Anybody Using Robbins?

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kaleerkalut

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I'm well into 2nd year and I'm starting to regret not having used Robbins. I have not used textbooks at all during medical school and this year I have just been pounding away at RR Pathology (primarily focusing on Step 1 here). Anybody have any insight on this, particularly for those that did use Robbins and whether it helped with Step 1? Thanks 🙂
 
I'm well into 2nd year and I'm starting to regret not having used Robbins. I have not used textbooks at all during medical school and this year I have just been pounding away at RR Pathology (primarily focusing on Step 1 here). Anybody have any insight on this, particularly for those that did use Robbins and whether it helped with Step 1? Thanks 🙂

Robbins for me is great for when RR is too spare. sometimes i just need sentences to hook everything together. it's probably the best written textbook i've ever used and it can be a nice change.
 
I'm well into 2nd year and I'm starting to regret not having used Robbins. I have not used textbooks at all during medical school and this year I have just been pounding away at RR Pathology (primarily focusing on Step 1 here). Anybody have any insight on this, particularly for those that did use Robbins and whether it helped with Step 1? Thanks 🙂

Big Robbins is too much. I used it, and hated it. You can get the useful information from Medium Robbins and peek at big robbins only when the material gets to sparse. If Rapid Review is your primary, filling in gaps with medium robbins will be sufficient. You aren't trying to become a pathology powerhouse, so Big Robbins is probably too much. This is the 1024 page tome they call a "book."

Medium Robbins is a great reading book. There is text, paragraphs with full sentences, and pictures. It will easily fill in gaps missed by bullet points and outlines in Rapid Review. It is not overwhelming, and really is not a difficult read. You will not have all the details, but the information will be more explicitly stated than in rapid review.

Small Robbins blows. Especially in comparison to Rapid Review, there is almost no reason to use small robbins. This is the pocket text.

Bottom line, its probably too late to go back over material already covered, but if you feel you are deficient in some areas going forward, feel safe in knowing that medium Robbins makes an excellent choice to get the structure of a textbook without the innane details that don't matter.
 
Big Robbins is too much. I used it, and hated it. You can get the useful information from Medium Robbins and peek at big robbins only when the material gets to sparse. If Rapid Review is your primary, filling in gaps with medium robbins will be sufficient. You aren't trying to become a pathology powerhouse, so Big Robbins is probably too much. This is the 1024 page tome they call a "book."

Medium Robbins is a great reading book. There is text, paragraphs with full sentences, and pictures. It will easily fill in gaps missed by bullet points and outlines in Rapid Review. It is not overwhelming, and really is not a difficult read. You will not have all the details, but the information will be more explicitly stated than in rapid review.

Small Robbins blows. Especially in comparison to Rapid Review, there is almost no reason to use small robbins. This is the pocket text.

Bottom line, its probably too late to go back over material already covered, but if you feel you are deficient in some areas going forward, feel safe in knowing that medium Robbins makes an excellent choice to get the structure of a textbook without the innane details that don't matter.

I agree with OAB. I used Big Robbins and thought it was too much. I especially hated reading through 3 dense pages and then them throwing in "but this is only theory and has not been proven..." Great. I advise everyone to get medium Robbins now. And, I do tell people to actually read it. I think it ties in concepts better than RR can. Personally, I saw a big change in my practice board scores when I went back and read robbins chapters I hadn't read during 2nd year, but just used RR for.
 
I've also gone back and started reading the relevant chapters after getting fragmented information through other sources and getting frustrated when it wasn't making sense.
 
I've also gone back and started reading the relevant chapters after getting fragmented information through other sources and getting frustrated when it wasn't making sense.

I've heard that there is a new edition of Medium Robbins coming out. Anybody know when? Thanks 🙂
 
I love "medium Robbins" as well, but it took up a bunch of time.
Try Pathoma, it's new but very efficient.
 
I use Big Robbins all the time. I love it and I'll keep trying to get through every chapter in BR that we cover in class. I also follow along with RR Path to bring all the pathophysiology together and make sure I really understand how it all fits.
 
People are just scared of Big Daddy Robbins because of its size. I went to kinkos and had it split and bound into 12 individual booklets, and broken down it is much more manageable. I end up re-reading whatever section we are covering in path 3-4 times before each exam. The alphabet soup of cytokines and signalling molecules and the level of detail gets easier to deal with the more you're exposed to it, it's a cumulative thing.
 
People are just scared of Big Daddy Robbins because of its size. I went to kinkos and had it split and bound into 12 individual booklets, and broken down it is much more manageable. I end up re-reading whatever section we are covering in path 3-4 times before each exam. The alphabet soup of cytokines and signalling molecules and the level of detail gets easier to deal with the more you're exposed to it, it's a cumulative thing.

That is an absolutely phenomenal idea. And I'm being completely serious. If I had the printed version I would totally do that.
 
People are just scared of Big Daddy Robbins because of its size. I went to kinkos and had it split and bound into 12 individual booklets, and broken down it is much more manageable. I end up re-reading whatever section we are covering in path 3-4 times before each exam. The alphabet soup of cytokines and signalling molecules and the level of detail gets easier to deal with the more you're exposed to it, it's a cumulative thing.

How much was it? Great idea!
 
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