Did your medschool help with board reviews?

[axeon123]

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I wanted to ask if your medical school helped you guys out with your board reviews. And if they did, did you like it? This is to make me feel worse. 😀 I think the dean of the medschool and the whole education panel have some big ego problems and never emphasize the boards at all, never teach for the boards. I never heard of the First Aid book until the end of first year when they emailed out books for sale. I never knew qbanks existed until some time later. They gave us no review lectures at all for boards. Did not teach us any biochemistry (literally). Never said a word about the boards during lectures, like guys this is important for the boards. No help list for books we should get. No review books on reserve in the library. They wasted the last week of the school year making us go through fake patient simulated history/physical and some other junk. 🙁

 

[metalrex]

My school took the tentative approach-kinda.They had someone come in to coach us on board basics few hours in the morning earlier this year but after first week ,I chose to stay away.It was like the dude was going through some very basic stuff ,I had expected to hear of something hot ,something to really help us through but felt I was getting more with my own studying and added to that-I am not much of a morning person,so staying up the whole night studying and having to sit through this class 8am got quite daunting.The only best thing my school ever did was making us go through those NBME exams repeatedly.

So yeah I think when the real deal comes out, self study is what benefits best.If I do break a 250+ ( which I would so love) then it would def be all on my own-with some great help from you guys😉

My med school years were replete with mindless rote memorization and class politics/😡

 

[MilkmanAl]

There were a few professors who would comment on things that almost always get tested, but for the most part, UAMS does its own thing. Behavioral science is the only class I found to be board-friendly. That's a big part of why I haven't gone to class in a year.

 

[username456789]

There were a few professors who would comment on things that almost always get tested, but for the most part, UAMS does its own thing.

That's how it is with us, too. I think the very first mention of "this is often tested on boards" was the third day of class in M1, when an anatomy prof was talking about rib notiching with a coarctation.

Our administration does set up brief meetings with the educational support department to hash out a real general study plan, and may send out an update every once in a while to keep us informed (such as with the new changes to Step I).

But nothing beyond that. I know there are schools that place students into small groups and have them work on board exam review for X hours each week together.

 

[illixir]

Just mentions of high yield stuff in terms of lectures, though really hardly anything because our school only has a few hours of lecture a week.. They had kaplan reps come to talk to us like back in october like 5 months before 2nd year got out, also a DIT rep. Then gave us the CBSE and the kaplan diagnostic.

 

[vicinihil]

We do a little board review where the subject specific prof comes and leads us through some questions. Some of it is useful but it's not to the extent that is helpful for the boards. If you average 12 hours a day over 4 weeks...you're looking at 336hours of studying. If the school puts in 10 hours for you even, that's only 10 hours that may have been better spent elsewhere.

As mentioned on some of the pre-allo forums, the avg step 1 score is much more dependent on you as a student than it is on the school. There is more score variation between students at a school than there are amongst schools in general. Regardless, don't think that because your school's board prep is better/worse it means anything to your score.

 

[mordounhas]

My school had a couple of MD/PhD students who had taken step 1 put on an optional weekly lecture during second year which many students went to. They saw a decent jump in step 1 scores last year, and attributed it to this class (so we were the second year to have it). They also are having faculty do quick reviews of pertinent points in their fields, though the couple I went to didn't seem very helpful.

They're a bit obsessed with the idea of moving up in rankings here, so I think this is an attempt in part to get the students into better residencies in order to help the reputation of the school. Not that that's a bad thing.

 

[axeon123]

I wish my school had helped us better organize what they taught. Lectures never have time to really explain things, so I just end up lost and trying to cram all the details. Ugh.