ABR 2021 Dates announced later today

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trainee said:
Lol, why not? Still have 4 months for oral boards. Is that enough?
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Although it would be painful to study for two tests back-to-back, I would definitely consider it so I could move on with life earlier. 4 months coming off the clinical writtens is probably enough, since there is probably a lot of overlap in the material you study.
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w00tz said:
Although it would be painful to study for two tests back-to-back, I would definitely consider it so I could move on with life earlier. 4 months coming off the clinical writtens is probably enough, since there is probably a lot of overlap in the material you study.
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i like your positive attitude - agreed, the material would be fresh!
 
2019 grad here.
I wasn't selected for the pilot test as the "response was overwhelming"
So I take it in May and only get one chance in 2020. How do they decide who gets to take it in March anyways?
 
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Got this message today. I believe this means my exam is canceled and I will have to take the April one. Anyone else in this boat?


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Same here. Couldn't find anything else open, so I guess that means April ...
 
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maruchan said:
California
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Wow. You can come take it in Ohio (and risk getting COVID)! - I feel like corona is raging here in the Midwest, but no government wants to risk shutting things down again even if that's what we need right now... and I doubt PearsonVue will cancel/reschedule if there isn't a governmental order.
 
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I can confirm some of my friends in NY area also had their test site cancelled
 
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This is not going away for months. This test will hang over many lives. This is nuts.
 
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Ray D. Ayshun said:
I'll be prepped for the deluge of cancers affecting male external genitalia when it finally hits.
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Besides fallopian tube carcinoma staging, i am hearing left foreskin staging will get you a few points too. Obscure picky ovarian question will definitely show up as well.
 
After nearly two years in the real world (by the time orals actually ? hopefully ? happen) all the obscure testable stuff has left my brain.

The real world non-testable situations, though, hopefully I can now pass that section. Oh wait it doesn't exist. Allow me to freshen up on my rhabdo groups and the brachy scripts that I never actually do in real life...
 
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Man, mentally I thought I had prepared myself for this, but to see it actually start happening less than two weeks out from writtens is terrifying. I checked with my friends, who are all taking either RadBio/Physics or Clinical in locations that are not California or New York, and we haven't been canceled right now - though all of us (myself included) are scheduled to take it in locations which are politically similar to Cali/NY.

I'm exhausted. Do you guys want to hear about rounded MLC edges or what CHK2 does? No? :shrug:
 
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Wow, beyond frustrating and demoralizing. Can't imagine having this rescheduled again and so close to the exam.
 
The dakota territories may end up being a wonderful destination for the ABR test. No masks to bother you as you take the test and nobody around. Quite the winter wonderland as you walk out of your test. Good skiing near a fracking town.
 
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My exam in a rural center has thus far remained uncancelled. The testing centers in the major cities closest to me weren't accepting testees throughout this whole process, so maybe this is a silver lining to having to drive multiple hours for my testing location?
 
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thecarbonionangle said:
The dakota territories may end up being a wonderful destination for the ABR test. No masks to bother you as you take the test and nobody around. Quite the winter wonderland as you walk out of your test. Good skiing near a fracking town.
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Bring your own ventilator, i hear they are running low, however
 
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Also, I feel like there is a high likelihood that this will throw off the scoring of the written exams. I had a conversation with someone who used to volunteer for the ABR Angoff exam process today, and they confirmed that questions which end up being "bad" (in part based on the breakdown of who got it right/wrong) are thrown out.

With how this is evolving, it's clear that:

1) Not everyone signed up to take in-person exams in December to begin with
2) December exams are now being canceled due to COVID entirely at the discretion of individual cities and states
3) April remote exams are possible
4) August remote exams are possible

What if we only get 25-50% of eligible test takers sitting for the exam in December? Will that be a statistically representative sample to appropriately evaluate potentially problematic questions? Same, then, for April and August exams.

I didn't ask how many questions are "thrown out" on any given exam on any given year, so perhaps it's very few and this is me being paranoid (I'm being paranoid anyway, I admit).

I'd like to imagine the ABR has considered this in their meetings they Tweet about having, but who knows. While 200 RadOnc residents graduating a year is too many for the job market, that's very few for exam metrics, compared to the several thousand Diagnostic Radiology residents taking exams.
 
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thecarbonionangle said:
The dakota territories may end up being a wonderful destination for the ABR test. No masks to bother you as you take the test and nobody around. Quite the winter wonderland as you walk out of your test. Good skiing near a fracking town.
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The Dakotas should advertise on the ASTRO and ABR websites. "Your home for ABR certification exams, regardless of the circumstances. Only goodwill and charity required, masks optional."
 
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Ray D. Ayshun said:
Speaking of nuts, this perpetual half-assed studying will make me expert at staging seminomas.
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i literally laughed out loud - and penile cancer?? i have a nice mental diagram of how the urethra courses through it and of the layers of the testes ("some darn englishman called it the testes")
 
Now that we've made it to Sunday, December 6th, 2020: good luck to everyone attempting to take what might be the last in-person exams tomorrow and Tuesday! I obviously have a lot of opinions about trying to study for - and take - exams of this style during a pandemic while the very structure of our lives and training has been so vastly different than everyone else's experience, but instead of taking the time to write that, I'm just going to watch this video seventeen more times before I make a long drive and check into a hotel:

 
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I thought I had it rough, good luck... I can’t imagine the level of stress you guys are having!
 
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Ray D. Ayshun said:
Anybody take phys/radbio today? I heard there were a few more states that shut things down.
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Yup, I would guess several dozen of us took one or both today (just a guess based on Twitter and personal conversations/experiences, I can only vouch for maybe 10-15 from my real-life connections).

Mudit did a Twitter poll a few weeks ago, it seems like maybe only 60-70% of people were willing to roll the dice today taking one/both in-person, the scoring of these exams will be real interesting (hopefully there's enough of a population for their system to flag and review problematic questions).
 
elementaryschooleconomics said:
Yup, I would guess several dozen of us took one or both today (just a guess based on Twitter and personal conversations/experiences, I can only vouch for maybe 10-15 from my real-life connections).

Mudit did a Twitter poll a few weeks ago, it seems like maybe only 60-70% of people were willing to roll the dice today taking one/both in-person, the scoring of these exams will be real interesting (hopefully there's enough of a population for their system to flag and review problematic questions).
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maybe they'll be reasonable...
 
Ray D. Ayshun said:
maybe they'll be reasonable...
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Yeah hopefully. Obviously these exams and their merit - or lack thereof - have been discussed extensively here. I would personally hope that my hundreds and hundreds of hours of studying while COVID raged, the entire structure of our training shifted to accommodate the pandemic resulting in the absolute obliteration of protected study time for most of us, board dates in flux, having to travel long distances and stay at hotels/with friends/family for a chance to take these exams, all while trying to find jobs in a market that's bad for everyone, let alone RadOnc - I would hope there was some grace in the scoring process.


:shrug:
 
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Does anybody have any information about the usual mock oral courses doing virtual programs for 2021? I would imagine that would be a slam dunk easy moneymaker for these places.
I haven't seen anything on this site mentioned about it.
I had signed up for Kansas before everything went down.
 
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