AMBOSS for Shelf Exams & MS3?

[pistachio17]

So AMBOSS gave a presentation to our med school today, and from what I gathered, it's designed to be a comprehensive, single resource for MS3, including a Qbank and Library. They are based in Germany and used as the primary resource for students and physicians across Europe. There's a lot of convenient features - highlighting, overlays on imaging, high yield modes for the library, etc. - but I can't imagine using this in place of Step Up to Medicine or UWorld or Pretest and so on.

AMBOSS

Has anyone ever heard of AMBOSS and/or have any thoughts on it?

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[Redpancreas]

So AMBOSS gave a presentation to our med school today, and from what I gathered, it's designed to be a comprehensive, single resource for MS3, including a Qbank and Library. They are based in Germany and used as the primary resource for students and physicians across Europe. There's a lot of convenient features - highlighting, overlays on imaging, high yield modes for the library, etc. - but I can't imagine using this in place of Step Up to Medicine or UWorld or Pretest and so on.

AMBOSS

Has anyone ever heard of AMBOSS and/or have any thoughts on it?

OP, there are two types of resources you need as a 3rd year medical student. There's an index/reference and for you that's UptoDate, MedBullets, or First AID. Then there's the book that will ask you questions and get you to think the way you need to for third year shelf exams. AMBOSS looks OK, but it's not a replacement for anything and kind of resembles MedBullets. Ignore it and do what you were going to do before.

 

[sofakingood]

I just used amboss for my OBGYN shelf and it covered it pretty well. I can outline some pros/cons for you:
PRO
+IMO Questions are of the same quality as UW questions.
+Have their own notes that are annotated well and are easy to navigate through when going through Questions (unlike UW)
+Better notes than medbullets
+Have 1418 questions and they add about 200-300 new questions each month
+Currently have questions for these shelf exams: obgyn, psych, internal, surgery, peds, neuro, emergency. Each one has about 250 questions (with the exception of surgery and IM which have 500+ q that overlap with the other subjects).


CONS
-Less IM questions than UW
-They are still pretty new so they are filling in the gaps with new notes, questions, and videos. I supplement with First Aid or Clinical Cases just to make sure I fill in the gaps that Amboss might miss. Their biggest weakness right now for me is their pharmacology in certain subjects isn't detailed
-Don't have flashcards. This is more of a personal preferences since I liked firecracker.

 

[Tashaaaa]

I used Amboss for my german medical boards 4 years ago and I loved it. I am curious how it will work out for USMLE Step 2.

 

[666670]

I just took family med shelf and AMBOSS was total garbage

 

[Hyahh15]

I liked AMBOSS and specifically used it for rotations where UW didn't offer a lot of questions (ie surgery). Some of my friends used the knowledge app thing (I was never smart enough to get this going) and swear by it.

 

[Gorne]

I liked AMBOSS and specifically used it for rotations where UW didn't offer a lot of questions (ie surgery). Some of my friends used the knowledge app thing (I was never smart enough to get this going) and swear by it.

I did the same thing for surgery, worked out great. I only used the questions for surgery and they were legit but the hidden gem is the library / learning cards.

The learning cards are fantastic. Used for step 2 and was MUCH better than stepup2trash, firstaid, MTB.

 

[CanIBeAnonymous]

This seems like such a sketchy review written to sound appealing by adding ideal pros while having minor cons to make it seem realistic. First off, no one uses First Aid (at least not many) or "Clinical Cases" for CK. No AMBOSS isn't the next UWorld and MedBullet's is far better and I'd try their new QBank over this AMBOSS garbage that I've seen. My 2 cents.

I'm curious if your opinion om AMBOSS has changed since '17

 

[aldol16]

For shelf exams and Step 2 prep, UWorld is the gold standard. No other resource comes close to it. Amboss has some nice clinical summaries and review pages for subjects you're weak on but I would say unless they're giving a free trial of their QBank, I wouldn't use it in place of UWorld.

 

[CanIBeAnonymous]

For shelf exams and Step 2 prep, UWorld is the gold standard. No other resource comes close to it. Amboss has some nice clinical summaries and review pages for subjects you're weak on but I would say unless they're giving a free trial of their QBank, I wouldn't use it in place of UWorld.

People say UWorld is the gold standard, and that is true because it's tried and true, people have obviously done just fine with UWorld and no one would argue against it for Step 2 but I've heard a lot of people who have compared UWorld and Amboss styled questions have said Amboss was more akin to the Shelf exams - any comments on that?

 

[aldol16]

People say UWorld is the gold standard, and that is true because it's tried and true, people have obviously done just fine with UWorld and no one would argue against it for Step 2 but I've heard a lot of people who have compared UWorld and Amboss styled questions have said Amboss was more akin to the Shelf exams - any comments on that?

I cannot comment on that as I did not use Amboss for shelf exams.

 

[Detailsmatter]

I will say in general amboss is more comprehensive (unnecessarily so if you're trying to do average but its great if you're trying to kill it). I've been using both UW and Amboss and have been able to get 90th percentile or greater on every shelf so far (EM shelf I was off by one percentage point). I mostly start off with doing all of the UW and try to finish like 1-2 weeks before the shelf so that I can then focus on doing as many amboss questions as I can. UW is definitely enough for shelfs with the caveat that you really need to extract every single fact from the answer explanations since UW would be your only resource. If you're able to memorize everything from UW you can do really well on shelf exams. Amboss includes some really tough questions so that's why I always finish UW first so I have a really good foundation but the Amboss questions have def helped me out with stuff that wasn't included in UW. The amboss explanations, radiology interpretations, and articles for the question topic really are second to none imo. in essence what im getting at is to do well on shelfs UW should be enough if you study it really well (I would say maybe psych and neuro are exceptions since there's relatively few questions in the qbank) but for step 2 im gonna make sure I also finish amboss just because I really wanna do well on step 2.

 

[DrRiker]

For shelf exams and Step 2 prep, UWorld is the gold standard. No other resource comes close to it. Amboss has some nice clinical summaries and review pages for subjects you're weak on but I would say unless they're giving a free trial of their QBank, I wouldn't use it in place of UWorld.

I cannot comment on that as I did not use Amboss for shelf exams.

How can you claim that AMBOSS does not come close to UWorld for Shelf exams if you've not used the resource? Personally, I've used both and prefer AMBOSS. 85%+ raw score on all shelves using AMBOSS first, then some UWorld if time remains. I predict that AMBOSS will eventually surpass UWorld in popularity due to a clean interface, excellent question quality, and secondary study resources (Anki addon, for instance).

 

[Phloston]

So AMBOSS gave a presentation to our med school today, and from what I gathered, it's designed to be a comprehensive, single resource for MS3, including a Qbank and Library. They are based in Germany and used as the primary resource for students and physicians across Europe. There's a lot of convenient features - highlighting, overlays on imaging, high yield modes for the library, etc. - but I can't imagine using this in place of Step Up to Medicine or UWorld or Pretest and so on.

AMBOSS

Has anyone ever heard of AMBOSS and/or have any thoughts on it?

Amboss and Kaplan dominate the B2B environment and schools chuck the courses and Qbanks for free at their students, even though the students are better off just doing UWorld. Kaplan is out of touch with USMLE prep and obsolete in 2022. Amboss is nitpicky and superfluous but superior to Kaplan. UWorld does better B2C because students recognize UWorld is better and push it word-of-mouth. Schools are about saving money on inferior B2B Amboss/Kaplan strategies and just pushign students through, not about students getting an extra 9 points on their boards.

 

[Redpancreas]

Deleted a previous impression of mine on AMBOSS because AMBOSS has truly become a player in the space. UW>AMBOSS>>Kaplan. AMBOSS has decent reading material too.