Is UW High-Yield?

Interesting question.

Looking forward to the responses.....

As in, if you used UW as your primary source of review (without FA or another book) and just knew 95% of its contents cold?

I would not recommend that strategy for Step I, although I did not use UW.

tony montana said:

As in, FA + UW

But all of it, not just know the answer to the questions but master all the concepts in its explanations.

Just trying to KISS (keep it simple stupid) it.

Click to expand...

Try it out and let us know ..kinda like the real scientists back in the day who would infect themselves in their search for the truth ...

It'd be your eureka moment ....Seriously though you can try the experimental method - take nbme 3 , then study your FA and UW only for 2 weeks and retake nbme 3 or another nbme and see if there's any marked improvement ...

I wish I could have been of more assitance - I'm in your shoes ... Its disheartening because 400 something views on your post and less than a handful responses ....

Btw..I like the idea of keeping it simple ... thats einstein's way
ok I have to go now before you try and introduce me to your little friend

lord_jeebus said:

As in, if you used UW as your primary source of review (without FA or another book) and just knew 95% of its contents cold?

I would not recommend that strategy for Step I, although I did not use UW.

Click to expand...

Lord_jeebus and (anyone of the 260+ scorers),

why? and do you think that would work for NBME? I dont want to experiment, just want to know what your reasoning is. Technically, given the predictive value of the tests, they should encompass pretty much all of the material, and one should be able to get a 98%ile if one WERE to know the stuff REALLY cold (which is all relative, of course....). Care to share your thoughts?

Time said:

Lord_jeebus and (anyone of the 260+ scorers),

why? and do you think that would work for NBME? I dont want to experiment, just want to know what your reasoning is. Technically, given the predictive value of the tests, they should encompass pretty much all of the material, and one should be able to get a 98%ile if one WERE to know the stuff REALLY cold (which is all relative, of course....). Care to share your thoughts?

Click to expand...

Mastering a small set (yes 2000 Qs is a small set) of practice questions, no matter what their predictive value, does not make you a master of the much larger set of testable material.

I don't really have a good answer to this question either, although I agree it's interesting.

For what it's worth, I can offer my observations thus far. So far I've done about 20% of Uworld in tutor mode, w/ FA open in front in me so I can annotate info into it. Based on this small sample I would estimate that the answers to at least 75% of the questions I've done so far could be found somewhere in FA. Since the info in Uworld seems to overlap a great deal with the info in FA, I would infer that UWorld is hitting the high yield points.

In my prep so far, I've found that the two resources complement each other very well. There is no way that UW can cover every fact presented in FA, but conversely, just regurgitating every fact in FA doesn't seem to be enough to do well on this test. UW gives you a chance to see how you need to recall and apply the that info when faced with a question. I guess I'll see how well it works out in May...

I think just knowing FA and UW is really not enough.

2000+ Q is a relatively small qbank to go off of. I would increase my qbank knowledge to expand at least 4000+. But I'm not sure if that is even enough. I would like to do as many questions as possible until I take my exam.

That being said, if you knew FA cold, backwards and forwards. You would still need the ability to connect concepts together in which FA does not do. To me it just gives you a bunch of high-yield facts and you are expected to know these and regurgitate them at will.

The questions help tho, but only 2000+ is not good enough for me.

.

lord_jeebus said:

Mastering a small set (yes 2000 Qs is a small set) of practice questions, no matter what their predictive value, does not make you a master of the much larger set of testable material.

Click to expand...

Thanks.

g6pddfishnc said:

Supplementing with QBank sounds like a good idea.

Click to expand...

You might want to consider adding a review book rather than "supplementing" with yet another Qbank. USMLE World + Kaplan QBank is a lot of questions. Personally I found that combining some questions with some review was the most helpful. FA alone is definitely not enough, and in my opinion FA + questions is not enough either. Questions are great, but after you do a block of 50 you have to review all the answers and explanations if you really want to learn from it, so it could get very tedious if that were your main source of information. I just can't imagine spending 8 hours a day doing questions! For me, that would have been 4 blocks of questions and 4 hours of reviewing the answers..yuck. Maybe you have more stamina than I do, though.

In addition to FA and USMLE World, I used BRS Path and BRS Phys, which are both concise but readable and helped me put things into context. For me that was important -- learning to switch gears quickly by doing random timed questions is great practice for the exam, but reviewing from the books is what really helped solidify the important concepts. Other review books covering pathology and physiology would probably work equally well if you like the style better.

Edited to add: to answer the original question, yes UW is very high yield. I saw many many questions on the real exam that were very similar to questions on UW. It's great preparation for the exam, but as I said above you will want to have a couple other resources to review.

.

g6pddfishnc said:

Well yes, this can also be very true. Mudphud from what I remember got a very high score, so I would definitely heed this advice. You can work with some very highly recommended books such as BRS Physio/Behavioral/Path (or RR), CMMRS, HY Neuro and Cell and Mol Bio, something for Immuno, Lippincott's for Pharm and Biochem, Lange series, etc. You can choose which areas you need more reference in and select a good resource for those.

You would need to consider your study style and the type of learner you are. Do you prefer to do many questions and learn from them? Do you need to read review books? Maybe a combination of these? Which subjects are you strong in and which need more work?

Also are you generally a good test taker? There was a post from another high scorer (RangerD), who described making a spreadsheet from the questions with high yield info pinpointing areas of strength and weakness and how to work and reason through the questions, so that the logic could be applied to the real questions on the exam. This might be an advantage to doing more questions, in particular if you feel that you need more practice. Also, I guess you build more confidence in answering questions (even with the uncertainty while taking the real exam) and also you can work on timing and pacing.

Click to expand...

Ok , so lets get this right - is it better to just do UW or is someone better off doing BOTH . I was told to complete 4000 questions - UW and Qbank ..
but come to think about it ..mudphud and others are making sense when they say limit the prep to UW ...what says the other experts ?

So cute , long Dong , Taus , PeepShow, Lanky , Basupran et al ..please weigh in on this interesting topic ...

.

Interesting thread

My first thought when I read the title to this thread was "yes." And then I thought about the other question banks out there *cough* Kaplan *cough*., and compared to those my answer is now "hell yes". Seriously, though, there were very few questions on UW when I thought "no way will I have to know that." UW + FA would probably not be enough, but just get a couple more review books and you're on your way to a respectable score.

The Buff said:

My first thought when I read the title to this thread was "yes." And then I thought about the other question banks out there *cough* Kaplan *cough*., and compared to those my answer is now "hell yes". Seriously, though, there were very few questions on UW when I thought "no way will I have to know that." UW + FA would probably not be enough, but just get a couple more review books and you're on your way to a respectable score.

Click to expand...

this seems to be the way to go

tony montana said:

Aight peoples,


NBME 1 = 370

Let's see if my strategy pays off, will report post-prep the next NBMEs wish me the best.

Tony

Click to expand...

we wish u a very scientifically sound undertaking ....

tony montana said:

BTW is it true FA pharm is more than enough?

Click to expand...

I would say it is just enough. Nothing in excess, very few deficiencies.

Those could also be "experimental questions". At least, that's what I'm telling myself any time I see a question that makes me go WTF?...

osli said:

Those could also be "experimental questions". At least, that's what I'm telling myself any time I see a question that makes me go WTF?...

Click to expand...

haha, if that's the case my exam is gonna have like 100 experimental questions.

surebreC said:

I also had a question on healthcare systems which wasn't covered in anything (including my classes).

Click to expand...

I had one too: it was on capitation. Luckily my school had a health care policy class. Definitely not something I was expecting to see on the boards, though!

Do you guys really recommend doing all of Qbank and all of USMLEworld?
I have about 6 weeks before my exam and I've done about 15% of Qbank and 5% of USMLEworld. I'm reviewing first aid right now. Which question bank would you recommend that I proceed with?

Pewl said:

Do you guys really recommend doing all of Qbank and all of USMLEworld?
I have about 6 weeks before my exam and I've done about 15% of Qbank and 5% of USMLEworld. I'm reviewing first aid right now. Which question bank would you recommend that I proceed with?

Click to expand...

UW.

surebreC said:

Forget QBank and do UW. UW was quite similar to my actual exam and the explanations are excellent.

btw, my UW Self Assessment score was pretty close to the actual thing - I'd reccommend it!

Click to expand...

Cool, thanks for the recommendation. I think I might do UW Self Assessment instead of a 3rd NBME. Cheaper, and get to see answers/explanations.

Is it just one UW self-assessment? Or or there multiple forms?

And do they just use the questions from their qbank or is it a whole different set?

Thanks!!

surebreC said:

Forget QBank and do UW. UW was quite similar to my actual exam and the explanations are excellent.

btw, my UW Self Assessment score was pretty close to the actual thing - I'd reccommend it!

Click to expand...

Is it really advisable to forget Qbank totally? For some reason Qbank seems to be more popular at my school. But nonetheless I have heard such great things about UW. My plan is kinda to get through most of Qbank now, and just do nothing but UW for the last week or so.

Yeah, for some reason my school is all about Qbank, as well. I did most of Qbank and switched to UWorld last week, and I'm lovin' it.