2008 Step takers- "2008 FA is deficient in ..."

good thoughts....anyone for more feedback?

 

Pathology....nuff said. Nearly all subjects of pathology it's not enough in my opinion. Also I thought perhaps the molecular biology it's not enough as well.

 

Was it that they didn't include all of the diseases necessary or that there wasn't enough detail about them. (or both) I'm using RR Path to fill in the gaps, but I'm finding that theres a HUGE amount of additional material.... I don't know how much of which is important.

And what about anatomy? It seems like theres not much anatomy in FA.

 

I just finished Biochem for a full week - if you KNOW your biochem and have retained it all from 1st term med., its a great review, but if you're like me and really needed to refresh on just about every Biochem. topic, it's not nearly enough....it will give you a diagram of eg. fatty acid synth and degredation, but with virtua;;y no explanation as to what exactly is happening and what gets transported where....I supplemented FA biochem with Rapid Review Biochem. and it helped tons

I personally have not felt that Path is deficient - I am still going to supplement it with RR though

Overall, it's probably good to have a reference for every subject to fill in any gaps FA leaves

 

Yes there is a lot more in RR Path compared to FA, and I essentially used it exclusively for my path. I felt for the real thing, if I would of just used FA, I would of been up a crick. Also Path was my strongest subject when I got results for the test and I really feel like that was due to Goljan/RR path, not FA. My 0.02, take it or leave it. GL

 

any more recent test takers with advice for all of us still at it --

For the recent test takers - if you could have gone through one more book which would it be? FA or RR again?.... HY molec? Anatomy? thank you!

 

Freaking Shoddy A$$ Index!!!!!!!

 

FA doesn't have pelvic plexus!!! This is the one thing I wished I'd looked at a few times before my exam.... although i would have been too tired to do that anyways after one and a half month of studying haha......

 

My own personal opinion is that first aid was geared more towards covering test questions on the NBMEs than for my version of the step.

In the end, the usefullness of first aid depends since all step 1 exams are different. That's my opinion.

 

x 1000.

 

I took it today too and think nearly everything that was in my exam was on FA. Can't say for sure of course, but the majority definitely was.

My problem with FA (and RR Path for that matter) is that I have a hard time reading "high yield facts" and retaining them. Packing a whole ton of random facts into my head just didn't work real well. I found that reading through BRS Path helped me a lot. I also read through a Cell Bio board prep book (I think it was BRS) recently and that helped me a lot. It was all real basic stuff, most of which wasn't in FA, and a lot of which helped me answer a few more questions on the test - maybe it wasn't NECESSARY, but it did help me understand a few things better (since I had forgotten so much since the first part of first year), and I can honestly say that if I hadn't read it, I would've gotten at least 5 questions (maybe more) wrong.

I was also glad that I went back through biochem (FA was enough) before the exam because that probably gave me another 5-10 questions as well.

 

Everything IMO. FA and UW sufficiently cover pharm and the majority of biochem, but other than that they are just not enough. At the very least, I would add a goljan and a neuroanatomy book.

 

There were a lot of questions on my test that dealt with CT scans and having to know what structure they were pointing to or what was the pathology...not much of that in first aid. Also I had quite a few developmental questions on what genes were involved in what processes which i had no clue about. but for pharm and biochem i would say everything on my test was in first aid.

 

thanks everyone - very helpful indeed. keep the suggestions coming!

you are right lilnoelle -- it is tough to just memorize facts - but after a few times the connections/integrations start to become evident -- and it is really amazing that FA seems to be enough for biochem. the most daunting subject for me by far.

recap:
HY Cell/Molec
HY Neuro
CT images -- maybe some CXRs?

 

Yeah.... its hard to know how to prepare. Every test is different, and I think the tools you need will vary based on what kind of score you seek. Getting a great score will probably require more than FA. Looking back though.... the questions I didn't know - I just didn't know and doubt any amount of additional study would've given me a bunch more points. However, there were certainly questions that I knew something about, but didn't maybe know enough detail and therefore I could only narrow my choices down and make an educated guess. Obviously if I had known a little more detail, then I could've added quite a few more points that way. I can't blame that on FA though - rather that I DIDN'T have FA memorized front to back.
FA has a huge amount of information, memorizing it alone is quite a formidable task.
And for that matter - I don't think memorizing FA is enough - I think that understanding the general concepts and being able to apply it is probably more important than memorizing the material. There were really very few questions on the test in which strict memorization was enough to answer the question.

Anyway.... I'm not pretending to be an expert. I went into the test thinking it was going to be a disaster because I DIDN'T have enough memorized.

It turned out that I psyched myself up over nothing. The test turned out to be fine. I'm not going to claim a great score, but it wasn't the disaster that I thought it was going to be.