Does this happen at your school?

[deleted263296]

Classmates asking upperclassmen what questions were on the exams? I know this is happening at my school on at least a limited basis. Considering how tight the school is with their exams (can only review them under supervision), I'm sure they don't want this happening.

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[dude1344]

I'm sure it happens everywhere...

 

[Sol Rosenberg]

Of course it happens. Big time.

 

[Mr hawkings]

Of course.
The teachers know it happens yet they still choose to use the same questions they've been using for 10 years.

 

[physics junkie]

You must be new to..errmm, life? This is a time honored tradition in education.

Other great strategies include finding the answer key to previous fill-in-the-blank exams, listening in lecture, and reading textbooks.

Personally, I'm more shocked about how open all the step1 prep companies(Kaplan, Falcon, DIT, etc.) are about surveying students for questions on their step1 exam.

 

[KeyzerSoze]

Classmates asking upperclassmen what questions were on the exams? I know this is happening at my school on at least a limited basis. Considering how tight the school is with their exams (can only review them under supervision), I'm sure they don't want this happening.

I guess people could, but it would be sort of silly since most of the professors give out the old exams.

 

[Evergrey]

I think I must have been lucky (or unlucky depending on your perspective), at my school almost no professors reused exam questions so I never had to worry about looking at old exams being "academic dishonesty."

 

[coldweatherblue]

I'm an MS2 rooming with two MS1's so I could definitely help them out... the problem is that I don't really remember specific questions from exams last year, so my advice is basically only "yeah that test is going to be really hard, you'd better study a lot..". lol

 

[deleted263296]

You must be new to..errmm, life? This is a time honored tradition in education.

Other great strategies include finding the answer key to previous fill-in-the-blank exams, listening in lecture, and reading textbooks.

Personally, I'm more shocked about how open all the step1 prep companies(Kaplan, Falcon, DIT, etc.) are about surveying students for questions on their step1 exam.

Yeah, I was a little surprised at this too. I hear Goljan say in almost every lecture how some student told him this question was on the exam, etc. I haven't taken the step I yet (only 6 more months o_o), but I'm sure there's a disclaimer on the beginning of it saying not to discuss the questions afterwards, just like there was on the MCAT. Oh, well, anything to get ahead in medical education, I guess. This wouldn't bother me so much if we weren't graded at my school relative to how other people in the class do.

 

[45408]

I think I must have been lucky (or unlucky depending on your perspective), at my school almost no professors reused exam questions so I never had to worry about looking at old exams being "academic dishonesty."

Several of my M1/M2 classes offered the exams to us. My physiology class was a well-oiled machine, and they posted every exam online (including the final exams) in the past 5 years along with detailed answer keys. They were extremely helpful in realizing what I did and didn't understand. They wrote new questions every year, which is not very common, but I think it was great.

 

[deleted263296]

God, you are so lucky. We never get practice exams and our learning objectives are very broad/vague, so I have almost no idea what's on our exams (which is probably why some people resort to asking upperclassmen).

 

[Music MD]

How much advantage do you think those students are really getting? I took my biochem final 3 weeks ago and I could hardly tell you what was on it now let alone this time next year.

 

[reedman]

i really hate this kind of crap. its like poker. if one person cheats, he will win. if everybody cheats it levels the playing field.

since we all know that inside information about test questions is floating around we all have to find out about it to be competitive. i despise the whole situation. that being said, you are stupid if you don't take advantage of every opportunity, as long as you don't break any rules.

if i was a professor i would make every test available to my students. supposedly there is a certain amount that everyone needs to know. if the test covers that, then why not give it to the students? if everybody learns the old tests they will be learning what they need to know.

 

[beyondbethany]

if i was a professor i would make every test available to my students. supposedly there is a certain amount that everyone needs to know. if the test covers that, then why not give it to the students? if everybody learns the old tests they will be learning what they need to know.

It is not easy to write good test questions, so I can understand where profs come from when they chose not to share their exam questions from each year.

Our school has a very strict closed exam policy, some departments don't even let you see what questions you missed on their exams because of past problems with exam questions being copied and passed around.

As for asking upperclassmen about exam content, I think that is fair game.

 

[Engineer2MD]

Our school has a very strict closed exam policy, some departments don't even let you see what questions you missed on their exams because of past problems with exam questions being copied and passed around.

This is a particular pet peeve of mine. If you don't know what you missed how can you learn from your mistakes?

 

[Bartelby]

Score another point for pass/fail grading! I wouldn't know who to ask about previous questions, and it doesn't matter. As long as I break 70 I get a "P" no matter what anyone else gets or how high my grade goes. This sucks for those who are graded, hopefully if a student is honest and puts stuff together on his/her own that will be reflected in his/her step 1 score.

 

[bambi]

This is a particular pet peeve of mine. If you don't know what you missed how can you learn from your mistakes?

You mean at some places they actually give you your exams back after they have been marked? I wish they did in the UK! In my 7 years of university I have been allowed to see 0 exam papers after the exam itself.

 

[Mr hawkings]

You mean at some places they actually give you your exams back after they have been marked? I wish they did in the UK! In my 7 years of university I have been allowed to see 0 exam papers after the exam itself.

They dont give them back but they set up a time (usually a couple of hours) when you can come look at the exam and see which questions you got right or wrong. That way if there was a mistake in grading, you could bring it to their attention. Or if a question was unfair or was on material not coverered in the course, you could appeal it. The concern for some schools is that they fear that students will bring in paper to copy the questions to pass on to the next generation the next year so they have a leg up on the exam.

 

[Tatastrophy]

,

 

[kingofthehill]

Score another point for pass/fail grading! I wouldn't know who to ask about previous questions, and it doesn't matter. As long as I break 70 I get a "P" no matter what anyone else gets or how high my grade goes. This sucks for those who are graded, hopefully if a student is honest and puts stuff together on his/her own that will be reflected in his/her step 1 score.

Exactly. There is NO substitute to learning something the first time around, and it usually means not being able to scan old tests as a crutch. If you don't have access to old tests or questions, it forces you to know your stuff.

I took anatomy in undergrad, but the guy handed back his tests and reused all of the same questions from past years. I got my hands on a bunch of his old tests, and no joke not one question on any of the tests I took was one I hadn't seen from the copies of old tests my friends gave me. I got an A in the class, but that didn't amount to a hill of beans when med school anatomy came around. I probably remembered 1%.

 

[OpalOnyx]

i'm a bit concerned about things like this. when i had access to old exams in undergrad (some sororities/frats have test banks), i used to share them with all those i knew in the class. But it seems like a unfair advantage that some are getting info from upperclassmen while others may not know any upperclassmen or be close enough to those upperclassmen to ask... I really detest situations like this.

 

[silverhorse84]

i'm a bit concerned about things like this. when i had access to old exams in undergrad (some sororities/frats have test banks), i used to share them with all those i knew in the class. But it seems like a unfair advantage that some are getting info from upperclassmen while others may not know any upperclassmen or be close enough to those upperclassmen to ask... I really detest situations like this.

Medical schools tend to be small, plus a lot of them have a sponsor/sponsoree program where they match you with someone above you to be your guide. It's not like undergrad where you may not know anyone who took the class before you - the chance of someone not knowing anyone from the class above them is very low.

 

[Sol Rosenberg]

It is not easy to write good test questions, so I can understand where profs come from when they chose not to share their exam questions from each year.

Our school has a very strict closed exam policy, some departments don't even let you see what questions you missed on their exams because of past problems with exam questions being copied and passed around.

As for asking upperclassmen about exam content, I think that is fair game.

Bull. Maybe it's hard to come up with questions that are borderline incomprehensible, where the difference between two of the answer choices might be once word, but those questions are crap anyway.

Undergraduate profs (and the anatomy and immunology course instructors at my Medical School) manage to write new questions every year -- those that don't are just lazy.

The solution to students' passing around the questions is for the profs to just pass them around themselves. It's really the only fair way.

 

[Ashers]

You mean at some places they actually give you your exams back after they have been marked? I wish they did in the UK! In my 7 years of university I have been allowed to see 0 exam papers after the exam itself.

The University of Westminster gave back each exam to each student (study abroad or UK) after it was marked when I was there.

About half of the exams were on computers in the 1st two years. For those, we got to see the answers, but we didn't keep the exams.

One of our classes, pharmacology, we had completely written exams... no multiple guess, and we got those back. We had official access to 3 years of exams from about 4-5 years before, but previous years that were more recent floated around.

 

[bambi]

The University of Westminster gave back each exam to each student (study abroad or UK) after it was marked when I was there.

About half of the exams were on computers in the 1st two years. For those, we got to see the answers, but we didn't keep the exams.

One of our classes, pharmacology, we had completely written exams... no multiple guess, and we got those back. We had official access to 3 years of exams from about 4-5 years before, but previous years that were more recent floated around.

Really? You were very lucky! It's not a 'major' uni, don't know if that means it's quite small but if so maybe they had more time to sort out papers for students. You had multiple choice exams too?

During my 1st degree we could get copies of old papers from the library, in med school we get about 15 practice questions online for the pre-clinical modules, and a total of 50 for this other exam that we take twice every year but they never change those questions so after 1st year they aren't that useful.

 

[Ashers]

Really? You were very lucky! It's not a 'major' uni, don't know if that means it's quite small but if so maybe they had more time to sort out papers for students. You had multiple choice exams too?

During my 1st degree we could get copies of old papers from the library, in med school we get about 15 practice questions online for the pre-clinical modules, and a total of 50 for this other exam that we take twice every year but they never change those questions so after 1st year they aren't that useful.

Oops, so I guess i switched from university to med school without a clear change. At Westminster there were about 80-100 people in my science lectures. In my German class, there were 6 of us. The exams were a variety of question types, multiple guess, true/false, short answer, and essay. I preferred the UK system of uni, and I actually applied to Imperial college for medical school... got interviewed, but never got in. Now I'm glad I'm done with school, and I'll be an attending before my friend will be who's in anesthetics training -- he graduated in 2004 from Kings.

The pharm class with the written exams was in med school.

 

[ChubbyChaser]

how the hell are you supposed to remember specific questions a year from now?

Our school has a huge test bank that the teachers add to ever so often...they just pick and choose questions from it in order to test certain objectives. So i guess they do reuse test questions..but only some from year to year.

 

[RySerr21]

Classmates asking upperclassmen what questions were on the exams? I know this is happening at my school on at least a limited basis. Considering how tight the school is with their exams (can only review them under supervision), I'm sure they don't want this happening.

Interesting. At our school, all of the old exams are open to everyone and the professors often times pass their old exam questions out themselves. Sometimes we have tests going back to 2000! It has its pros and cons and it depends how you use the tests during your studies. Professors definitely do repeat exam questions, so on the one hand you can study for a section of the test by reviewing old test questions. Now you might be getting good grades in the long short term b/c youve memorized old tests, but thats not the way I think the tests should be used. If you study normally like you would if you didnt have access to an old exam, and then take an old exam at the end of your studying to gauge where you are at, then I think that is the most efficient use of the exams and I think I'll benefit in the long run. All in all though, I'm glad we have the old exams. We are P/F anyway (no honors).

 

[bambi]

Oops, so I guess i switched from university to med school without a clear change. At Westminster there were about 80-100 people in my science lectures. In my German class, there were 6 of us. The exams were a variety of question types, multiple guess, true/false, short answer, and essay. I preferred the UK system of uni, and I actually applied to Imperial college for medical school... got interviewed, but never got in. Now I'm glad I'm done with school, and I'll be an attending before my friend will be who's in anesthetics training -- he graduated in 2004 from Kings.

The pharm class with the written exams was in med school.

100 would be small for a 1st year lecture but huge for 3rd year so can't tell from that if it's big or small.

Are you from the UK?

 

[Ashers]

100 would be small for a 1st year lecture but huge for 3rd year so can't tell from that if it's big or small.

Are you from the UK?

It was a 1st year class.

I'm not from the UK, but I want to be. I'm still annoyed that my dad didn't do the fellowship to which he was accepted . I would've been born in London instead of California. I studied abroad for a year, and go visit friends as often as I can.