does your school "teach to the boards"?

[doctorFred]

this goes for allopathic, DO, caribbean schools, etc. i'm curious after reading through the thread on the significantly lower pass rate for DOs on step 1.

i understand the curriculum is a bit different, but there are a lot of places (like AMC) that reaaaaaaally don't "teach to the boards." the only real biochem exposure we've had was the first few weeks of the first year of medical school (like anyone remembers that!) and we haven't had any significant exposure to it since. we also had microbiology for a whooping two weeks out of the past two years. so those are two pretty huge board subjects that have been mostly ignored at our school, yet our board passing scores are right around the national average.

we spend a LOT of time on "low yield" subjects, doing extensive evidence-based medicine/stats, and doing standardized physical exams/clinical bedsides.

i should also add that our school is starting to go nuts with "self study", which is a nice way of saying, "you're bothering us. go learn it yourself." up to 25% of the material in some themes is self study.. so i don't have much sympathy for the people who complain that they have to teach themselves the material for step 1.

is it different at your school? do you feel more prepared for step 1?

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[zedx]

Even then that's better than the case at my school. Where its about 25% teaching and 75% "go find the answer on your own." As far as teaching for the boards, my school pretty makes it a point not to teach towards the boards and instead tries to do stuff with more of an angle of getting us into the wards.

 

[SeventhSon]

there should be a lot of self study in medical school. Lots of lectures, especially things like Micro and biochem, are worthless because they are lists of fun facts. Also, there is simply too much information for which you are responsible to have a lecturer say every single thing you need to know.

 

[doctorFred]

there should be a lot of self study in medical school. Lots of lectures, especially things like Micro and biochem, are worthless because they are lists of fun facts. Also, there is simply too much information for which you are responsible to have a lecturer say every single thing you need to know.

this may be true, but i don't think schools implement it properly. self-study should be focused, and each self-study session should be preceded by a lecturer offering some guidance on the material. this doesn't really happen at our school.

 

[zedx]

Hardly the point I was making. The one thing that distinguishes actually going to a school versus reading a pile of books is in gaining some direction as to what to attempt to focus on. In my case, my last two years have been pretty made up of trying to sort out all the various concepts we're "supposed to learn" from a variety of primary texts.

 

[Tiger26]

No, our school doesn't teach for the boards. They teach buzzwords. Makes it kinda frustrating when you ace the Robbins Review questions and still struggle on a buzzword exam

 

[emlopez2]

Our school has an (optional) once a week back to basics lecture to try to catch us back up to speed, but of course there is no way to recall everything you need to know from this. Even if they did cover everything from previous units there is still a ton of info out there that they have never taught us that the boards expects you to know. I dont think our pass rate is too great either(70%) but im sure it has to do with those students who get too caught up with ONLY the material the school provides. Yes it gets a little frustrating trying to memorize what Dr. So and So thinks important, but the bottom line is if you dont take the time to look into what you need to know and you rely only on your school to tell you, its really gonna hurt you in the end.

 

[ASUAZCOM]

I go to a DO school and our overall first time pass rate on Step 1 of the COMLEX is a 98%. They do not publish our USMLE pass rates, however, the first time pass rate for all DO's on Step 1 of the USMLE is around 70%. Although passing the COMLEX at our school is almost a given, passing the USMLE takes extra effort to learn information that we weren't required to memorize for our school exams (I know MD students have to learn new info for the USMLE, but I believe the quantity of info is greater for DO's).

I have many friends at MD schools and they have told me it's pretty much a given that everyone passes the USMLE, it just takes a lot of work to do very well on the USMLE (similar for DO's and the COMLEX).

 

[distracted]

I feel your pain. My school doesn't teach for the boards at all. We spent 2 weeks on biochem and basically didn't touch micro, pharm, or behavioral. We maybe covered 50% anatomy, 70% physio, and 30% embryo. We do, however, get to write 10 page term papers a few times a semester, go to mandatory journal club once a week, do 2 PBL presentations per week, spend an afternoon each week at a preceptors office, and do multiple 'write-ups' for physical exam sessions -- not to mention all of the standardized patient sessions. Also, a large portion of our quizzes are based on lectures given by various researchers who come in and give us a laundry-list of the newest research being done in a particular field. It's interesting stuff, but I would rather spend my time trying to learn the basics of medicine.

Going to my school was one of the worst decisions of my life...

 

[zedx]

I feel your pain. My school doesn't teach for the boards at all. We spent 2 weeks on biochem and basically didn't touch micro, pharm, or behavioral. We maybe covered 50% anatomy, 70% physio, and 30% embryo. We do, however, get to write 10 page term papers a few times a semester, go to mandatory journal club once a week, do 2 PBL presentations per week, spend an afternoon each week at a preceptors office, and do multiple 'write-ups' for physical exam sessions -- not to mention all of the standardized patient sessions. Also, a large portion of our quizzes are based on lectures given by various researchers who come in and give us a laundry-list of the newest research being done in a particular field. It's interesting stuff, but I would rather spend my time trying to learn the basics of medicine.

Going to my school was one of the worst decisions of my life...

I take it your school prides itself on being a "pioneer in medical education"? Thats just about how my school put it when they changed their curriculum not too long ago. Scary thing is this seems to be a growing trend as far as medical education is concerned.

 

[osli]

Our school does not teach to the boards (a DO school), but I feel very well prepared as far as lectures go. Having gone through about 1500 Kaplan questions, I'd say probably 90-95% of them were covered in class at least once (and of course some are just "wtf did that come from?" type of questions). If I could remember everything said in lectures I'd be golden!

Seriously, I get the feeling that our lectures are pretty strong overall, even though some areas are weaker. For example, the majority of questions I've never seen in Kaplan Qbank are biochem and molecular bio questions. We get the basics in biochem but not much more, and a few signaling pathway lectures for molecular and that's it. And for some reason, I don't think we've ever actually been taught the difference between southern blot, northern blot, western, central, midwestern, southeastern blots, or whatever.

 

[HIJay]

or those stupid zinc fingers, that finger, this finger, chicken fingers....

 

[registered user]

Man, its refreshing to read some of your comments. Here I thought I was the only one paying for a $40000/year online medical degree.

 

[doctorFred]

I feel your pain. My school doesn't teach for the boards at all. We spent 2 weeks on biochem and basically didn't touch micro, pharm, or behavioral. We maybe covered 50% anatomy, 70% physio, and 30% embryo. We do, however, get to write 10 page term papers a few times a semester, go to mandatory journal club once a week, do 2 PBL presentations per week, spend an afternoon each week at a preceptors office, and do multiple 'write-ups' for physical exam sessions -- not to mention all of the standardized patient sessions. Also, a large portion of our quizzes are based on lectures given by various researchers who come in and give us a laundry-list of the newest research being done in a particular field. It's interesting stuff, but I would rather spend my time trying to learn the basics of medicine.

Going to my school was one of the worst decisions of my life...

yeah. you know what i was doing last week? writing a book report on "the diving bell and the butterfly". we also have mandatory journal club sessions every week.. ethics class as well. and of course, write-ups after every clinical skills session.

 

[lilnoelle]

wow you guys, you just made me even more glad that I went to my school. I do get a little tired of hearing "well, this isn't clinically relevant but you have to know it for Step I." I think I hear that at least once a lecture.
Our school had a 95% first time pass rate last year and a 98% pass rate the year before.

 

[MedLover25]

my school teaches to the boards...for the most part

I'm at a caribbean school, but our first time pass rate is typically between 88-90%. And we have our group that hit 240+.

And don't knock your school giving you any kind of clinical experience. trust me, when you get ZERO clinical experience, you CRAVE it.

 

[DrFraud]

I go to a school in the Carib as well. For the most part, my professors are very familiar with the USMLE. We have 3 classes per year, which means a faculty who has been at our school for 5 years has had 15 classes worth of students who can give feedback.

Plus, we have a contract with Kaplan, so Kaplan reps come down to run workshops with our faculty.

After a few months of attending my school, I was able to find out who has a good reputation for preparing students for the boards, based on feedback from upperclassman, and so I was able to get good idea as to where to focus on deficiencies.

I was encouraged by upperclassmen to buy a subscription to UW, and I started using this to practice about 10 questions a day early on at school.

In the spring, about 1/2 or more of our time is devoted to self-study for Step 1, so I am able to hit any weak areas.

Like the last poster, I also wish that I had more clinical exposure, but I am more than satisfied with my preperation for step 1.