Gunner Training % Mastered

[pufferfish]

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Cannot get my % mastered beyond 25%. Have banked the majority of flashcards. 5 weeks until exam--should I continue? Love the program, feel like I'm gaining something out of it...but just can't seem to nail the answers down perfectly...

The cytokines are killing me!!! 😡

Anyone's thoughts/comments (in same boat?)--

Thanks-
PuffPufff

 

[Day man]

Cannot get my % mastered beyond 25%. Have banked the majority of flashcards. 5 weeks until exam--should I continue? Love the program, feel like I'm gaining something out of it...but just can't seem to nail the answers down perfectly...

The cytokines are killing me!!! 😡

Anyone's thoughts/comments (in same boat?)--

Thanks-
PuffPufff

how many cards do you have a day? I was at ~500/day about 2.5 weeks ago but now i have 100% banked, 70.2% mastered and still have ~200 cards per day. dedicated time is starting next monday. I've decided to just do as many cards as I can each morning and hopefully it will be below 200 = ~2 hours. If that seems to cut too much into UW time, I'm just going to drop the cards I do per day. The program is great, but really really time consuming...and I don't believe it replaces doing question bank questions. That's just my 2 cents though.

 

[pufferfish]

how many cards do you have a day? I was at ~500/day about 2.5 weeks ago but now i have 100% banked, 70.2% mastered and still have ~200 cards per day. dedicated time is starting next monday. I've decided to just do as many cards as I can each morning and hopefully it will be below 200 = ~2 hours. If that seems to cut too much into UW time, I'm just going to drop the cards I do per day. The program is great, but really really time consuming...and I don't believe it replaces doing question bank questions. That's just my 2 cents though.

200-300 a day...but never feel comfortable to score 4/5, so my %mastered is really low. it's killing my mindset to go into the exam!

thanks for your input!!!

 

[Shadowmoses]

this should be an interesting thread, although I have nothing to contribute. Its nice to hear how others grade themselves, and how much GT helps them absorb FA. I have a meager 2% mastered although I only banked 4% of the cards so far...yea i'm still on the free trial lol.

 

[DrDrToBe]

I am in the same boat..70% banked and 11% mastered. Yesterday I banked the last of the basic science sections, and I don't think I'm going to bank anymore since I feel pretty comfortable going through the systems on my own (I also banked all the pharm from each system).
I wouldn't focus on the % mastery so much if I were you; I score myself lower on some stuff because I want to make sure I see it again before I take my exam (in about 4-6 weeks). Also, it's the concept that matters for a lot of things, so even if you can't regurgitate the card word for word if you understand it you're probably fine. Of course, there are some cards that I just feel like I need to know almost verbatim, like some micro and pharm cards, and the cytokines too! I don't really rely on the mastery that much myself; for instance, I banked 100% of heme about 1 month ago and it's my highest master at 34%. Each day it fluctuates and I can't move past 34%. However, in Kaplan Qbank and on the NBME, I do very well in heme so I don't think too much about the mastery.
By the way, I'm planning to use it right up until test day, just to make sure i don't forget stuff. These days it gives me ~600 review cards per day, but I never do more than 200 so it keeps carrying over to the next day. Now that i am done banking I can focus more on reviewing.

 

[chet]

I'm just in the free trial mode, trying to decide if this is something I want to invest in for next year.

Does anyone know if there are more features in the pay mode?

There doesn't appear to be any options to set up a study plan.

 

[tco]

I ended up only getting 10% mastered...I have until June 30th, but I don't know if it's worth trying to learn through it or FA? I definitely have NOT done it religiously. I'll remember it for a week then forget for two.

Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[hrandani]

I started in July, will test in July, and I've got 60% mastered and only 90% banked. I really feel like I should have pushed myself a lot harder during the year. It really is extremely time consuming. But once you know it, it seems to stick, which is something that is a lot harder for me to do when I study by just reading. If I could go back in time though I would have tried to finish the course by December so this would all be gravy. Idiot!

I will say that it's a tricky balance. If you do hundreds of cards a day, I notice I retain a lot less. It's like my brain gets stressed out. There is a delicate balance between trying to memorize each card so you know it the next time and not spending 8 hours on GT.

You definitely have to do Q banks in addition. It is not at all the same thing and is never advertised as that. I still plan on hitting FA hard for my final month. GT is nice because the information is well written and they seem to really make each word count. Or at least I think so.

There's no additional benefits. You have access to everything during the trial. According to my buddy who emails them a lot GT is going to roll out some new stuff soon, and I think there was a hint at a step II course. I'm a little overwhelmed with what's on my plate now, so I didn't press for details.

 

[hrandani]

And to the OP I would probably cut your losses at this point. I have 30% to go in the next two months and I doubt I'm going to make it. Christ that's depressing.

Maybe just go over all the highest yield memorization stuff on GT and discard everything else. But if you've already banked it all, I don't know if you can do that.

 

[Encephalectomy]

I think there was a hint at a step II course.

👍👍👍

I really hope they roll this out soon/hope that it is as good as it is for step1. I definitely agree that you need to supplement it with qbanks etc., but I am so happy that I did it. I started last june, have 97% banked (never got around to banking some of the stuff they added over the last few weeks) and at 74% mastery (peaked out at 80% mastery)

 

[CatFactorial]

👍👍👍

I really hope they roll this out soon/hope that it is as good as it is for step1. I definitely agree that you need to supplement it with qbanks etc., but I am so happy that I did it. I started last june, have 97% banked (never got around to banking some of the stuff they added over the last few weeks) and at 74% mastery (peaked out at 80% mastery)

What Q Banks would you recommend along side GT? I was thinking about Kaplan as a lecture/GT accompaniment throughout the year.

 

[Encephalectomy]

What Q Banks would you recommend along side GT? I was thinking about Kaplan as a lecture/GT accompaniment throughout the year.

I used kaplan along with classes and did uworld over the last 2 months of school. I'm now almost through both a second time. This worked out well for me, but I honestly think any combination of gunnertraining + question bank through the year + another question bank at the end is a great recipe for an excellent score.

 

[JPanda]

I have everything but embryology banked and i have a 70.9% mastery. I wish i started gunner earlier. I found that on average, i retain a lot of the information gunner tests on. But i feel that had i started a few more months ahead, i would of retained even more. All in all, i still feel that the time i spent on gunner training was worth it. I've covered possibly 70% of the actual first aid many times over and that is not a bad position to be in two months before the exam.

here is a fair bit of warning for everyone: Gunner training covers a good deal of the first aid but not all of it. Be sure to review first aid to see what it doesnt cover. Neurophys wasnt covered too well.... Additionally, you will have to do question banks. Gunner training is great for getting you to remember the minuate and learning the BASICS. But if you want to do bad things to uworld you need to review question banks to supplement what you learn.

 

[unsung]

Cannot get my % mastered beyond 25%. Have banked the majority of flashcards. 5 weeks until exam--should I continue? Love the program, feel like I'm gaining something out of it...but just can't seem to nail the answers down perfectly...

The cytokines are killing me!!! 😡

Anyone's thoughts/comments (in same boat?)--

Thanks-
PuffPufff

I'm in the same boat! 90% banked (still have embryo and a few random left-overs), but way less than that mastered.

In part, this is 'cuz I switched to lite mode a couple weeks back. And when you do that... prepare to be depressed. lol But still feel like GT is useful and making a lot of progress.

I'm torn about what to do at this point. Something that hasn't been mentioned on here is GT's "Q-bank". Right now, I'm mainly focused on finishing the Qs and reaching 100% banked.

The % mastery on lite mode seems kind of wonky. 'Cuz you only get tested on one main point from a card... which I may know well 5 out of 5, but the test time I get a different Q from that same card, I might get 2 out of 5... which only gets averaged down by GT, and I might not see that card again for eons.

...This doesn't really translate into learning the content like I'm supposed to, ya know?

So I'm not paying too much attention to that at this point. As long as GT doesn't take up too much of my time, I'll do the daily review Qs. And focus on using the Q-pool they have to review, before doing UWorld Qs. 😀

 

[Shadowmoses]

To those who used a Q-bank throughout an entire year, I am assuming you did the questions by subject and not on random. Even if you do it by subject, do the questions require some basic knowledge of other subjects in order to answer the questions? I'm not sure if lets say I do questions from a subject I am currently learning, but the questions also tie in parts of another subject which I didn't learn yet. This would seem like a waste cause then I'd get the question wrong for sure and I'd have to teach myself the new stuff.

Also...props to you guys for being able to manage GT + Q-banks + your regular course work. Do you guys not sleep?

 

[Encephalectomy]

To those who used a Q-bank throughout an entire year, I am assuming you did the questions by subject and not on random. Even if you do it by subject, do the questions require some basic knowledge of other subjects in order to answer the questions?

I did the qbank by subject with what I was studying and after winter break started mixing in the first year stuff. As far as your question, I guess the answer is yes and no but mostly no. Uworld is much more integrated than kaplan or rx, so I'm guessing you would have more of that if you did uworld along with classes (i did it towards the end of the year so maybe someone else can speak to it better). For kaplan qbank most of the questions are fairly subject specific and most of the time the extent that they aren't is based on physiology not pathology so as long as you had physio first year (i.e. not totally integrated curriculum) it shouldn't be a problem.

 

[hrandani]

When I did q-banks, like when I completed Rx over winter break, it wasn't really about focusing on learning everything about every question. I gunned through it to basically evaluate how badly I had been screwed over by my school, and then made plans to be sure that I had covered everything by July. Plus it was a good intro to just see the format of the test, the types of questions, like a warm up if you will.

Later on when I was doing Kaplan starting in March I went through their books and then did their bank and tried to build on my mastery of topics. Despite buying World in December with the goal of doing 46 questions daily, I never really found the time to make a dent in that until mid-April once my school used my score on Kaplan's exam to sign off on my eligibility with the ECFMG. I regret not doing more of U World consistently but what can you do. I just had too much going on with school work piled on plus the standard 20 something roommate drama.

These last two months will have me finishing off GT in the next few days, then hitting U world / FA / Goljan with a vengeance, keeping on with the gunner q's.

During this whole time, every night I did gunner and tried to bank more and more until I fell asleep. But by far for better or worse the vast bulk of my time to date has been on Gunner. I have a less technologically inclined friend who did a similar approach with going through first aid, he's gone through two copies so far, and I guess we'll see how we stack up when our scores come in.

In retrospect Rx and Kaplan were a total waste of money, especially considering I had a concurrent Uworld subscription, but I wasn't going to take any chances on missing out on a good resource. And then there's the fact my school made me take the Kaplan stuff, so I didn't want to pay for it and not use it. Learn from my mistakes!

I just realized I didn't answer your question properly. Initially I tried to do stuff by subject, but lately I just hit unused / random so I don't get overconfident about my %. Most of the people I respect who are good students tend to do the study heme-> only heme questions pattern though. Either way I plan to do UWorld 3-4 times to the extent where it won't matter how I tackle it.

 

[Shadowmoses]

thanks a lot for the replies guys. its so helpful to learn from your experiences for those of us who aren't in your shoes yet

 

[pufferfish]

thanks a lot for the replies guys. its so helpful to learn from your experiences for those of us who aren't in your shoes yet

second that--thanks for all the replies. despite my horribly low %mastered, i'm going to stick with it up to the exam. great insight everyone. please feel free to further comment/recommend. 😉