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KAPLAN BIOCHEM is TOO long i guess for BOARDS to use with TAUS plan.
is RR - rapid review BIOCHEM short and better?
is RR - rapid review BIOCHEM short and better?
I used RR biochem and was very happy with it.
I read RR biochem actually over a break since I felt my biochem was real weak; I agree that it's dense, I took it piecemeal and just did a chapter a day(maybe a bit over an hour, no more than two) and got through most of the book, don't try to understand info from multiple chapters at once; I felt like they had decent separations. The UCV book is also good, it does not overall have as many disease enzyme correlations as RR but for each one it does have it gives a page long vignette with a differential and explanation on back; it goes into all the endocrine ones and alot of the metabolic ones really well that aren't hit as well in other biochem sources. The kaplan biochem videos..... 32 hours is alot but I was considering giving it a once over at some point during my next 3 months of prep; might only do some but definately at 2x.
Did you basically just read it straight through?
[I know this is an old thread, sorry]
Edit: I'm trying to read it right now, and WOW is it a slow read for me. I'm not sure if I just have bad ADD tonight or what, but it's absolutely terrible.
I'm very much not a fan of biochem, so unless it's a really horrible idea, I'm probably going to stick with FA and the ludicrous number of practice questions I have in my possession to re-teach me what I need to know. I can't imagine trying to plow through a review book for that course again. Ugh^2.
Is that an indirect way of saying, "What you're planning is a really horrible idea?"
Yeah I'm going through some carbohydrate metabolism and it's not as terrible as I thought it would be, but still not fun at all.
Did you write stuff down in FA while going through, or just read it straight through without any annotating/highlighting/etc?
Is the genetics in the biochem section of FA good enough for the boards? Just wondering if any of this **** they threw at us during genetics is gonna appear again, its certainly not in FA.
So I've been trying to back to RR Biochem (I abandoned it a bit about a month ago) and go through FA with it, but I'm really getting hung up on things it seems. I know I shouldn't be trying to memorize every little detail (this is more of a Taus first pass deal) but I can't help but feel like I should be writing out all these pathways myself. And then there are paragraphs and paragraphs on each reaction. It's just tough to have a good idea of what I really need to know, and I hate this subject with a passion.
Any input/advice? I don't want this to bog me down and keep me from moving on to other areas of FA.
Just read through RR biochem. Understand concepts. Then memorize FA. I have Kaplan biochem and Lippencott but am just going to use them as reference to FA. Remember the major thing on boards is to know rate limiting enzymes, enzymes that are associated with pathology, and pathway dysfunctions (ie. excess alcohol causing increase NADH which results in more triglyceride synthesis, etc).
cheersMy frustration: I understand biochem, I get the clinical picture, I get the assoc. findings, etc
HOWEVER - all q-bank seems to care about are enzyme def. and accum. substances.
So screw understanding --> here's to memorizing 👍
Here's a super newbie-ish question, but I just realized I have no idea what specific book the "Kaplan Biochem" book is. Is it an actual published text? Or a note set? Or what?
I was considering taking a look at it if possible to see if it's something i'd want to try to run through once.
that happened to me the first time i tried using it. you just have to close the window and reload it. fyi, the online questions suck--they're mostly direct recall questions ("what is the rate limiting enzyme of glycolysis?") and they are repeated too.Thanks for the info guys.
In other news, for those of you who used RR Biochem, did anyone have trouble loading the quiz questions? I click on "click here to launch tests" on studentconsult's website, and it opens a window, and just says "Loading" forever. It works when I do RR Path, but it just gives me this stalled out window for Biochem.
that happened to me the first time i tried using it. you just have to close the window and reload it. fyi, the online questions suck--they're mostly direct recall questions ("what is the rate limiting enzyme of glycolysis?") and they are repeated too.
yeah, but all the vignette ones are duplicates of questions in the back of the book (which are excellent imo). i was just disappointed to log on expecting another 250 good questions and get, "which of the following reactions requires biotin as a cofactor?" But, yeah, I mean if those types of questions are prevalent on nbmes then I stand corrected.If I recall, over half of them are written in vignette form. There are like 15 questions repeated out of the 350. The questions are pretty picky with the disorders but I've seen questions exactly like them and even shorter and more detailed on NBMEs I've taken. It's also much much quicker to get through b/c of that since just biochem though prob 30-40 min for each block.
yeah, but all the vignette ones are duplicates of questions in the back of the book (which are excellent imo). i was just disappointed to log on expecting another 250 good questions and get, "which of the following reactions requires biotin as a cofactor?" But, yeah, I mean if those types of questions are prevalent on nbmes then I stand corrected.
I need some input from those of you who used RR or Kaplan.
I need to refresh my biochem on a conceptual basis. What I need to memorize will come from FA. Which is a better approach, RR Biochem or Watch the Kaplan DVDs and flip through Kaplan as I watch the videos?
Its about 23 hours of Video vs. 20 hours of reading....? I am just wondering what will give the best overview of biochem. I don't plan on memorizing either book.