Are there finals or cumulative exams in med school?

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ratman7

Except for Step 1. Are the regular tests they give in med school cumulative? Do they have finals in med school?
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My school does not have cumulative finals. Test about every 3 weeks.
 
They have it all. Quizzes, midterms, cumulative exams.

In anatomy, you might have an exam every 3 weeks. There will be 90% questions from the new information and 10% from older blocks. They do this to prepare you for the shelf exam and so you also study the older info.

In organ blocks, you might have 1 exam at the end, or you might have a midterm and a cumulative final. It depends on the course director and how long the block is.
 
Depends on the school. We have 8 week blocks followed by one day with a clinical skills test, one day of 2 written/essay cumulative exams (4 hours each), and one day with cumulative anatomy and histo exams in the AM, and a 4 hour multiple choice exam in the PM. On the written and MCQ portions anything is fair game (histo, anatomy, basic science, clinical science/skills, etc.). With the exception of the last 3 blocks of second year we don't have any tests or quizzes during block.
 
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Cumulative anatomy, no multiple choice! But then multiple choice non-cumulative everything else! Depends on the school.
 
Seems so intimidating... probably explains the physician suicide and attrition rates...

Right now, we're in undergrad working our a**es off, just to get into med school, and then we have to work our a**es off even harder, followed by residency! Spending more than 1/2 our lives challenge after challenge sacrificing happiness until we start practicing. Hopefully it's all worth it!
 
My school has blocks for the science courses (one course at a time) so no cumulative exams outside of a cumulative anatomy final (after our 7 week block of anatomy).
 
ratman7 said:
Seems so intimidating... probably explains the physician suicide and attrition rates...

Right now, we're in undergrad working our a**es off, just to get into med school, and then we have to work our a**es off even harder, followed by residency! Spending more than 1/2 our lives challenge after challenge sacrificing happiness until we start practicing. Hopefully it's all worth it!
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How are you defining 'happiness'
 
For us some do. Most have some questions from old material included in every exam (so like 10% of our anatomy exams are from old material). It's for the reason that Goro mentioned, you can't be binging and purging in medical school because you still need that information for COMLEX/USMLE
 
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WillburCobb said:
Depends on the school. We have 8 week blocks followed by one day with a clinical skills test, one day of 2 written/essay cumulative exams (4 hours each), and one day with cumulative anatomy and histo exams in the AM, and a 4 hour multiple choice exam in the PM. On the written and MCQ portions anything is fair game (histo, anatomy, basic science, clinical science/skills, etc.). With the exception of the last 3 blocks of second year we don't have any tests or quizzes during block.
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Sidenote - Say hi to your anatomy prof for me.

I just went back and found my corpus from his undergrad anatomy and it's got soo much helpful stuff in it.
 
ratman7 said:
Seems so intimidating... probably explains the physician suicide and attrition rates...

Right now, we're in undergrad working our a**es off, just to get into med school, and then we have to work our a**es off even harder, followed by residency! Spending more than 1/2 our lives challenge after challenge sacrificing happiness until we start practicing. Hopefully it's all worth it!
Click to expand...

If you have to ask that, it's probably not. If the idea of having to learn massive amounts of medical information so you can be a competent professional and properly treat your patients, doesn't give you any happiness then I don't know whether you will actually have any when you're an attending.

Medical school isn't one giant suckfest. It's a challenging endeavor that you engage in, bond with your fellow students, and occasionally have a little fun that is all the more sweeter when you know you can't have it everyday and it's going to give you strength to keep going in the marathon.
 
touchpause13 said:
Sidenote - Say hi to your anatomy prof for me.

I just went back and found my corpus from his undergrad anatomy and it's got soo much helpful stuff in it.
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If it was Jackson he was denied tenure after last spring/this summer. I don't think any of the med and grad student anatomy faculty teach undergrad. However, did you take undergrad Physio by chance?
 
WillburCobb said:
If it was Jackson he was denied tenure after last spring/this summer. I don't think any of the med and grad student anatomy faculty teach undergrad. However, did you take undergrad Physio by chance?
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Yeah it was him. Seriously? I did not hear that and that makes me sad because he was awesome.

Yes I took physio. Worst class of my life. God he was the worst...... just would pimp the shet out of us, would be super mean if you got stuff wrong and just was a general crab ass
 
Some cumulative, some not

I don't know of any school that doesn't have finals
 
darklabel said:
I thought anatomy exams were fill in for most schools?

And I just take exams every few weeks (not cumulative). It has it's pros and cons.
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Ours are a mixture, however the MC questions are very nuanced, so it really doesn't make it any easier.
 
An "all subjects" exam every 2-3weeks that covers just that time frame

A weekly quiz that covers one week worth of one subject

A 9wk omm practical

Cadaver practical about every 4 wks

Standardized patient final every 9wks
 
On a block schedule at a state MD school here, with an exam every 3 weeks or so, and we do not have cumulative tests. Our biochem professor likes to throw in one or two out of seventy questions that are from previous material, but that's the extent of it.

Edit: And no final exams. Just another exam on the material of the preceding three weeks.
 
I accept anniversary blocks followed by one day with a analytic abilities test.
FD5Gqx
 
Is there a resource that lists every MD school with P/F, Grades & Cumulative exams, non-cumulative?
Would be helpful if an applicant had an idea of the kinds of exams before they apply

EDIT: P/F and grading system are probably on other speadsheets or MSAR, but is there a resource that shows cumulative and non-cumulative exams or at least type of exams (MC, fill in) for all US MD schools?
 
ratman7 said:
Is there a resource that lists every MD school with P/F, Grades & Cumulative exams, non-cumulative?
Would be helpful if an applicant had an idea of the kinds of exams before they apply

EDIT: P/F and grading system are probably on other speadsheets or MSAR, but is there a resource that shows cumulative and non-cumulative exams or at least type of exams (MC, fill in) for all US MD schools?
Click to expand...

Every school has a MC cumulative exam. It's called Step 1.

Cumulative exams are definitely a pain in the neck, but a necessary one. If the first time you're taking a cumulative exam is the board exam or the practice exam prior to it, then your school's doing you a disservice IMO.
 
NickNaylor said:
We had very few cumulative finals if any. I actually don't remember having any during the preclinical years.
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Wow! Then what's to stop someone from just binging and purging information on tests?
 
DermViser said:
Wow! Then what's to stop someone from just binging and purging information on tests?
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That's what we do. I remember nearly nothing from anatomy, which was only 3 months ago, and I was at the top of my class. It worries me (though our school still has a pretty decent average board score and pass rate). I think I'll continue doing my Anki cards from every class instead of just deleting the deck after the class is over.
 
Mr. Vandemar said:
That's what we do. I remember nearly nothing from anatomy, which was only 3 months ago, and I was at the top of my class. It worries me (though our school still has a pretty decent average board score and pass rate). I think I'll start doing my Anki cards from every class instead of just deleting the deck after the class is over.
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That's exactly why med schools have final exams or end-of-block exams. They know very well medical students will rote memorize hardcore (binge) and the moment the exam is over, they will erase (purge) it from their memory banks. That will be a problem when Step 1 hits, which is cumulative. Not to mention, Step 1 blocks also have questions from a mix of subjects. It's not like Block 1 is all Biochemistry, Block 2 is all Anatomy, etc. the way the licensing board exams for basic sciences used to be.
 
It's a temporary convenience that we don't have finals, for sure.
 
Mr. Vandemar said:
It's a temporary convenience that we don't have finals, for sure.
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Sadly to your detriment. No one enjoys final exams, but it does force you to contain more information than the binge and purge method. It's exactly why the USMLE exams are changing to stop that mentality -- i.e. slowly incorporating basic science questions in later steps. bc studies show after Step 1, med students knowledge in those areas, tends to decrease tremendously.
 
Anatomy is cumulative and fill in the blank. Clinical skill exams are cumulative. Most other basic sciences we have are not cumulative in the traditional sense, but are in the sense that the material comes up over and over again, so you can't really just not know something important.

Oh, and at my school we've got block exams, which are basically like having finals every 6-7 weeks. If you bomb a block and fail remediation the following week, you're out of school, so every block is a hurdle you have to survive to move on, making them stressful as all hell.
 
What are the easiest (relatively speaking) US MD schools?
I don't care about ranking and prefer to attend one where there is minimal competition among students that has a ~0 suicide rate
 
ratman7 said:
What are the easiest (relatively speaking) US MD schools?
I don't care about ranking and prefer to attend one where there is minimal competition among students that has a ~0 suicide rate
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Yeah I'm not aware that these exist lol
 
ratman7 said:
What are the easiest (relatively speaking) US MD schools?
Click to expand...

:eyebrow:

I've encountered my fair share of pre-meds with this attitude in the last few years of taking pre-med classes and I always find myself wondering how in the world they are going to make it...
 
Residency directors do NOT like P/F grading schema.

There's no weaseling out of this, Ratty, med school is hard. An MD I once knew described it as the greatest intellectual challenge he ever faced.

And it's not half your life. 4 years UG + 4 yrs med school + 3-5 years of residency = 15-17 years. You can expect to live around 80 years.



ratman7 said:
Is there a resource that lists every MD school with P/F, Grades & Cumulative exams, non-cumulative?
Would be helpful if an applicant had an idea of the kinds of exams before they apply

EDIT: P/F and grading system are probably on other speadsheets or MSAR, but is there a resource that shows cumulative and non-cumulative exams or at least type of exams (MC, fill in) for all US MD schools?
Click to expand...
 
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