APMLE Part II

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premedkid10

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So... with a full 24 hours to recover/digest whatever it was that we took yesterday, any comments about Boards Part II?

I am a very good student and would not be surprised if I failed, there was no "feeling" like, oh I passed. I in no way felt that test adequately tested the knowledge I have accrued in the past 3+ years. I had more questions on anemia than flatfoot, more radiology mumbo jumbo (not clinical radiology, just like "how it all works") than surgical questions, and more anesthesiology drugs than antibiotics...

So I ask, what is the point of that test? I truly feel bad for anybody that ends up failing, unless the curve is ridiculous, you did not deserve to.
 
It was junk/pathetic.
If you repeatedly had problems where the imagery/information you needed to answer the question wasn't depicted - you weren't alone.
 
I have nothing new to add that hasn't already been mentioned every year about this POS exam. A test of minimal competence consisting of maximum incompetence.
 
That test was awful.... I left feeling like I failed, but didn't really care because I think everyone else felt the same way.
 
Passed. Good riddance.
 
So I have been getting texts from students over the last couple of days stating that they passed.

Any numbers yet, as far as how the schools did? or overall pass rate?
 
Just out of curiosity, would anybody be willing to comment on what specifically was wrong with it?
 
Hard to elucidate and obviously I can't share test questions. The easy junk stuff would be questions for which they fail to show the images necessary to answer them. That gets resolved, but its frustrating. Then there's the questions that just doesn't make any sense at all. My best explanation is they have some thought or idea that they want to express and then they try and turn it into a question and fail. You stare at it and you just don't even know what they mean or are asking. I had a public health question like that - somewhere there's probably a book with a sentence in it that someone highlighted and decided it should be a test question. Where I went to school our questions were most often in vignettes and you had to assess the information you were given to try and draw the right conclusion. The boards in general have a "you know it or you don't" - either its the first thing that comes to mind or you are guessing. Either you gave the weight to that one thing they cared about or you missed the problem. I felt that way about a number of the medicine scenarios - it felt like we needed 1 or 2 more pieces of information. My exam featured a large number of questions about vary obscure disease states and their X-ray presentation. Either you read the book they wanted you to read and memorized the exact wording or you were going to miss the problem - and this was for obscure things that the review book you used didn't even have a picture (X-ray) of - just their word description. My boards at least could be described as heavy on things that were covered second year and some of third year. The things you do fourth year, the things people expect you to discuss and work up at interviews don't intersect very well on boards. The practice tests are not useful.
 
heybrother said:
Hard to elucidate and obviously I can't share test questions. The easy junk stuff would be questions for which they fail to show the images necessary to answer them. That gets resolved, but its frustrating. Then there's the questions that just doesn't make any sense at all. My best explanation is they have some thought or idea that they want to express and then they try and turn it into a question and fail. You stare at it and you just don't even know what they mean or are asking. I had a public health question like that - somewhere there's probably a book with a sentence in it that someone highlighted and decided it should be a test question. Where I went to school our questions were most often in vignettes and you had to assess the information you were given to try and draw the right conclusion. The boards in general have a "you know it or you don't" - either its the first thing that comes to mind or you are guessing. Either you gave the weight to that one thing they cared about or you missed the problem. I felt that way about a number of the medicine scenarios - it felt like we needed 1 or 2 more pieces of information. My exam featured a large number of questions about vary obscure disease states and their X-ray presentation. Either you read the book they wanted you to read and memorized the exact wording or you were going to miss the problem - and this was for obscure things that the review book you used didn't even have a picture (X-ray) of - just their word description. My boards at least could be described as heavy on things that were covered second year and some of third year. The things you do fourth year, the things people expect you to discuss and work up at interviews don't intersect very well on boards. The practice tests are not useful.
Click to expand...
Thanks for putting this out there. Reading this as someone starting school in the Fall is really, really troubling. Hopefully this gets somewhat corrected by the time my class comes through and takes it...unfortunate that you all had to be the guinea pigs
 
CardsFan92 said:
Thanks for putting this out there. Reading this as someone starting school in the Fall is really, really troubling. Hopefully this gets somewhat corrected by the time my class comes through and takes it...unfortunate that you all had to be the guinea pigs
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No, yours will just be another year of guinea pigs like all the years before you... But it's not all that bad - they just print the exams, throw them up in the air, and pass all but the peripheral 5% or so.
 
I wonder though how, for instance AZPod, could consistently have a perfect or near-perfect first time pass rate with such an awful exam. I believe y'all that the exam is awful because that is what every class has said every year as far back as I can find on SDN. But how does AZPod consistently prepare their students so well for such an unpredictable exam? I understand that especially the larger schools might let a bunch of sub-par students in, but it sounds like y'all are saying that the test would even trip up the smartest of students. This is a genuine question, not trying to say that one school is necessarily better than another, just talking about board pass rates.

Also, if questions are thrown out is that done before you get your results back or is there still a chance for those of you who just failed that the test people will review the test again, drop some questions, and bump some of you up to passing?
 
bobtheweazel said:
I wonder though how, for instance AZPod, could consistently have a perfect or near-perfect first time pass rate with such an awful exam. I believe y'all that the exam is awful because that is what every class has said every year as far back as I can find on SDN. But how does AZPod consistently prepare their students so well for such an unpredictable exam? I understand that especially the larger schools might let a bunch of sub-par students in, but it sounds like y'all are saying that the test would even trip up the smartest of students. This is a genuine question, not trying to say that one school is necessarily better than another, just talking about board pass rates.

Also, if questions are thrown out is that done before you get your results back or is there still a chance for those of you who just failed that the test people will review the test again, drop some questions, and bump some of you up to passing?
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Well, good questions. The answer to the first question is partly, IMHO, that we have a lot of whiny podiatry students and the test really isn't as bad as what most people make it out to be. AZPod has a great board pass rate for Part I because it does a great job in the basic sciences and with pre-clinical education.

As to the second question, they throw the questions out before you find out the scores, so if you find out you failed, that's it, you failed.
 
ldsrmdude said:
Well, good questions. The answer to the first question is partly, IMHO, that we have a lot of whiny podiatry students and the test really isn't as bad as what most people make it out to be. AZPod has a great board pass rate for Part I because it does a great job in the basic sciences and with pre-clinical education.

As to the second question, they throw the questions out before you find out the scores, so if you find out you failed, that's it, you failed.
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Thank you!
 
ldsrmdude said:
Well, good questions. The answer to the first question is partly, IMHO, that we have a lot of whiny podiatry students and the test really isn't as bad as what most people make it out to be. AZPod has a great board pass rate for Part I because it does a great job in the basic sciences and with pre-clinical education.
Click to expand...
I don't think it's necessarily whining (whether from students or residents) to note that there's a bit of a contrast between our boards and, say, USMLE-type questions in terms of quality and orders of reasoning. Of course, one could argue more your point of view that the test is a good exam and that it's questions are just geared more toward minimum competency rather than graded levels of competency. Definitely agree with your assessment of why AZPod's preparation for boards is top notch, which I found applied to Part I and Part II (also, there were some questions that certainly had the timbre of a few of our professors... I recall a few of the trickier ones from Part I sounding particularly Devine 🙂).
 
ldsrmdude said:
Well, good questions. The answer to the first question is partly, IMHO, that we have a lot of whiny podiatry students and the test really isn't as bad as what most people make it out to be. AZPod has a great board pass rate for Part I because it does a great job in the basic sciences and with pre-clinical education.

As to the second question, they throw the questions out before you find out the scores, so if you find out you failed, that's it, you failed.
Click to expand...

FootAndAnkle said:
I don't think it's necessarily whining (whether from students or residents) to note that there's a bit of a contrast between our boards and, say, USMLE-type questions in terms of quality and orders of reasoning. Of course, one could argue more your point of view that the test is a good exam and that it's questions are just geared more toward minimum competency rather than graded levels of competency. Definitely agree with your assessment of why AZPod's preparation for boards is top notch, which I found applied to Part I and Part II (also, there were some questions that certainly had the timbre of a few of our professors... I recall a few of the trickier ones from Part I sounding particularly Devine 🙂).
Click to expand...

Ankle Breaker said:
You are delusional
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I think I may already know, but having been there, what would you all say prepares an individual most for these exams?
 
SLCpod said:
I have yet to take the exam but this is what I imagine it's like:



At least you didn't have to take the clinical exam in PA. I am SUPER (caps to emphasiza sarcasm/anger/frustration/sadness/stress) excited to pay $1200 for another test.
Click to expand...

My interpretation involved a little more of this: :diebanana:
 
Justintxc said:
I think I may already know, but having been there, what would you all say prepares an individual most for these exams?
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Ankle Breaker said:
Do well in school. [...] If you put in a solid effort into your studies it will take you far and worrying about passing the boards will be a[n] after thought. Trust me. Been there done that.
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I think that's certainly the best advice. I tried to do well in my courses, then I just read through First Aid once (except the non-applicable subjects) and lower extremity anatomy class notes twice for Part I. For Part II, notes from my classes and rotations, PRISM, and Dr. Joseph's Handbook were apparently adequate review.
Ankle Breaker said:
[...] Learn the material and don't memorize/cram. [...]
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To me, this is a major downfall of having pass/fail boards. Besides not equalizing students' performances between schools, I feel that I would have gleaned even more from a few of my courses had I not crammed/memorized some material for tests (since board scores don't help differentiate between students in our profession).
 
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Word on the street is NYCPM first time pass rate this year was 89%. Not great, but not as bad as those poor Temple kids.

Any numbers from any other schools? Hopefully everyone gets through on the second time around. Really going to be an interesting match if the pass rates don't improve.
 
Does anyone know what the pass rates for the other schools was?
 
Word from CSPM is 83%. This is not from the Dean. If I hear something different I will correct it.


Sent from my HTC6525LVW using Tapatalk
 
Great job to everybody that passed! Those of you who didn't, just put in a ton of quality study time and hit the hot topics and you should be fine. I've met plenty of capable doctors who, for one reason or another, failed part 1, or part 2, or even both. It happens, don't be discouraged, look at it as an opportunity to solidify some knowledge before residency, you'll be better of for the extra studying.

As it looks so far with Part 2 pass rates-
National: 85%
AZPOD: ?
DMU: ?
Barry: ?
CSPM: 83%
Kent: ?
NYCPM: 89%
Scholl: 90.4%
TUSPM: 72%
Western: ?

Can anybody fill in the blanks here?
 
As it looks so far with Part 2 pass rates-
National: 85%
AZPOD: 100%
DMU: ?
Barry: 88%
CSPM: 83%
Kent:
NYCPM: 89%
Scholl: 90.4%
TUSPM: 72%
Western: ?
 
Barry is actually 89% per the Dean
 
Can someone find the rest of the numbers. They don't seem to jive with the national average.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app
 
That's higher than the nat avg meaning the remaining school must have an average lower than that of the nat avg. I'm curious on how they did on boards.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app
 
DMU will not release their results until after the second administration.

We really shouldn't have to have one of these threads every year - the test administrators should release the results rather than allowing the schools to average them into a 2012-whenever pass rate.
 
90% pass rate for Western. Hope everyone passes the re-take.
 
Omicron85 said:
As it looks so far with Part 2 pass rates-
National: 85%
AZPOD: 100%
DMU: ?
Barry: 88%
CSPM: 83%
Kent:
NYCPM: 89%
Scholl: 90.4%
TUSPM: 72%
Western: ?
Click to expand...
AZPOD had 100% first time? and wow TEMPLE?
 
Since I know the school will refuse to release/try to somehow buff the result, the chatter I'm hearing is that Kent is around 80%...KSUCPM will not release the results until after the 2nd administration if ever.
 
Updated

National: 85%
AZPOD: 100%
DMU: ?
Barry: 89%
CSPM: 83%
Kent:
NYCPM: 89%
Scholl: 90.4%
TUSPM: 72%
Western: 90%
 
The 2 schools I'm deciding between haven't published yet. Niiiiiiiice
 
Is the exam centralized so that each student takes the exact same exam, no matter what school they attend? One of the Temple students said that the reason the pass rate was so low was because the test contained an unusual amount of law questions that students weren't necessarily focused on, and that usually there's just 1-2 questions on it in general. But if the test is the same for everyone, it's still telling that Temple had the lowest pass rate by far.
 
yea, everyone i spoke to from every school had an inordinate amount of law questions, so dont think that is the reason for their low pass rate.

on another note NYCPM now has a 100% rate for 2016, all 2nd time test takers have passed. I am told national pass rate for 2nd time takers was around 65%
 
HR91 said:
Is the exam centralized so that each student takes the exact same exam, no matter what school they attend? One of the Temple students said that the reason the pass rate was so low was because the test contained an unusual amount of law questions that students weren't necessarily focused on, and that usually there's just 1-2 questions on it in general. But if the test is the same for everyone, it's still telling that Temple had the lowest pass rate by far.
Click to expand...

The exam is centralized..... The questions just show up in a different order and there might be 2 versions that you could get at random. The questions are poorly written for everyone and is the prevailing complaint EVERY year.... The actual podiatry questions aren't very hard so you can make up a lot of ground there. I wouldn't worry about it too much. I am not an awesome student and prepared by reading pocket pods once and didn't have a problem passing the first time (luckily). That said, I wouldn't have been surprised if I hadn't passed the first time.

It only felt like there were a lot of law questions because they were all off the wall and random. I felt the same way. I don't think any of the schools focus/teach the exact material that was asked about on these questions.

"I am told national pass rate for 2nd time takers was around 65%" .... That's really rough for all those who couldn't get it the second time. Guess match rates for qualifying applicants will be pretty good this year?
 
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I'm trying to decide where to attend between attending Temple and NYCPM and possibly take an interview at Barry. Does anyone know if this was just an off year for Temple and/or what their pass rate was after re-takes?
 
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