Board Simulator Series Question

[fernj1975]

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I?m a second year medical student who is curious about the quality of the Board Simulator Series (Body System Review I, II, and III). I just bought the series at a really good price but would like some feedback from those who have used them. Thanks you.

 

[Winged Scapula]

Moving to the USMLE Forum...

 

[Jaded Soul]

I don't think the books themselves are that good. I bought a used set too and I only got through about 1/4 of them because they turned out to be a lot of physical work. It is really time consuming to spend a good quarter of the time you are reviewing the questions to flip back and forth between the explanation and the original question stem.

The questions themselves are a little dated and you can really see the difference in style when compared to the released items or to Qbank. BSS rarely has clinical vignettes whereas the real thing is almost all clinical vignettes. BSS has negative response questions (i.e. "which of the following items is LEAST likely...") and groups of questions that make you choose from a list of answers which you can use "once, more than once, or not at all." Step 1 is positive response only. However, I've heard from people who used BSS as their main question source that the questions were harder than the real thing, and thus a good prep because it made the real thing seem easier.

My advice would be to sell the books to one of your classmates and invest in irevu from medrevu.com if you want the BSS questions. They are the same questions in the computer format with progress tracking, a lot like Qbank. I think they have the NMS questions in there too. Reviewing answers is a lot easier and you won't get frustrated by losing your place in the book for the nth time while reviewing the past 100 questions.

 

[LoneSEAL]

Yeah, the BSS books will kick your ass -- hard! I just finished the first book in the series, General Principles in the Basic Sciences. My average score correct was 70%. As the above poster said, the questions are not in the current USMLE format. That being said, I liked the challenge of the questions. The writers made the questions super-duper hard. For example, for one question, they showed the citric acid cycle and instead of putting in the real names of the compounds in the cycle, they labeled them A,B,C,D... and asked a bunch of questions. The explanations are also very well-written. However, there are some really stupid questions that you have to sift through. For example, some questions want you to calculate the crude death rate or use terms that I've never heard of, such as "nephelometry."??

From what I know, people either really love the series or hate them. There is no middle ground 😱

 

[Jaded Soul]

Originally posted by LoneSEAL
For example, for one question, they showed the citric acid cycle and instead of putting in the real names of the compounds in the cycle, they labeled them A,B,C,D... and asked a bunch of questions.

Everytime I saw one of those questions, it made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. If anything like that shows up on the real thing, I'm totally screwed.

 

[NewGuyBob]

In my oinion the BSS series is the best out there! The only problem is that for the average medical student to catch up with the level of detail and depth of the explanations means loooong hours and lots of hard work. These series includes basically every single topic you might found on step I (high yield and low yield ones), and all of them are explained in much more detail than they actually did in med school, or needed to pass the step; but I think is better to be overprepared if you have the chance to. Anyway, like another poster mentioned all the Qs are included in that medrevu service but since you have the books already I 'd say DO THEM ALL if u have the time!
Also, Normal and Abnormal Processes... and the one called General Principles... are the easiest ones in the series but yet full of important info, so if you can get them, save them for when you need a confidence boost! Good Luck