- Joined
- May 1, 2001
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- 766
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I just took step 1 today and I thought I might as well join everyone else in talking about what it was like. I took it at the only Prometric testing center in this entire city?45+ minutes away from my apartment with traffic. 👎 I was the last one in and they managed not to give me the blue sheet people on here mention receiving. I actually just realized that. If it?s anything important I?m sure someone will tell me about it.
In general I thought it was at least 60% basic knowledge, about 20% kinda unsure on the answer but able to reason out my best guess sort of situations, and the rest were either too poorly worded for me to be definite on, had an unclear image along with the question, or basically just was something I?d never heard of before. There weren?t a great deal of overly nitpicky questions (unlike qbank, eg ?A patient presents with a lesion. A similar disease is caused by a mutation in which of the following chromosomes??). For example, in situations where the test authors could have taken one general type of answer and generated an entire list of very similar answers to choose from, the answer choices were more often than not dissimilar enough that the real answer was fairly easy to spot. For example, (this wasn?t on my exam but it?s the sort of thing they?d do), they might have asked something like which of the following has the strongest anticholinergic effect, and instead of listing four secondary TCAs and one tertiary amine TCA like qbank would probably do, they would give me something like amitriptyline, bethanecol, diazepam, bananas, and furosemide to choose from.
Path/pathophys comprised the majority of the exam, and I thought the questions were fairly straightforward. In spite of what I?d heard, there were a good number of classic, knee-jerk, buzzword associations that you basically had to know cold in order to get the question right. Mostly that was fine, but when I wasn?t able to recognize the classic triad of sirenomelia, pruritis, and exploding liver syndrome or whatever other hopelessly obscure presentation they gave me, I was pretty much out of luck. All the organ systems were covered, but I noticed it was somewhat heavy on GI and musculoskeletal/rheum which surprised me. There were few questions just asking for a diagnosis. Pharm was fairly doable too, the side effects in particular were the classics. It was definitely heavy on ANS drugs, and there were at least 6 questions on NSAIDs. I think FA and general knowledge from class would be enough but they went into a little more depth in ANS drugs. I didn?t have any behavioral science questions directly similar to qbank like I?ve heard some people have had, and I thought it was slightly easier than qbank. Genetics was very similar to qbank as far as the calculations and the style of the questions. Anatomy and embryo were minimal and all highly clinically oriented, often with some associated image or drawing. Biochem was pretty straightforward too and pretty minimal. Mol bio wasn?t a killer, in fact there were relatively few questions. Many of these were laughably obvious, on DNA and protein synthesis, etc., and sometimes with diagrams that basically gave the answer away. The rest of the questions they asked weren?t so easy though (I wish I?d studied the ER/Golgi protein pathways). Micro was mainly common clinically important bacteria, with few questions on viruses, treatment, and fungi. I think the only protozoa questions I had were all the obvious ones. Physio was mainly a scenario followed by at least 3 columns of variables and 6 or so ?up, down, same? type of answers to choose from.
I?ll list my study sources for anyone interested. Path: BRS path, FA, general knowledge from second year; biochem: FA and BRS biochem; anatomy: BRS anatomy, skimmed Netter?s, FA; neuroanatomy, behavioral science, embryo, histo: all HY, FA; mol bio: nothing beyond the half page or so in FA; immuno: basic immunology (like 300p, softcover, don?t know the author); physio: Costanzo (the text not the BRS book); pathophys: pathophys for the boards and wards (almost completely useless, just mentioning for completeness); pharm: Katzung pharm exam and board review book, FA; micro: MMRS, FA; about half the UCV series (ran out of patience with it); and qbank of course (I made a list of all the facts I didn?t know as I went through it and studied that last night).
Update: shocked the mother**** out of it (258).
In general I thought it was at least 60% basic knowledge, about 20% kinda unsure on the answer but able to reason out my best guess sort of situations, and the rest were either too poorly worded for me to be definite on, had an unclear image along with the question, or basically just was something I?d never heard of before. There weren?t a great deal of overly nitpicky questions (unlike qbank, eg ?A patient presents with a lesion. A similar disease is caused by a mutation in which of the following chromosomes??). For example, in situations where the test authors could have taken one general type of answer and generated an entire list of very similar answers to choose from, the answer choices were more often than not dissimilar enough that the real answer was fairly easy to spot. For example, (this wasn?t on my exam but it?s the sort of thing they?d do), they might have asked something like which of the following has the strongest anticholinergic effect, and instead of listing four secondary TCAs and one tertiary amine TCA like qbank would probably do, they would give me something like amitriptyline, bethanecol, diazepam, bananas, and furosemide to choose from.
Path/pathophys comprised the majority of the exam, and I thought the questions were fairly straightforward. In spite of what I?d heard, there were a good number of classic, knee-jerk, buzzword associations that you basically had to know cold in order to get the question right. Mostly that was fine, but when I wasn?t able to recognize the classic triad of sirenomelia, pruritis, and exploding liver syndrome or whatever other hopelessly obscure presentation they gave me, I was pretty much out of luck. All the organ systems were covered, but I noticed it was somewhat heavy on GI and musculoskeletal/rheum which surprised me. There were few questions just asking for a diagnosis. Pharm was fairly doable too, the side effects in particular were the classics. It was definitely heavy on ANS drugs, and there were at least 6 questions on NSAIDs. I think FA and general knowledge from class would be enough but they went into a little more depth in ANS drugs. I didn?t have any behavioral science questions directly similar to qbank like I?ve heard some people have had, and I thought it was slightly easier than qbank. Genetics was very similar to qbank as far as the calculations and the style of the questions. Anatomy and embryo were minimal and all highly clinically oriented, often with some associated image or drawing. Biochem was pretty straightforward too and pretty minimal. Mol bio wasn?t a killer, in fact there were relatively few questions. Many of these were laughably obvious, on DNA and protein synthesis, etc., and sometimes with diagrams that basically gave the answer away. The rest of the questions they asked weren?t so easy though (I wish I?d studied the ER/Golgi protein pathways). Micro was mainly common clinically important bacteria, with few questions on viruses, treatment, and fungi. I think the only protozoa questions I had were all the obvious ones. Physio was mainly a scenario followed by at least 3 columns of variables and 6 or so ?up, down, same? type of answers to choose from.
I?ll list my study sources for anyone interested. Path: BRS path, FA, general knowledge from second year; biochem: FA and BRS biochem; anatomy: BRS anatomy, skimmed Netter?s, FA; neuroanatomy, behavioral science, embryo, histo: all HY, FA; mol bio: nothing beyond the half page or so in FA; immuno: basic immunology (like 300p, softcover, don?t know the author); physio: Costanzo (the text not the BRS book); pathophys: pathophys for the boards and wards (almost completely useless, just mentioning for completeness); pharm: Katzung pharm exam and board review book, FA; micro: MMRS, FA; about half the UCV series (ran out of patience with it); and qbank of course (I made a list of all the facts I didn?t know as I went through it and studied that last night).
Update: shocked the mother**** out of it (258).
