Yeah that was uh, well, yeah. I wouldn't go so far as to say the exam was unfair- all topics , spare 2 questions, were fair game topic wise. I'm *pretty* sure I passed, as many questions I was 50/50 on in my answer choice turned out to be correct when I frantically looked them up after the exam.
Overall, I just feel the exam was not an appropriate metric for assessing whether the student meets 'minimum competency' standards.
If it was a percentile ranked exam than these levels of difficulty would be necessary to differentiate the good from the great, but if the goal is to make sure a student is above an established minimum threshold- I feel there will be several students who do not pass that are certainly minimally competent, but weren't able to show it due to the nature of the exam.
On another note, on questions I absolutely knew the correct answer, there were several cases where multiple answer choices would have sufficed, and it was about choosing the 'best' option. Again, this is the type of question that doesn't lend itself to weeding out the incompetents, and a few that a student could have a legitimate beef over. Subject specific comments:
Micro- I did all of sketchy micro and it definitely helped, but it seemed a lot of question stems were really lacking for indicators- so much so I felt the proper answer was often 'not enough evidence to make an informed clinical decision', but that was never an option. There was often one very minor detail that would indicate the correct answer, but frankly I felt it was overkill in terms of level of difficulty.
LEA- Ligaments and bones. Inside and out.
Gross- another head scratcher. Very few gimmes.
Physio- hit and miss. lots of easy ones, lots of WTF.
Pharm- I thought this was the hardest. Seemed like every question was secondary or tertiary. Often you had to recognize what drug class was appropriate for patient profile, and then answer in a second layer of knowledge, like mechanism of action or contraindication. Also felt they avoided many of the well known agents.
Histo/Neuro- hardly any. Barely studied for these, and glad I didn't.
Biochem- hardly any 'rate limiting enzyme' questions. Lots of intermediary substrates/products.
Path- know your cancer causing cells and where they are found.
TL;DR- probably in the clear, but don't feel that exam is the best representation of minimum competency due to level of difficulty.
