exam experience

[MCG]

took step 1 yesterday and i have mixed feelings about it. i hope everyone feels like this coming out of the exam, because i have absolutely no idea how i did. now i have to go through the torture of 4 weeks to find out, great. anyways the exam was fair in my opinion, with 20-25% gimmies and 10-20% that were pretty hard. the questions resembled the online 45 dollar exam more than qbank or the disc they send you. i'll post my correlations when i get the score, so you guys can do some useless comparisons and predictions on how well youll do. i say useless because they could give you a lot of questions on material you know, or material youre clueless on. the exam is alot of luck and a lot of knowledge. for example, if you dont know a certain subject very well, and they start pounding with those questions, youre gonna fell like the little kid in right field begging for the ball not to be hit to him, and the hits keep on coming. so my advice is to know a little about alot rather than a lot about little, because the questions test a lot of concepts more than anything. with that said, it still does make you feel warm and fuzzy inside if another person did similar as you on prep tests and then rocked the boards, i know i'm that way.
neuro-very straigthforward, kaplan or high yield are perfect
antatomy and embryo - again high yield or kaplan, and first aid only could answer one of the 10 anatomy questions i got, and couldnt answer any of the 4 embryo questions i got, go figure.

bugs and drugs, if you can get your hands on kaplan micro, youll smoke this section, trust me, first aid did have pretty good coverage also, but not enough. people gave me this advice before i took the exam, and i was skeptical, but trust me, almost all you need is first aid for pharm, if you neeed to supplement it, use kaplan pharm, which is written by trevor, of katzung and trevor fame, only more condensed and doable than the textbook, which i fell asleep on many nights. the questions are very cut and dry and you should be fine.
BHS- there is no way to study for this in my opinion, I thought BRS barely gave me little if any help. Other people would disagree though, all I can say is goodluck
Pathophys ? the majority of the exam, BRS path and BRs phys are all you need.

In order of my rankings of questions I would say
Robbins path questions and BSS are number one
Qbank 2
Webpath q 3

If you have any questions I?ll be happy to reply. And it is true, all I can think about are all the questions that I pissed away, that I actually knew, all I can do is wait and hope. Thanks to all you guys on the forum that answered all my questions.

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[Kris2c]

Hi again MCG

First of all thanks for sharing your experience, I know you must be a little relief now but also anxious on this time that left for your score report, The best of luck for you

Regarding your post, you said you got lots of questions on Patho-physio. I don't want to be a pain for you but could you pleeeeeease tell me aprox for you how would you rate the subjects accord to their # of questions, I know every exam is different but just to see a sample of yours.
x.e. i know from you that Patho-physio was 1st, ...

And also, did you take NBME questions?

I am sorry for being so demanding

Good luck on your exam again.

Thanks in advance,

Kris
[email protected]

 

[MCG]

no problem, for pathophys i got a lot of renal, gi, and endocrine, little cardio, no cns (my favorite, of course it turned out like this), a good number of gen path. i know this sounds stupid, but know the most common diseases very well, such as heart disease, diabetes, alzheimers, etc. another thing i didnt mention was that the biostats questions were not easy, compared to what others say they get, i got more epidemiology rather than straight stats, mine were not gimmies, so i suggest reading high yield if you can, if you dont have time, then just know first aid.

and yes i did take the online 2 exams they offer, i did better than the mean, i'll let you know the correlations exactly in a month.

also, i almost forgot, biochem was pretty heavy on my test, and i hope everyone gets kaplan biochem, because that book is on the money, especially if you hate the subject, it is perfect for the boards, better than BRS. and first aid will not be enough, again my opinion from my exam.

thanks kris for the words of encouragement, i need all the help i can get.

 

[jakstat33]

thanks for the info, and best of luck to you in your future career!

 

[jed2023]

Appreciate the post, helpful comments. For gross anatomy and embryo, you said that First Aid was not sufficient to answer much, if any of the questions, but that these were covered in HY or Kaplan. Did you do both Kaplan and HY of did you choose one of the two? If you only had to choose one, which one would you go with and why?

As far as epi questions can you be more specific on how many questions you think you got? A lot of people blow this off because they expect only a handful of questions at most.

 

[DrSmiles]

Thanks for sharing your exam experience- it really does help to hear what to expect.

 

[mele]

Hello MCG,

Thanks for all of your helpful suggestions! I'm a bit new to the Kaplan books and robbins. Could you specify the title of the robbins path question book you used? Also, are the Kaplan books you used from the Home study program or are they the ones from the actual live course books they give you when you sign up for a class? Thank you again!!

 

[MCG]

The kaplan books i have say lecture notes on the cover, i believe there are 8 of them, including the qbook which includes i think includes 800 questions. robbins path questions book is written by kumar (1100 questions), which is very helpful. i suggest reading BRS path chapter followed by the corresponding chapter in robbins q book, it seemed to help me.

for jed, i would just pick one anatomy, embryo, neuro book and stick to it, i think the kaplan book is better for anatomy and embryo, put high yield neuro is better than kaplan neuro. DO NOT blow off neuro, but in my opinion you could blow off anatmoy and embryo that is not in first aid. There is just too much material in anatomy and embryo to put time into, for such few questions. On the other hand, neuro could be quite a number of questions so read high yield. hope my comments have been some help. good luck to all you guys, i hope you all knock the test out of the park.