I just knocked out the Kaplan QBank (~100 Qs/day x ~1 month). I made all annotations into FA in orange ink so I know in the future exactly where they've come from. Looking back at my FA now, there is quite a bit of orange in there, so quantitatively speaking, Kaplan has been fairly educational.
For a while, I had heard that Kaplan loves minutiae and that the QBank question-style is very different from that found on the real exam. To that effect, I had never really been excited to do Kaplan QBank, but rather just knew it was something that I'd have to "check off" accordingly in order to progress with my prep. Back in May, I had finished the QBook, 5th ed, and I had definitely felt at the time that Kaplan had help up to its reputation of catering to the minutiae (my review of the QBook, from a while ago:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=917952). However to my surprise, Kaplan QBank actually
seems disparate relative to the QBook. I found that it doesn't overly cater to small details, but that it can
appear that way if you are still early-on in your prep. For instance, when I had first gone through the QBook, quite a few of the questions seemed obscure or heavily detail-oriented, but by the time I got to the QBank, because I had already encountered some of the concepts before, I realized that the material tested isn't overly pedantic; it's just that the QBank is a very difficult one, relatively speaking, and requires a strong foundation/background before tackling it. If on the other hand you choose to grapple it earlier on in MS2 (or even MS1), then yeah, some of the questions will seem overly ridiculous, but they're really not that bad.
My cumulative performance on the QBank was 81% (84% on the QBook, 94% on FA Q&A, 85% on GT QBank, 85% on USMLE Rx). I list those percentages in order to illustrate the relative difficulties of the question resources. I had done Kaplan QBank
after all of the latter, and the % was still the lowest.
Cons:
I didn't find the Kaplan interface/platform very user-friendly at all. I found that whenever I entered a two-part question, the screen would zoom-in and either I wouldn't be able to read all of the answer choices or it wouldn't let me select one, even though I'd click on the letter a million times. This forced me to omit about 6 questions total on the QBank. I would then need to exit the block and re-enter it in order to restore the magnification settings. Ctrl(-) never worked for me. I know this doesn't happen with everyone, and perhaps it's my computer, but I had never had a problem with USMLE Rx when I had gone through it (my review of USMLE Rx / FA Q&A:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=912135).
Of the 3000 total questions, I had encountered probably around 20 notable errors. Perhaps I hadn't searched hard enough, but as far as I could tell, there was nowhere to submit a comment. Even worse, all of the questions (at the end of the explanations) would
very commonly say something along the lines of "
last updated: 02/24/10," and I'd just be thinking to myself, "there's clearly an error here and nobody's corrected it in 2.5 years because there's no comment box." My impression is that Kaplan feels they've already perfected their QBank and they don't have anyone actively working on modifying
current questions. There were quite a few times that they didn't have %correct information alongside the explanations because some of the questions were supposedly new, but for all other questions that were not just introduced, they hadn't been updated in years.
It is very difficult to cross out answer choices on this QBank.
Many times I would click an incorrect answer choice to cross it out, and perhaps only one of the seven written words would actually have a line through it. Then, because I'm OCD, I would click on all seven words independently just so the entire answer choice would be crossed out. In the end, I assume this isn't the biggest deal in the world, but for the arrow questions, being able to cross stuff out right away makes things much easier.
Sometimes my internet would be perfectly fine (i.e. all other websites would be quickly loading), but when I'd click to go to the next question, the interface wouldn't load properly and I'd have to exit and re-enter in order to access the subsequent questions. However that's only part of it. On several occasions, upon re-entering, it would
subtract several minutes from the clock, which I would find a bit ridiculous. It even became a game after a while: the interface wouldn't load, I'd look and see the clock says ~16 minutes, then I'd be forced to close it and re-enter, and the clock would then say ~12 minutes.
There are far fewer biostats questions compared to USMLE Rx. Biostats is not one of my strengths, and I had wished there were more questions in this subject area on the QBank.
There are page numbers listed for where to turn in FA, but these are given as a list and not by topic (i.e. alongside an explanation, it might just say "FA pp. 426, 434, 438, 524, 562"), so whenever I had referenced FA, I had done so based off of my prior knowledge of where to turn to, versus the QBank actually having helped to direct me. USMLE Rx had PrntScr images straight from FA alongside their explanations; Kaplan doesn't. This might be a Copyrights issue, but Kaplan would be better if they had that feature, or at least something very similar with respect to their Kaplan notes or Medessentials!
Pros:
Kaplan nails behavioral science extremely well. There are copious amounts of "which of the following is the most appropriate response?" or "what is the next best step in management?"-type questions. I had finished both BRS and HY Behavioral Science (my review of those resources:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=12613303), however, behavioral science was still my weakest area in Kaplan QBank. This could be because the next-step scenario questions can be tricky, or it's likely that I'm just behavioral science-inept.
Molecular biology lab techniques and microbiology are also done very well by this QBank. These are two areas that are more detail-oriented, but the heavy focus is for a reason. I've definitely learned a lot in these two subjects through Kaplan. USMLE Rx covered the basics nicely, but Kaplan helps to reinforce some "top-up" details that you've likely overlooked or just haven't heard of before. I also don't feel any of the information is particularly low-yield; it's more just difficult.
Physiology is also very good and there are lots of graph- and arrow-questions. This is certainly a strength of Kaplan QBank in the sense that you actually have to use your brain and not just rapid-click to the next question.
I would recommend reading all of the explanations. There were times when I was tempted to skip over some parts of them on questions I had gotten correct because I felt I had already seen the concept a million times, but then I'd notice in the last line, for instance, that Kaplan would mention something I hadn't heard of before. So definitely read/skim everything. Occasionally you'll find that they'll elucidate a mechanism that you had been wondering about for two years and had never had explained to you before.
There were plenty of CT scans and images in this QBank. I'm considering PrntScreening the images into a master file to review the day or two before the real exam.
Bottom line:
Kaplan QBank is overall a relatively challenging question resource. There is a heightened focus on molecular lab techniques and microbiology that delivers a strong breadth of foundational knowledge in these areas. The physiology and behavioral science are also very good, excepting the fact that biostatistics is comparatively de-emphasized. The explanations are great ~20% of the time, good ~40% of the time, and then average and poor ~30 and 10% of the time, respectively.
I had sat NBME3 the day before having started Kaplan QBank. I scored 250. During the first few blocks of the QBank, I had encountered two questions that were
almost identical to two that I had gotten wrong on the NBME the previous day. Therefore, I realized that if I had gone through Kaplan QBank first, I would have had those questions correct. This means that Kaplan QBank is beneficial for helping to bridge beyond 250+, and therefore I highly recommend it. I have likely gained 7-12 additional questions correct on my future USMLE having gone through this QBank.
