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JackShephard MD

JackShephard MD

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  1. Medical Student
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New medical education website rooted in an adaptive learning platform. Looks impressive, check it out.

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Just discovered FC and began playing with the month trial. Is it wise to mark topics I learned about but am not good at? Like, I literally know none of this stuff that well. Should I still mark it and begin reviewing or try to learn it better before I start with FC?

Cheers and sorry if this has been asked already
 
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Just wanted to check in here and post - looks like this thread has slowed down a bit. Makes sense with step 1 season in full swing.

See my post from earlier detailing my usage of FC - I was pretty strict about it. Throughout the year, I would also reference First Aid and made it through about 1.5x. Uworld: 78% 1st pass - starting about 2 months before dedicated and for the 1 month of dedicated prep timeHere's my list of practice exam scores, all of which (except the in-school one) I took same day of week and time that my real thing would be at:
NBME's:
at school: 245
13: 249
15: 251
16: 234 -This was certainly a letdown. Didn't treat this one as seriously and was not ready to zero-in on each question as I took it (noticed my timing was really bad on each block). I decided to mix it up, stopped doing Firecracker completely and went back and thoroughly reviewed FA sections I was weak on.
17: 260 - I honestly don't think my changed study habits caused this jump - more so, I think a commitment to killing uWorld blocks and treating each one seriously and as a time-trial of sorts.
18: 249

Did my UWSA's back-to-back about 5 days before the real thing.
UW1: 259
UW2: 260



REAL THING: 254
Boom. Couldn't be happier. This should at least not prevent me from going into whatever field I choose - this is all I can ask for at this point.
 
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justAstudent said:
Anybody using or has used FC for step2?
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I just started. Have like 7 topics flagged lol. I hear it's great if you can dedicate your time to it, but that's the problem, especially with surgery, so we'll see if I can stick with it. I'll probably just try to be more dedicated and methodical with it. Maybe flag 4 topics/day and do 100 review or something. There's now way I have time for 250 review plus flagging topics upon topics. What's your first rotation?
 
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For those of you that used/are using FC for step 1 I'm curious how you marked questions. Do you use the "snooze" feature if you get a question completely wrong and then rate it a "1" or "2" when you get the answer right or do you go straight to a "1" or "2" in the interest of time (I'm worried about the amount of time that FC will take on a given day during M2 and if I'll have that time to dedicate to FC along with my coursework)? Also, I'm currently in the summer between my M1 and M2 year just starting FC and am trying to figure out how others set up their summer study plan. Did you add every class taken in M1 and set them all to "past" or just add a couple classes at a time and set them to "current"? Thanks for the help!!
 
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For those using FC for step 2. How do you'll like it so far? I'm jumping on the ship pretty soon, just want to see how some peers feel about it. Thanks
 
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Hey Everybody -

I'm in the summer between MS1 and MS2 and recently started Firecracker. Results have been rather discouraging thus far:

As it turns out, I have completely forgotten about 90% of the material that I learned during MS1. About 5% of the FC questions cover material that I never learned. The last 5% are topics that I learned during MS1 and do remember.

I'm wondering if I should go back and unmark some of the subjects that I initially selected when I signed up. Alternatively, I could keep on trucking, and hope to learn the material as I see the same cards over and over again.

What would be the best strategy at this point? I do like spaced repetition and did well with Anki last year. However, I feel like I'm not getting much out of clicking through flashcards when I only get 1 out of every 20 questions correct.

Thanks for any advice.

-Bill
 
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BillrothI said:
Hey Everybody -

I'm in the summer between MS1 and MS2 and recently started Firecracker. Results have been rather discouraging thus far:

As it turns out, I have completely forgotten about 90% of the material that I learned during MS1. About 5% of the FC questions cover material that I never learned. The last 5% are topics that I learned during MS1 and do remember.

I'm wondering if I should go back and unmark some of the subjects that I initially selected when I signed up. Alternatively, I could keep on trucking, and hope to learn the material as I see the same cards over and over again.

What would be the best strategy at this point? I do like spaced repetition and did well with Anki last year. However, I feel like I'm not getting much out of clicking through flashcards when I only get 1 out of every 20 questions correct.

Thanks for any advice.

-Bill
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Don't mark everything at once. Besides, some topics are just too low yield to bother marking. Do yourself a favor and skip embryology entirely. I would also mark anatomy selectively. Physiology is really good, and most of biochem is decent. Additionally, I say you find your own way of doing questions, and don't blindly follow the advice from FC. The algorithm and interface will probably change and screw you over every 6 months anyway, like it has been doing for the past couple of years I've been subscribed. If I were to do it all over I would have saved myself the money and the headache and sticked with anki. Sounds like your medical school did a good job if they covered 95% of FC material, mine sure didn't.
 
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AnalisCanalis said:
Don't mark everything at once. Besides, some topics are just too low yield to bother marking. Do yourself a favor and skip embryology entirely. I would also mark anatomy selectively. Physiology is really good, and most of biochem is decent. Additionally, I say you find your own way of doing questions, and don't blindly follow the advice from FC. The algorithm and interface will probably change and screw you over every 6 months anyway, like it has been doing for the past couple of years I've been subscribed. If I were to do it all over I would have saved myself the money and the headache and sticked with anki. Sounds like your medical school did a good job if they covered 95% of FC material, mine sure didn't.
Click to expand...

Thank you very much for the advice, Analis. I'm glad to hear that embryology and anatomy aren't necessarily high-yield for Step; both subjects were weaknesses for me.

I will go back into FC and unmark all of the embryo. Will leave anatomy for now, but umark it if it becomes too much of a headache. As you know, FC has a ton of biochem and physio material, so that should be plenty for this summer.

Thanks again.

-Bill

PS -- Although Anki helped me learn class material well, I included a ton of questions that almost certainly aren't relevant to Step. That being the case, I feel like I'm better off using FC than reviewing my old Anki decks. I do like the flexibility of Anki, though, and probably should have tagged Step-relevant subjects.
 
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BillrothI said:
Thank you very much for the advice, Analis. I'm glad to hear that embryology and anatomy aren't necessarily high-yield for Step; both subjects were weaknesses for me.

I will go back into FC and unmark all of the embryo. Will leave anatomy for now, but umark it if it becomes too much of a headache. As you know, FC has a ton of biochem and physio material, so that should be plenty for this summer.

Thanks again.

-Bill

PS -- Although Anki helped me learn class material well, I included a ton of questions that almost certainly aren't relevant to Step. That being the case, I feel like I'm better off using FC than reviewing my old Anki decks. I do like the flexibility of Anki, though, and probably should have tagged Step-relevant subjects.
Click to expand...
Just to be clear, anatomy is still somewhat high yield for step, it's just that FC is far too detailed in anatomy. Enjoy your summer!
 
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I just started MS-1 last week, and I found out that my school has a contract with Firecracker so the whole class can use it. I've started tinkering with it and want to consistently use it alongside First Aid as a supplement to my coursework. So far I've just flagged the topics I've gone over in class and answered questions after finishing my reading...is that all there is to it? I feel like I'm missing details of the program, or something.
 
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w0rldw3y3d said:
I just started MS-1 last week, and I found out that my school has a contract with Firecracker so the whole class can use it. I've started tinkering with it and want to consistently use it alongside First Aid as a supplement to my coursework. So far I've just flagged the topics I've gone over in class and answered questions after finishing my reading...is that all there is to it? I feel like I'm missing details of the program, or something.
Click to expand...

Nope, just keep doing what you're doing.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
 
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Anybody else having issues with not staying logged in to the iphone daily review app? It's frustrating to have to log in every time I want to get a few questions in while waiting in line/on the bus/...bathroom lol. Want to see if it's a problem with my phone or the app.
 
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ForHumors said:
Anybody else having issues with not staying logged in to the iphone daily review app? It's frustrating to have to log in every time I want to get a few questions in while waiting in line/on the bus/...bathroom lol. Want to see if it's a problem with my phone or the app.
Click to expand...

I get auto-logged off every other day or so. No solution thus far.
 
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Does anybody know if there's a way to reset the clock for FC? My daily tasks reset each night at 9 PM, and I'd like to change it to reset at midnight.

Thanks!
 
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Is it possible to know the majority of the questions being asked during a topic you marked as current? I'm taking Path right now and holy ****, I think I know maybe like 30% of these damn questions. Am I doing something wrong?
 
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Brorthopedic said:
Is it possible to know the majority of the questions being asked during a topic you marked as current? I'm taking Path right now and holy ****, I think I know maybe like 30% of these damn questions. Am I doing something wrong?
Click to expand...

Haven't done much Path yet, but from what I can tell FC draws strongly from Pathoma for making its path cards. Maybe try to do class -> do associated section in pathoma -> flag and do associated firecracker?
 
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ForHumors said:
Haven't done much Path yet, but from what I can tell FC draws strongly from Pathoma for making its path cards. Maybe try to do class -> do associated section in pathoma -> flag and do associated firecracker?
Click to expand...

I did something similar except I went straight to pathoma and then followed it up with FC.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
 
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ForHumors said:
Haven't done much Path yet, but from what I can tell FC draws strongly from Pathoma for making its path cards. Maybe try to do class -> do associated section in pathoma -> flag and do associated firecracker?
Click to expand...
I don't know if it's my particular school, but the material we're currently covering in Pathology is nowhere near as in-depth as these FC cards.
 
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Ophthoseidon said:
Man, that's rough too since there are like 450+ internal topics. I luckily start with peds, though it has almost 200 as well
Click to expand...


Hey, I know that you just finished Step 1 and used FC, I'm about to enter my M2 year and I was wondering if you had any advice, when/if to drop FC, focus on questions, or any reflections that you may have.

Thanks!
 
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Daitong said:
Hey, I know that you just finished Step 1 and used FC, I'm about to enter my M2 year and I was wondering if you had any advice, when/if to drop FC, focus on questions, or any reflections that you may have.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Never stop! lol. Maybe decrease the load in terms of other stuff. I stopped and regretted it because there were a few things on test day I had on the tip of my tongue but just couldn't remember between 2 things. Maybe I would have saw them again, maybe I wouldn't have, who knows. Just make sure you do it everyday without taking breaks. I would not use it religiously throughout spring and winter and I think that hurt me also. A month off can have devastating effects on your spaced repetition skills. Overall it was my number 1 resource and combined with qbanks is very powerful. If you haven't started Rx or Kaplan yet, you should with classes. These will set you up nicely for UWorld. Depending on how many questions you've done, you can start UWorld early. Otherwise it doesn't hurt terribly to wait until later.
 
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ForHumors said:
Haven't done much Path yet, but from what I can tell FC draws strongly from Pathoma for making its path cards. Maybe try to do class -> do associated section in pathoma -> flag and do associated firecracker?
Click to expand...
This is both true and untrue. While it does cover everything on pathoma, it covers a lot more depth than Pathoma does. Sometimes I think it may be unreasonable and doesn't tell you what is high yield. With Pathoma it might say "symptoms are A B C D and A followed by B are most high yield" but FC will just ask the question and have K C D E A H I B F G J in its list and that sucks.
 
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Question. I recently moved to using the firecracker APP instead of legacy for step 2. Is there a way to just re-do questions you got a 1 or 2 in later in the day?
 
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Thought you guys would be interested in this, a study done by a former student at my school: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4673073/

Found that increased Anki use (quantified by number of unique cards seen) was significantly associated with increased performance on Step 1, even accounting for MCAT, class performance, and more. However, firecracker use (same quantification, # of unique cards) was not significantly associated. While I am betting it would be significant with increased sample size, this does seem to suggest that Anki gives more bang for your buck/card.

Personally, I think the most likely rationale behind the difference is that Anki pretty much forces you to get a card correct before you no longer see it that day, whereas in Firecracker I know I have a bunch of cards I haven't fully memorized yet, but keep seeing every other day because I keep giving them 1s. So, I am thinking that I will continue to use firecracker in second year, but only by doing it "Anki-style" using snooze until I get the card right. However, another potential criticism of Firecracker is that Anki gives you better opportunities for looking at pictures and diagrams, while Firecracker isn't the best for remembering things in visual form because it's all text. Thoughts on this?
 
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ForHumors said:
Thought you guys would be interested in this, a study done by a former student at my school: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4673073/

Found that increased Anki use (quantified by number of unique cards seen) was significantly associated with increased performance on Step 1, even accounting for MCAT, class performance, and more. However, firecracker use (same quantification, # of unique cards) was not significantly associated. While I am betting it would be significant with increased sample size, this does seem to suggest that Anki gives more bang for your buck/card.

Personally, I think the most likely rationale behind the difference is that Anki pretty much forces you to get a card correct before you no longer see it that day, whereas in Firecracker I know I have a bunch of cards I haven't fully memorized yet, but keep seeing every other day because I keep giving them 1s. So, I am thinking that I will continue to use firecracker in second year, but only by doing it "Anki-style" using snooze until I get the card right. However, another potential criticism of Firecracker is that Anki gives you better opportunities for looking at pictures and diagrams, while Firecracker isn't the best for remembering things in visual form because it's all text. Thoughts on this?
Click to expand...
You can't add images to questions but you can add images in the notes for answers or helpful reminders. Also, the snooze button is supposed to combat the problem you are you were talking about with not seeing it the next day or two days later. You snooze it until you know it, then hit it as a 1 and see if you can remember it in 1-2 days. Otherwise, you're right, it's impossible. Especially with the laundry lists of things.

I also just skimmed the paper and I would say that I highly doubt 49% of people at 1 school used firecracker consistently every day, regardless of the number of questions done. I think it's hard to gauge how accurate it was in terms of relation to board scores because of that (you could probably say the same for 31% using anki.
 
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Ophthoseidon said:
You can't add images to questions but you can add images in the notes for answers or helpful reminders. Also, the snooze button is supposed to combat the problem you are you were talking about with not seeing it the next day or two days later. You snooze it until you know it, then hit it as a 1 and see if you can remember it in 1-2 days. Otherwise, you're right, it's impossible. Especially with the laundry lists of things.

I also just skimmed the paper and I would say that I highly doubt 49% of people at 1 school used firecracker consistently every day, regardless of the number of questions done. I think it's hard to gauge how accurate it was in terms of relation to board scores because of that (you could probably say the same for 31% using anki.
Click to expand...

True, they probably didn't use it every day, not like how we are generally using it. Based upon the distribution of cards seen and time used, we would already be pretty far to the right on the distribution. That said, it would be nice to get a strong "dose-response" curve where, even if you're not using it perfectly, you're still significantly outperforming someone who isn't using it at all (controlling for other factors). Or, that when you use it longer you outperform someone who used it for half the amount of time. It looks like Anki is able to show that occurrence, which I think, yeah that probably comes down to the snooze functionality. The data were collected before FC's snooze was implemented. Additionally, it is easier to jump around through topics via "Study something specific" than in Anki, perhaps making it easier to see more cards without effectively learning them and hurting the correlation.

It's true, we can put images in to firecracker to improve our personal use, but come on, we're paying serious money for it. No sense for it to have a weakness here compared to Anki. I think that having the most relevant image, where appropriate (and without requiring extra clicks to display it), in the answer section should be the next functionality we should expect from firecracker. A platform trying to be comprehensive for medical education needs to have higher quality illustrations/images.
 
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Has anyone played around with the new high-yield option (released today)? I'm wondering if that might be a good choice for those of us at schools that don't use NBME exams...

Any thoughts are appreciated!

-Bill
 
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Quick question, for Firecracker they have certain cards/materials/questions that arn't in First Aid or Pathoma at all. Are these cards there for a specific reason? Are they actual questions that have appeared on the Step 1/Boards?
 
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testt said:
Quick question, for Firecracker they have certain cards/materials/questions that arn't in First Aid or Pathoma at all. Are these cards there for a specific reason? Are they actual questions that have appeared on the Step 1/Boards?
Click to expand...
No, that's unlikely. The questions in FC are not modeled after board questions. Neither is most of FA/pathoma to be honest. See it as a broader coverage of the same material.
 
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Hello! I'm a MS1 and have been using firecracker since the start of the school but have been using FC aggressively recently. I'm sitting at 20% flagged. I'm wondering how should I flag new topics that hasn't been taught in school to get ahead? Do I just read the card and do the questions? Would it be a good idea to read outside source in addition? I wanna get ahead with flagging this winter break.. Any insights and thoughts are much appreciated!

@mcloaf , @Ophthoseidon, @kirbymiester
 
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uvrsol said:
Hello! I'm a MS1 and have been using firecracker since the start of the school but have been using FC aggressively recently. I'm sitting at 20% flagged. I'm wondering how should I flag new topics that hasn't been taught in school to get ahead? Do I just read the card and do the questions? Would it be a good idea to read outside source in addition? I wanna get ahead with flagging this winter break.. Any insights and thoughts are much appreciated!

@mcloaf , @Ophthoseidon, @kirbymiester
Click to expand...
I'd just study that topic in full a few times using the cards then do the questions. Maybe even flag the questions but do them the next day outside of your normal set.
 
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uvrsol said:
Hello! I'm a MS1 and have been using firecracker since the start of the school but have been using FC aggressively recently. I'm sitting at 20% flagged. I'm wondering how should I flag new topics that hasn't been taught in school to get ahead? Do I just read the card and do the questions? Would it be a good idea to read outside source in addition? I wanna get ahead with flagging this winter break.. Any insights and thoughts are much appreciated!
Click to expand...
I think it's sort of dictated by how complicated the topics you're trying to study are. I found that most of the time I would get by through just reading the cards carefully and doing the questions, occasionally you might need to seek an outside source to clarify and help your understanding.
 
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Im an M1 who just recently picked up Firecracker and am still a bit unsure on the "best practices" especially in comparison to Anki. Does anyone have a guide on best way to use the snooze/question rating feature?

I know that some FC questions have answers that have multiple components. Should I only move the card up to 3-5 when I am able to successfully list every part of the answer?
 
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Ophthoseidon said:
I'd just study that topic in full a few times using the cards then do the questions. Maybe even flag the questions but do them the next day outside of your normal set.
Click to expand...

mcloaf said:
I think it's sort of dictated by how complicated the topics you're trying to study are. I found that most of the time I would get by through just reading the cards carefully and doing the questions, occasionally you might need to seek an outside source to clarify and help your understanding.
Click to expand...


Thanks! Also, how did you go about juggling the school work with firecracker? Were you able to do firecracker even days before leading up to class exams? or did you have to pause and pick it back up after tests? i feel like if I stopped, i fear i may lose the value of space repetition. i really appreciate any thoughts/tips on how to manage it!
 
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uvrsol said:
Thanks! Also, how did you go about juggling the school work with firecracker? Were you able to do firecracker even days before leading up to class exams? or did you have to pause and pick it back up after tests? i feel like if I stopped, i fear i may lose the value of space repetition. i really appreciate any thoughts/tips on how to manage it!
Click to expand...
Don't stop won't stop
 
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Are there sections of FC that you can skip over? Some of this anatomy is way too detailed!
 
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uvrsol said:
Thanks! Also, how did you go about juggling the school work with firecracker? Were you able to do firecracker even days before leading up to class exams? or did you have to pause and pick it back up after tests? i feel like if I stopped, i fear i may lose the value of space repetition. i really appreciate any thoughts/tips on how to manage it!
Click to expand...

Yep, I think in the 2 years leading up to step 1 I didn't miss more than a few days. That being said, it may be easier to miss days now than it was when I was doing it. It used to be that you had X number of review cards assigned to a day and if you didn't get them done they'd roll over to the next day--if you had 150 a day to do and you missed a couple days in a row you'd quickly be up to 500 cards, which was good motivation to not miss days. I think they've made it a little more flexible now, for better or worse.
 
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Ophthoseidon said:
Don't stop won't stop
Click to expand...

mcloaf said:
Yep, I think in the 2 years leading up to step 1 I didn't miss more than a few days. That being said, it may be easier to miss days now than it was when I was doing it. It used to be that you had X number of review cards assigned to a day and if you didn't get them done they'd roll over to the next day--if you had 150 a day to do and you missed a couple days in a row you'd quickly be up to 500 cards, which was good motivation to not miss days. I think they've made it a little more flexible now, for better or worse.
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot!! reallly appreciate your thoughts!

Also, i understand that firecracker is kinda weak with physiology (thats what ppl who used it say..plz correct me if i'm wrong). I also know that knowing physiology inside out is crucial to do well in boards. What other supplemental resources did you use for physiology that helped you master it in addition to firecracker?

Also, what do you think about embryology in firecracker? It looks daunting and I"m not sure if I should still flag them.
 
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uvrsol said:
Thanks a lot!! reallly appreciate your thoughts!

Also, i understand that firecracker is kinda weak with physiology (thats what ppl who used it say..plz correct me if i'm wrong). I also know that knowing physiology inside out is crucial to do well in boards. What other supplemental resources did you use for physiology that helped you master it in addition to firecracker?

Also, what do you think about embryology in firecracker? It looks daunting and I"m not sure if I should still flag them.
Click to expand...

Personally I thought I understood physiology best from doing Kaplan's qbank. If you weren't planning on doing it otherwise then that's kind of a steep price tag just to use it for physiology.

As for embryo, I'm not sure how much FC embryo has changed since I did it but I thought it was worth it. Not all of it is high yield, but things like pharyngeal arches are worth a good handle on.
 
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What do you guys think about the dedicated prep mode with FC? Anyone tried it?
 
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Question for fellow FC users: how much/how often do you rate topics as Past? I'm asking because it seems like most of the cards I rate as Past I end up not seeing for several months, and then I've forgotten the card by then. For those of you that already finished Step 1 how did you deal with this? Did you just go back and review through all your Past topics closer to the test date? Thanks!
 
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