who did..just not my style.
 
Oh, and if anyone responsible for overseeing the exam is reading this, out of respect for those who have spent hundreds of hours prepping, could you take 5 minutes and make sure the freaking calculator works?!
 
napoleondynamite said:
Oh, and if anyone responsible for overseeing the exam is reading this, out of respect for those who have spent hundreds of hours prepping, could you take 5 minutes and make sure the freaking calculator works?!
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This year we'll be using handheld calculators.

There goes my excuse.:D
 
FYI - PearsonVue has a practice exam available to familiarize yourself with the test environment. No physics or radbio questions, but you might find it worthwhile just to see the format. www.pearsonvue.com/abr
 
Is radbio or physics the first exam?
 
I found the physics component to be extremely difficult compared with the radiobiology. The questions were just out of left field.... what did everyone else think?
 
Felt the same way! The physics questions were not very reflective of the past 2-3 years of RAPHEX.
 
Not only were they not representative of raphex, but more importantly they were largely a collection of random and arbitrary concepts and even definitions that in way test the competency of potential future board certified radiation oncologists. Who writes these questions and what is their goal?
 
oldking said:
Not only were they not representative of raphex, but more importantly they were largely a collection of random and arbitrary concepts and even definitions that in way test the competency of potential future board certified radiation oncologists. Who writes these questions and what is their goal?
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Hate to say it but.... good. Glad the rest of you feel that way and it wasn't just me. As for the writing of these questions, I really wish that they would include some MD's for review of the content, just to filter out some of the insanity that makes its way into these boards. What can you possibly ascertain regarding an individual's competence to be a radiation oncologist with garbage like this??
 
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Pointless said:
Hate to say it but.... good. Glad the rest of you feel that way and it wasn't just me. As for the writing of these questions, I really wish that they would include some MD's for review of the content, just to filter out some of the insanity that makes its way into these boards. What can you possibly ascertain regarding an individual's competence to be a radiation oncologist with garbage like this??
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I couldn't agree more! It does make me feel better that others felt it was difficult. I was feeling really deflated after I finished Physics.

It's going to be a long 3 weeks waiting for those results!!!
 
socal_med said:
I couldn't agree more! It does make me feel better that others felt it was difficult. I was feeling really deflated after I finished Physics.

It's going to be a long 3 weeks waiting for those results!!!
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Does anyone know: do we get initial P/F results and then a detailed report later, or the whole thing at once in 3 weeks? I thought I had heard that past years had gotten the coveted "P" before they got their quartiles....
 
Did others have an opportunity to study bio during their break? My center did not allow us to take anything out of our lockers during the break and expressly prohibited studying, which really sucked because a big part of my game plan was to quickly review my bio formulae & write them down when the section started. Instead, I got no review and remembered few formulae after finishing physics.
 
iradi8u said:
Did others have an opportunity to study bio during their break? My center did not allow us to take anything out of our lockers during the break and expressly prohibited studying, which really sucked because a big part of my game plan was to quickly review my bio formulae & write them down when the section started. Instead, I got no review and remembered few formulae after finishing physics.
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(Just swallowed some vomit thinking of studying between breaks)

Just remember, the vast majority pass. Also the vast majority probably have doubts they passed too!
 
I was surprised at the paucity of calculations on physics -- no activity or gap or collimator rotation calcs, or half-life calcs, nothing about equilibrium, minimal MU calculations, very little brachy -- of course, there was a Mayneord's factor question -- but seriously, it was definitely left field. The TI30XS calculator was awesome, though. I was taken aback by all the gory details on RadBio. There was only one Q on RBE, a couple testing LET/OER concepts. Mostly it was stuff that was not even close to making it to the salient points in chapter summaries. I think there's no way the majority of people scored >/= 70%. What exactly is the pass rate?

P.S. I second Napoleon's thought on studying between breaks ... emesis basin, please! For me, it would only add to my nervous tension.
 
I agree, I thought rad bio was hard this year. I think physics has been built up to be impossible, so I was happy to be able to answer some of the questions. RadBio, on the other hand, I thought was supposed to be very easy. I thought there were some poorly worded questions that made the test unnecessarily hard (like I didnt know it was possible to make a question on hypoxia hard).

Most people who do rad onc are really smart (on paper at least). Everyone is a good test taker, scoring >95th percentile on USMLEs....and the pool gets smarter every year. I wonder how it impacts the curve every year?
 
Not to be that annoying guy, but I found the tests pretty straightforward, save for a few random questions. I will agree physics was largely devoid of calculations. I was worried when I saw the eraseboard, thinking I'd burn through it all with PDD/TMR/Mayneord factor multilevel calcs, but it ended up barely used; as such time wasn't an issue. RadBio had a bit more minutiae, but fair I thought.

I studied Caggiano and Hall, essentially only. I felt 90%+ of the material on the exams was covered in enough detail in these texts to know the answer, not that I knew that many well enough, but I recognized almost everything enough to say 'shoot, I wish I hadn't glossed over that'. I didn't even get to the Raphex questions or RadBio study guides, b/c I've always felt studying random topic x on question 1 and then random topic y for question 2 is a terrible way to learn material and concepts. And I felt fine walking out of there.

Just throwing it out there as a dissenter, since I read all these posts from other years which are heavily dominated, as above, by the 'OMG it was so impossible/unfair/terrible' posts, and it got me freaking out a bit.

Not to the point that I was gonna study my RadBio notes during my break, however. I had a Snickers bar.
 
Alright, clearly cancerdancer passed and the rest of us who posted failed and are idiots! ;)

All jokes aside: I agree the test is blown out of proportion on this website. It's not utterly ridiculous or completely left-field. Study Caggiano, and Hall. The material is mostly there. For rad bio, the test is literally written by Eric Hall.

The rest comes down to be test taking, luck, and being able to discern the meaning of a poorly worded question (no amount of studying will help with that stuff). I haven't gotten my scores yet, but I'm assuming if you study and have a good fund of knowledge you should pass.

Also, know your own study habits: some people say they barely studies, and some people had a 6-month study schedule. My advice is don't listen to anyone, do what you have always done in terms of studying. It got you this far, don't switch things up now!
 
Physics – I don't want to seem arrogant or pompous but I agree that it was very straightforward. The majority of the questions I could either answer immediately or required less than 15 seconds of thought. There were less than 10 that I had to look back over and was unsure about.

I NEVER opened Khan and would not recommend that anyone do so. I read the green book once, went through Caggiano three times and did raphex. Some questions verbatim from raphex. More details to come once I get my scores. I am sure nearly everyone did fine.

RadBio – Despite feeling great after Physics, RadBio was different. Most questions were still able to be answered quickly but I went back over about 30 because it seemed that there was more than 1 acceptable answer. We shall see.

I used Hall and ASTRO exams and only peeked at Maryland powerpoints (they didn't add much and I don't think you need to attend). Some questions verbatim from ASTRO exams. Again, more details to come once I get my scores

There seemed to be ample time for both tests. My calculator was in the wrong mode and I had to figure out how to change it. This was disappointing and I hope it didn't limit anyone. Also the functionality of the calculator was not as good as I thought it would be. Probably my fault more than anything else but I would like to hear other thoughts.
 
My calculator too was in the wrong mode. They give you a few mins before starting the exam timer to play with it, so just to be sure, I did, and 'cosine 60' was displaying answers in the form ((sq3)/2) while less standard angles were coming out with crazy answers expressed as the difference between multiple square root values. I luckily went into the 'Mode' area and found one of the four modes was on some setting other than 'normal' and after switching it came back to a usable form.
I agree this was annoying/disappointing...there's no way the lady at my center would've had any clue...come on ABR...
 
BraggPeak said:
I agree, I thought rad bio was hard this year. I think physics has been built up to be impossible, so I was happy to be able to answer some of the questions. RadBio, on the other hand, I thought was supposed to be very easy. I thought there were some poorly worded questions that made the test unnecessarily hard (like I didnt know it was possible to make a question on hypoxia hard).

Most people who do rad onc are really smart (on paper at least). Everyone is a good test taker, scoring >95th percentile on USMLEs....and the pool gets smarter every year. I wonder how it impacts the curve every year?
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I could be wrong, but I don't think there is a curve. The pass rate is based upon the answering a certain percentage of questions correctly, and to some extent is based upon the percentage correct from past exams (which is why the pass rate varies from year to year). Again- I maybe wrong, but generally for these kind of tests, some questions don't count and are being tested for future examinations (to see if the % who answer correctly correlate with the % correct for the other questions).
 
I felt like both tests were fair this year. I agree that radbio seemed a little tougher... but still fair.
 
Pointless said:
I found the physics component to be extremely difficult compared with the radiobiology. The questions were just out of left field.... what did everyone else think?
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It didn't help for me that the computer crashed right in the middle of the physics portion of the test. The lady watching the monitors was completely out of it and didn't see me for a while--I had to wave both arms. She came but had no clue what happened only to tell me that the clock would continue to tick but she had no idea how to fix the problem and has to go get her supervisor. After fiddling with it for a bit, it turned out the monitor cable go disconnected. I lost at least a good 5 minutes (at least that's what she said later), but I was so rattled and so upset, the whole thing was a disaster. I didn't even finish the test. After all the prepping and all the anticipation, I cannot believe this happened. So depressing, I can't even function.
 
sanadkaram said:
It didn't help for me that the computer crashed right in the middle of the physics portion of the test. The lady watching the monitors was completely out of it and didn't see me for a while--I had to wave both arms. She came but had no clue what happened only to tell me that the clock would continue to tick but she had no idea how to fix the problem and has to go get her supervisor. After fiddling with it for a bit, it turned out the monitor cable go disconnected. I lost at least a good 5 minutes (at least that's what she said later), but I was so rattled and so upset, the whole thing was a disaster. I didn't even finish the test. After all the prepping and all the anticipation, I cannot believe this happened. So depressing, I can't even function.
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That's awful. I'm sure they would take that into consideration, should the results not come back in your favor. That's enough to rattle anyone... sorry.
 
When do we expect scores out? 3 weeks from Thursday or will it be Friday since that's when people took he clinicals?

I forgot about it, but remembered when I logged into pay my ABR fees!
 
BraggPeak said:
When do we expect scores out? 3 weeks from Thursday or will it be Friday since that's when people took he clinicals?

I forgot about it, but remembered when I logged into pay my ABR fees!
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My money is on the Monday after, just to extend the pain through another weekend.
 
I just checked online and results have still not been posted!
 
The ABR is in Arizona. They probably get to work at 9, which is around now.
 
It's 5 in arizona. I guess we have to wait until Monday :(
 
I called on Thursday(because the ABR was kind enough to send me an email on Thursday at noon that had NOTHING to do with the boards) and was told, "Well, we're HOPING to get them to you all next week. We've just had a big move downstairs from upstairs in our building, so that has made things more difficult for us. Plus, the results still need to be subjected to our extra scoring measures, so it takes a while."

Then I was told the letter we received at Pearson on ABR letterhead must have been generated by Pearson because the ABR wouldn't have told us our results would be ready in 3 weeks.

So I guess we wait the same amount of time as usual & the 3 weeks mirage was exactly that. Anything sooner than 5 weeks is a gift.
 
Typical. Well I guess I wint be nervous for tomorrow....
 
I passed! So relieved. For future test takers I recommend reading the 2009 Stanton & Stinton Physics Book as well as the Physics & Technology of Radiation Therapy by McDermott & Orton. I skimmed through the new Khan textbook but as many previous threads have mentioned this book is pretty much overkill.
 
Passed here as well.

I used caggiano, hall and the astro questions. Maryland was useful for making me realize I should remember to study, but that's about it.

Glad to be done with this one! Now I can officially never care about Dq, D0, ku70., etc!
 
"Passed Phys and Bio"... sweetest fragment sentence I will ever see.
 
Congrats to those who passed!! Any other recommendations for textbook and/or review sources that were more high yield for study purposes?
 
For those of you who only have the course once, I would definitely lightly browse through physics material at some point in january of february. I didnt start studying until mid-May and had literally not looked at physics material since i was a first year, which made studying more stressful. I personally thought the Raphex exams were helpful. The study guide was updated in 2009 from the ABR and the Raphex exam was modified then as well. So, I would do recent raphex exams (the ones from early 2000s are not as helpful, but but 2009-2012 are good).

Also, a lof of people spend a lot of time studying concepts such as as x-ray production, mu calcs, and x-ray interaction. this is all important, but i think treatment planning, dosimetry, image-guidance techniques are emphasized a lot more.

For Rad Bio, if you read hall and do the ASTRO study guide (3 years) you will pass. The Rabex exams are a rip off and not worth your time.

The exams are fair, some questions willl seem off the wall, but if you dont freak out and read the questions and make an educated guess, you will do well.
 
Anyone get their detailed results from the 2012 exam yet?
 
Nope. ABR says it will be mailed out at the end of the month... as in, approximately 3 months after administration of the test.
 
Got my results letter today. Too bad I hardly care about that exam now...
 
are you given/permitted a formula sheet for physics? :laugh:

or do you need to memorize hundreds of equations? :mad:

thanks!
 
brendav said:
are you given/permitted a formula sheet for physics? :laugh:

or do you need to memorize hundreds of equations? :mad:

thanks!
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Are you kidding?? You can't take anything into the test. The test center guys are hardcore . . . at my facility you had to show your ID and submit to a hand-print ID before they would let you back from a bathroom break.
 
Gfunk6 said:
Are you kidding?? You can't take anything into the test. The test center guys are hardcore . . . at my facility you had to show your ID and submit to a hand-print ID before they would let you back from a bathroom break.
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lol i guess not. thanks!
 
I always thought it was more helpful to see how people scored and then look at what they studied. I haven't seen that alot here. Perhaps others will contibute to make this thread more helpful? I loosely started all of this in mid-February.

I scored in the upper quartile in both RadBio and Physics.

RadBio:
Really no instruction at my program.
Read Hall about 4 times.
Did most recent three years of ASTRO exams and wet back over questions I missed or thought were good.
Didn't go to Maryland but the lectures would have probably helped clarify or point out some things. (Still would not go if I had it to do over again).

Thoughts: I think Hall is all you need and ASTRO exams help send it home. Those two resources are all you need. There were some questions that you could not answer based on Hall text but I am not sure were else you would get this information.

Physics:
Some in-formal instruction at my program.
Did not use Kahn at all and would not use it if I could go back.
Read Stanton and Stenson as a review before getting started and it is definitely worth it.
Used Caggiano notes and went through them about 4 times.
Did about ten years worth of Raphex (the older exams really solidify some of the basic concepts and in my opinion are worth it).

Thoughts: Stanton & Stenson as review and for simplification when needed. Caggiano and Raphex should cover it. Wish I had never purchased Kahn as I haven’t opened it since first year. Very reasonable exam.
 
RadOncMegatron said:
Anybody else missing fireworks b/c of what's going to happen on 7/11/14...? :thumbdown:
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Get used to it. Not being heartless but you'll miss the next two Springs of your life and it only gets worse with oral boards.

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel :luck:
 
Could anyone out there comment on what percent correct of the Raphex/Radbio questions is a good target?
 
I'd say ~70%. However I thought Raphex was easier than the exam
 
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