Best Way to use a Qbank

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osumc2014

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I have Kaplan and USMLE world Q bank, for a 6 week study plan, how should I use the Qbanks? I find that whenever I sit and do 46 questions on Kaplan, it takes me around 4 hours to answer then go thru and annotate first aid with new information from the Qbank. At this rate, I am not even gonna scratch the surface of these Q banks. Any suggestions as to how to tackle Q banks??

Thanks!!!

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Consider reading through FA or whatever topic you're doing first, before doing those Qbanks. That way, you can annotate only what's important and what's missing from FA.

I'm not too sure about Kaplan because I don't use it, but with the other Qbanks, it's often times not necessary to make sure you understand 100% of every single word in those explanations. It would take entirely too much time if you were trying to annotate every single word of new information into FA.

Personally, what I do is -- for the ones I get correct, I'll just read through the answer choices and the "take home point" (or whatever the Kaplan equivalent of that is), and make sure that is indeed my rationale, and maybe jot down a sentence or two of any "cool" information I find.

For the ones I get incorrect, I'll read through the explanation in its entirety and summarize/reword the concepts and write those down -- no more than 3-4 sentences, and that's if I really had no idea what the concept was (which doesn't happen often).

I get ~70-80% on UW right now, and it takes me ~1 to 1.5 hours to go through each question (so maybe about 2 to 2.5 hours at most per block)
 
The more questions you do the faster it goes since a lot of topics start repeating or you've already covered the topic from another question.

If you are always really good on time (and it's the reviewing that takes the longest), then switch to tutor mode for half your blocks and it will save you a bit of time.

Lastly each qbank is different, out of all of them i like kaplan for its somewhat complex questions but find compared to usmleworld it is a bit too detail oriented. So perhaps annotating extensively from Kaplan is not the way to go. I'm not sure what other qbanks you plan to use but after I completed a qbank the other ones started going a lot quicker. I like usmleworld(big picture good teaching) > usmlerx (very fast questions and hammer first aid in) > kaplan (takes the longest but some of the hard questions/overly detailed questions i find are really good in terms of completing my understanding of a topic).
 
46 questions a day is actually pretty reasonable. If you don't have enough time to knock out both Qbanks in your study period, then you don't have to prioritze that... just try to at least get through UW and your other sources.
 
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I have Kaplan and USMLE world Q bank, for a 6 week study plan, how should I use the Qbanks? I find that whenever I sit and do 46 questions on Kaplan, it takes me around 4 hours to answer then go thru and annotate first aid with new information from the Qbank. At this rate, I am not even gonna scratch the surface of these Q banks. Any suggestions as to how to tackle Q banks??

Thanks!!!

Honestly this just takes time. The more you do, the faster you get at annotating. Since you only have 6 weeks, you may have to prioritize and decide what you really have time for. I've gone through UW and Kaplan but I started in early January and have done 5 question sets a week basically. Back in January it took me f o r e v e r to annotate, but now I'm a lot faster at it.
 
Maybe I'm just bad at reviewing. But it only takes me maybe 1.5 hours to do a 46 question set. I also go through the questions in 30 minutes because of I'm quick at it by now. Many questions are straight forward (i.e. it shouldn't take you 30 minute to review whether a bug is bacitracin sensitive or not, etc. and you shouldn't even really do anything besides underline a sentence in first aid if you get certain things wrong). The only questions that take me awhile to review tend to be biochem and drug questions. Biochem because I always force myself to redraw the pathway in the explanation, and pharm because I'm terrible at it and normally have to look up all 5/6 answer drugs to make sure I know all of them/their side effects.

I can easily do 2 question blocks/day even with 6-7 hours of dedicated reading time in the morning and afternoon.

I would suggest keeping a "Step 1" journal though. I use it to write down small factoids I don't know, or draw out pathways I find confusing. That way you can have all your weak points in one area. Just review it for ~20 minutes every night before you go to bed and you'll help fix your weak points quickly.
 
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