APMLE Part 1 2019-Feedback

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The class of 21 took Part 1 yesterday and this thread is for those students to post their feedbacks regarding the exam. As in, resources used, how to tackle each subject, Qbanks, schedule, etc. I am sure we all did fine but this wait is horrible so maybe take your mind of that and post here your thoughts for the future kids. Thanks.

Btw, Happy 4th 😎
 
Hey man as a pre-pod thanks for creating this thread! Everyone have a good fourth!
 
I honestly thought the exam was quite challenging. I feel like I was digging way too much into the details while studying which made me loose sight of the big picture. USMLE is a great resource for everything except Anatomy and Physiology. BRS is great alternative.
 
I felt that the LEA part was a little all over the palce. Scholls powerpoints are good but dont have everything that you want to review.
 
Twin2012 said:
I felt that the LEA part was a little all over the palce. Scholls powerpoints are good but dont have everything that you want to review.
Click to expand...

Did you go to scholl or did you just get Scholl's lower notes to review from if I may ask?

Could you also elaborate about what it was lacking?

Thanks!
 
OblivionDPM said:
Did you go to scholl or did you just get Scholl's lower notes to review from if I may ask?

Could you also elaborate about what it was lacking?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
No I don’t go to Scholls. It might have been beta questions that made me think it but scholls is good overall and will do you fine.
 
4 more days for results. How do you guys feel now?
 
JPS398 said:
Nervous. Only thing i can hang on my hat on really at this point is that i put a lot of time/effort into studying so i’m hoping that was enough.
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I feel the same thing. I put the time and effort to prepare for the exam. I started studying right after the the spring semester ended til the last 1/2 hour before the start of the exam. LOL. Yes I reviewed few thing in the car before I went down to take the exam. But I took random days off when I felt that I was not productive (not more than 5 days tho). So, hopefully that was enough to get the "PASSSSSSS" on Wednesday. 🙂
 
Can't sleep in nervous anticipation.

I've heard rumors that those who fail get notified by the Dean a day before hand.. Any truth to this?
 
Scrubingfloors4Scrubs said:
Can't sleep in nervous anticipation.

I've heard rumors that those who fail get notified by the Dean a day before hand.. Any truth to this?
Click to expand...
I’ve never heard of this at my school but maybe some schools do it? I know the school gets their pass rate beforehand but not sure how long beforehand. So not sure how the school would know who passed and who didn’t a day before unless our schools already have their pass rates/scores.
 
Does anyone know what time tomorrow Prometric release the results?
 
UnDecided92 said:
Now I’m nervous about going to Kent next year lol...
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I wouldn't be. I don't know why there's a 77% pass rate with the 2021 class, or if that's been verified, but given the previous two years had a 92% pass rate I don't think that you'd have a problem if you work hard and keep up on the studying.
 
J29622 said:
I wouldn't be. I don't know why there's a 77% pass rate with the 2021 class, or if that's been verified, but given the previous two years had a 92% pass rate I don't think that you'd have a problem if you work hard and keep up on the studying.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, it is confirmed at 77% by faculty that received the results. I have a few speculations as to why it is so low that I would be happy to share over PM if anyone is interested in knowing. However, you are definitely right, if you study hard and smart for part 1 the school you go to will not directly affect you passing.
 
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Podstar said:
Unfortunately, it is confirmed at 77% by faculty that received the results. I have a few speculations as to why it is so low that I would be happy to share over PM if anyone is interested in knowing. However, you are definitely right if you study hard and smart for part 1 the school you go to will not directly effect you passing.
Click to expand...
I completely agree with this. Being a TA and really trying to comprehend the material throughout the year really helped prepare me for the exam as well. I passed and felt overall the exam was fair and balanced but by no means easy. Put the work in and really grind that second year and it will pay off! Resources I used consisted of the following.

Main resource -
First Aid. Gave me a great understanding of the general concepts and the high yield material. Only hit each system once really and didnt go crazy on the reproductive or neuro sections as much. Mainly focused on the anatomy, pharm, and major pathology material for those sections

Accessory Resources -
Board Vitals. At least 50 questions a day. Sometimes would do 75. Ended up going through it fully twice and flagged questions I had trouble with and repeated those a 3rd time.
Boards and Beyond. Did not use it much but for topics such as biochem that were a weakness of mine previously. Did a great job of simplifying things.
Lower notes from Kent. Very specific and detailed. Could have gone into more depth about hip and pelvic ligaments but other than that were essential to my studying.
APMLE released practice exams. Exams were from 2008 but gave a great idea of the type of questions that were to be asked and the main general topics.
BRS flashcards for pharm. Minimally utilized but were helpful. Just didnt have enough time to look at these.

I started studying a month and a half out from the exam doing lower anatomy and micro in the mornings from about 8-12 DAILY. Would take an hour break and then do a First Aid topic until about 4 or so. 50 or so BV questions at night and sometimes would sprinkle in a little more lower anatomy.

Summary:
Lower notes and micro via some sketchy or First Aid DAILY, Pharm from BRS flashcards and First Aid sections every other day. 50% of the exam is right here so hit this hard!!
General anatomy - First Aid as well as a major concept guide. A few tricky ones but overall pretty straight forward
Phys, biochem, Path - Big picture stuff for most part. Once again first aid was key as well as school review sessions.
Studied roughly 8-10 hours a day taking sundays off until 2 weeks out which I would only do lower anatomy and BV on sundays

Im sure I left some pertinent information out so if desired please do not hesitate to PM me. Please do not take this synopsis as the Holy Bible to boards preparation. This is what worked for me and I know many others who did not follow this by any means and did great as well.
 
I started studying right after finals ended in early May. I don’t recommend starting before this because I was burnt out after studying for 2 months. I can’t imagine how burnt I would have been if I had started in January. I think it is important to do well second year, so you have to spend less time on those areas and can spend more time on things you learned first year because memory atrophy is real. I also would recommend being a TA and tutor in general anatomy and LEA to stay sharp on these as that covers 38% of the whole exam. Add that to studying hard for pharmacology and path in your second year and essentially you will already be prepared for 2/3 of the exam.

The exam itself:

I will start by saying the exam is not easy. I think one of the most important things is staying calm and not psyching yourself out when you get a stretch of questions you do not know or when the flagged questions start to pile up. Personally, I had a stretch of 13 questions in a row that I had no clue on that started to get me in my head that I was going to fail. If you start to think this way, take a break and go to the restroom or sit back in your chair and refocus. You have 4 hours to complete the 205 questions, which is way more than you need so take as many mental breaks as you need because this could be the difference between passing and negatively thinking your way into failing. Another thing I was not expecting was that there were very few questions that I straight up knew the answer to. The vast majority of questions I could narrow it down to two answers and from there it was pretty much a toss up for me.

Practice Question resources:

I do not think any of the practice question banks I used were all that similar to the actual board questions. Of all of the ones I used I think the KSUCPM Rossi exams and mock exam were probably the most similar, which will not help most of you because if you are not at Kent you will not get to take them. BV was a good source. The questions were not at all like the real board questions, but they definitely helped me learn a lot of high yield material. I went through all of them twice and the ones I missed a third time, reading the explanations to each question even if I knew the answer. The 2005, 2008, and Prometric APMLE practice exams are similar to the question format of the actual boards, but I thought they were much easier content wise in comparison. I averaged 85% on them and there is no way I got that many correct on the actual exam. Nonetheless, I would recommend taking them to see wording and format of the questions asked.

Resources:

The majority of people used First Aid as their major source for studying. On the contrary, I never read a single page of First Aid, aside from the pharmacology sections at the end of each system. I think First Aid is gold for pharmacology as it is concise and not overkill like many other resources. For LEA I used KSUCPM class notes alongside Reuben's notes for the pictures and this is really all you need. Know your LEA front and back and knock this section out of the park on exam day, it is not only the most prevalent thing to know for the rest of your career, but it is 25% of the exam! For general anatomy, being a tutor helped as I had to review and know my stuff well enough to teach it to students. I used my class notes and BRS anatomy for weak points. I will add, I watched Joann's (KSUCPM professor) histology videos while I was relaxing two days before the exam and it got me around 5 questions that I otherwise would have had no idea on. For micro sketchy is the way to go. I cannot recall a single micro question I did not know the answer to immediately from watching sketchy. KNOW YOUR PARASITES!! For physiology and biochem I used Tim's (KSUCPM professor) class notes and recorded lectures. He is easily the best professor at Kent and his lectures are easy and quick to learn from and all of the material marked 4.0 on the curriculum guide is starred in them. I did not spend much time studying for pathology as a lot of my studying for other subjects covered a lot of the relevant pathology that goes with them and I had just finished taking it second year and excelled in the class. Sorry if my sources used were not as helpful to a lot of you that do not go to Kent. I also thought BV was a great teaching source for all subjects.

Take aways:

I think the key to passing the exam is excelling at a few subjects and being average in the rest. I think the easiest ones to kill on the actual exam are LEA, micro, pharm, and biochem. It is hard to say skip this or skip that because anything can be thrown at you on the exam and I had my fair share of random minuscule detail questions. I think the biggest thing is ace your classes second year, tutor in the anatomies if you can, and after finals hit the material from first year hard.

If anyone has any questions feel free to PM me anytime.
 
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Congratulations y'all

My 2 cents: Try to focus on the big picture. Don't get lost in the details as your memory will fail.

Must do's: Rapid review in First Aid, Boardvital x2 with reading explanations, sketchy Micro, sketchy pharm for Antibiotics, and LEA notes. I was good with Physio so didn't really study it much besides what was reviewed with Boardvitals...

Lastly, do as many practice APMLE questions as possible two times and limit the amount of resources you use. Barely used FA except for a reference or for Rapid review.

That is all I did. I started studying 2 months out and studied 16 plus hours 2 weeks out. Came out of the exam confident with 100, narrowed to 2 answers for 50 and completely lost on the rest.
 
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