Gunner Training?

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I feel lite mode is only good when you're on vacation or maybe have class exams coming up so it's a temporary way to lessen the review questions. Eventually with enough banked, people are getting 200+ questions a day and it starts becoming a time sink so that's my take on it. If you have the time and your step 1 exam is 6 or more months away then I say use comprehensive, that way you're hammering the HY and little details.
 
I feel lite mode is only good when you're on vacation or maybe have class exams coming up so it's a temporary way to lessen the review questions. Eventually with enough banked, people are getting 200+ questions a day and it starts becoming a time sink so that's my take on it. If you have the time and your step 1 exam is 6 or more months away then I say use comprehensive, that way you're hammering the HY and little details.

I guess you could go lite on review Q's each day, then switch to comprehensive on exam subjects.

Another way I've found to use GT, is I can go through an entire subject and rate them all 4 or 5 (like biochem, pharm or anatomy), if I want a break from that subject for a month. This helps lighten the load if you have 100% in some subjects you've already taken, then you can play catch up in the summer (if M1).
 
I feel lite mode is only good when you're on vacation or maybe have class exams coming up so it's a temporary way to lessen the review questions.

Vacation? Wow, it's called GUNNER training, not slacker training...real gunners don't take vacations, except to go to the library to read Robbins and look for mistakes. :p
 
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Ugg, the thing I hate most about GT is the lack of a pause button. We just had a pharm exam yesterday (at our school pharm is short answer, not multiple choice), so I definitely haven't had time for GT for a few days. Now I have hundreds of questions piled up. Oh well, guess that's what I'll be doing today.
 
I'm about 3 months outside my exam with approximately 70% banked. I'm considering going through the rest of the subjects and marking them 3-4 rapidly as opposed to studying the cards. What are peoples thoughts on this? I only have anatomy, embryo, biochem, and behavioral left. It would help get on to qbank questions.
 
I'm about 3 months outside my exam with approximately 70% banked. I'm considering going through the rest of the subjects and marking them 3-4 rapidly as opposed to studying the cards. What are peoples thoughts on this? I only have anatomy, embryo, biochem, and behavioral left. It would help get on to qbank questions.
You could go through them and mark the ones you know as 5 or perfect so you can spend time on the ones you don't know. If you mark them all 3-4 it's going to be annoying when they all come up again on the same day.
 
Ugg, the thing I hate most about GT is the lack of a pause button. We just had a pharm exam yesterday (at our school pharm is short answer, not multiple choice), so I definitely haven't had time for GT for a few days. Now I have hundreds of questions piled up. Oh well, guess that's what I'll be doing today.

There is a feature that let's you spread them out over next 7 or 14 days. At least that way it isn't as intimidating as having like 800-900 questions staring you in the face and you can tackle them a little at a time.
 
I'm about 3 months outside my exam with approximately 70% banked. I'm considering going through the rest of the subjects and marking them 3-4 rapidly as opposed to studying the cards. What are peoples thoughts on this? I only have anatomy, embryo, biochem, and behavioral left. It would help get on to qbank questions.

I'm not sure I totally understand this approach. Is this just a way to get everything banked without having to take as much time? Why not just quickly read each card once, bank it, then rank each question appropriately? I know a lot of people like to rank things they just banked as a 1-2 for a few times so they can see it more frequently initially, but if you just rate things that you know as a 4 you won't see it for like 10 days, then if you rank it as a 4 again the next time you won't see it for like 30 days. That way the things you know shouldn't be bogging you down, but I don't know why you'd want to artificially rank things as a 4 that you don't actually know. Then things you don't know you won't see again for a while, which defeats the purpose.

With ~30% left, you have a little over 300 cards to go through. If you go quickly and rank accurately, you should be able to add an extra 30 cards a day in like 3 hours, leaving you the rest of the day to focus on your daily questions and whatever school stuff you have (freaking school always gets in the way of my GT!). If you can do that, you should be finished in ~10-12 days.
 
I'm not getting one of the GT questions and would love some clarification if anyone can provide it. The question is on calculating pulmonary vascular resistance. An image of the question and answer is attached. My main issue is where in the world the 80 comes from. Thank you much!


Side question - Has anyone come across the cardio phys quiz questions that reference "the above patient" without giving any information about any patient? :(
 

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I'm not getting one of the GT questions and would love some clarification if anyone can provide it. The question is on calculating pulmonary vascular resistance. An image of the question and answer is attached. My main issue is where in the world the 80 comes from. Thank you much!


Side question - Has anyone come across the cardio phys quiz questions that reference "the above patient" without giving any information about any patient? :(

the 80 is a conversion factor to get you to dynes-sec/cm^5 from mmHg/L
 
Good deal. I looked up a table of conversion factors from dynes and didn't see any 80's, so just assumed that wasn't the case (particularly since there was an 80 in the question stem).

Thanks!
 
So I ended up reseting/ignoring the "anatomy" section of GT. Seemed too low yield and wasn't "sticking" for me after repeated views in the way other subsections have.

Anyone else do this? Or, am I not being a true gunner? Conversely, did anyone find that continuing to hammer GT GA resulted in ultimately learning it/found that info useful?

(I'm also quite tempted to do this for embryology, though GA seemed to me the most important one to ignore on GT.)

I'd love to hear another opinion on this.
 
So I ended up reseting/ignoring the "anatomy" section of GT. Seemed too low yield and wasn't "sticking" for me after repeated views in the way other subsections have.

Anyone else do this? Or, am I not being a true gunner? Conversely, did anyone find that continuing to hammer GT GA resulted in ultimately learning it/found that info useful?

(I'm also quite tempted to do this for embryology, though GA seemed to me the most important one to ignore on GT.)

I'd love to hear another opinion on this.
Do not use GUNNER. Use Kaplan, UW or USMLE RX. Those banks have been tried and remain a good bank from what I hear. I just checked out the GUNNER Q bank. It seems decent but I won't risk it. For anatomy, I would reccomend lippincott Q and A anatomy and embryo. The questions are detailed but it drives home the point.
 
Do not use GUNNER. Use Kaplan, UW or USMLE RX. Those banks have been tried and remain a good bank from what I hear. I just checked out the GUNNER Q bank. It seems decent but I won't risk it. For anatomy, I would reccomend lippincott Q and A anatomy and embryo. The questions are detailed but it drives home the point.

GT and Kaplan/UW/RX are different programs. One is used for USMLE Q's (Qbanks) while GT is a program to memorize FA facts and high yield info.

GT isn't really a Qbank.

Lippincott's is OK. I've gone through it. GT is definitely more detailed, whether or not that pays off, I do not know.
 
Do not use GUNNER. Use Kaplan, UW or USMLE RX. Those banks have been tried and remain a good bank from what I hear. I just checked out the GUNNER Q bank. It seems decent but I won't risk it. For anatomy, I would reccomend lippincott Q and A anatomy and embryo. The questions are detailed but it drives home the point.

Are you suggesting to not use GT at all, or just for the anatomy section? If you're suggesting we don't use it at all, I don't think you know what you're talking about (based on your post). GT is not a Q bank first and foremost. It is a program to hammer home facts across the board and track what areas you are weak in so you repeat those specific facts.

If people are looking for just at Q bank, then yes, Kaplan, UW, and USMLE Rx are the big 3.
 
So I ended up reseting/ignoring the "anatomy" section of GT. Seemed too low yield and wasn't "sticking" for me after repeated views in the way other subsections have.

Anyone else do this? Or, am I not being a true gunner? Conversely, did anyone find that continuing to hammer GT GA resulted in ultimately learning it/found that info useful?

(I'm also quite tempted to do this for embryology, though GA seemed to me the most important one to ignore on GT.)

I'd love to hear another opinion on this.

I haven't taken the real thing yet (and my main question bank so far has only consisted of Kaplan Qbank) but I've read on these forums that people feel that anatomy on step 1 is becoming increasingly challenging and is "something that no amount of studying could have prepared" them for. Yes, anatomy on GT seems ridiculous and detail heavy. In my experience, Kaplan anatomy questions are also ridiculous and detail heavy. Anatomy on GT definitely took me a lot longer to master than other subjects (read: literally DOZENS of repetitions), but I am glad I perservered. Mastering GT's anatomy section has made 90% of the Kaplan anatomy questions a cinch.

GT has also been my only embryology resource so far, and a quick looksie at my Kaplan qbank test profile for embryology shows me getting 89% of those correct. So I would suggest keeping at it with GT for both anatomy and embryology.

I've done about 73% of the Kaplan qbank, random mode, so I feel like I've gotten a good idea of what the typical Kaplan anatomy and embryology questions are like. :cool: I wouldn't say that learning these subjects is low yield - so many questions indirectly require anatomy as well (e.g. interpreting radiology images). There is also a freakish number of developmental abnormality questions that you can use embryo knowledge to help you out. I'm not sure how many anatomy/embryology questions a typical step 1 exam would have, but I'm guessing its not trivial. If you're aiming high, it makes sense to give these sections on GT a shot.
 
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There is a feature that let's you spread them out over next 7 or 14 days. At least that way it isn't as intimidating as having like 800-900 questions staring you in the face and you can tackle them a little at a time.

Where is this feature located? Definitely would love to use this every once in a while.


Also, how useful are you finding gunner for patho? I want to keep my daily question amount reasonable and realize that adding micro and patho back to back will ramp up my questions to possible 200-300 a day. I'm considering banking selectively in either biochem or patho to keep my daily questions down.

Micro seems like a topic I shouldn't skip so I probably will bank all of it. Just wondering which subjects you all have found it a bit less useful for so I can bank less topics from those sections in an attempt to keep my daily Q's down.
 
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there is a post on the feedback site requesting the old gunner...
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Where is this feature located? Definitely would love to use this every once in a while.

It's right under the calender. Click "clear today's review" and it will give you further options on how long of a period to spread the questions out over.
 
Thank you for the replies. Food for thought...

For now I will keep GA "reset" as I still need to master many other (higher-yield) subjects. Subsequent to that, I will consider re-adding GA cards.
 
It's right under the calender. Click "clear today's review" and it will give you further options on how long of a period to spread the questions out over.

Was scared to click it as I thought it might totally just remove the questions haha, great to know what this button does... might come in handy here and there.

Thanks!
 
Is anyone annotating Gunner into FA? Or is everyone just using Gunner's system to annotate straight into their brains without wasting time writing so much haha?


I just did the card for Physio Cardiac Cycle and it had 20 questions and about 16 of them were not located in my physio section of FA.

I didn't end up annotating too much because I felt like the process of reading kaplan, highlighing kaplan, reading GT, doing GT questions, annotating GT into FA and then going onto Kap Qbank for each section will start to become very time consuming (although I don't mind spending the time if it seems like the best way to do this).
 
Is anyone annotating Gunner into FA? Or is everyone just using Gunner's system to annotate straight into their brains without wasting time writing so much haha?


I just did the card for Physio Cardiac Cycle and it had 20 questions and about 16 of them were not located in my physio section of FA.

I didn't end up annotating too much because I felt like the process of reading kaplan, highlighing kaplan, reading GT, doing GT questions, annotating GT into FA and then going onto Kap Qbank for each section will start to become very time consuming (although I don't mind spending the time if it seems like the best way to do this).

The physio Cardiac section was taken almost word for word from BRS, which is great considering that it allows all the gaps to be filled in.

So far I have done most of the organ systems- just have GIT left which hopefully I can do this week. The physiology sections of the cards seem to be using BRS physiology as their outline while the Pathology section all have much more detail than Pathoma and I tend to believe they used Rapid Review. Granted the overall determination of which topics they choose is from FA, however the details (sometimes word for word) tend to be from other review sources.
 
Just a word on the anatomy section... I completed 33% of anatomy and I would say that the material is at the same depth as my school's anatomy materials. It's not as bad or "detailed" as some may have mentioned and there weren't really any new materials to learn. More of a refresher for me.
My $0.02.
 
Just a word on the anatomy section... I completed 33% of anatomy and I would say that the material is at the same depth as my school's anatomy materials. It's not as bad or "detailed" as some may have mentioned and there weren't really any new materials to learn. More of a refresher for me.
My $0.02.

i.e., it's too "detailed"
 
Is anyone annotating Gunner into FA? Or is everyone just using Gunner's system to annotate straight into their brains without wasting time writing so much haha?


I just did the card for Physio Cardiac Cycle and it had 20 questions and about 16 of them were not located in my physio section of FA.

I didn't end up annotating too much because I felt like the process of reading kaplan, highlighing kaplan, reading GT, doing GT questions, annotating GT into FA and then going onto Kap Qbank for each section will start to become very time consuming (although I don't mind spending the time if it seems like the best way to do this).

I'm annotating some things into FA, but that's because I remember best by writing it down, and if I'm going to write it anyways, I might as well do it in an organized manner.
 
Just checked their facebook page and they have 4 weeks free for all members with the coupon code. So you can add it to your existing account.

Coupon ends March 1st at midnight!
 
How do y'all score your answers when you repeat questions you got wrong after a quiz? For example, say I don't remember the answer to the question on the initial try after banking it and score it as a "1." Then when it gives me a summary of the quiz, I get the option of repeating the questions. If I know the answer when I go back through immediately after the quiz, should I leave it as a "1" or change it to a "3"? I've been leaving it as a "1" since I didn't know it initially. What do y'all do? Would marking it as a "3" make it so that I don't see it again for a long time, or does the software realize that only 3 minutes passed before I went from a "1" to a "3" and schedule it accordingly?
 
I think it's factored in to some extent. I generally give myself 3's on recall on new cards and on missed cards
 
Just checked their facebook page and they have 4 weeks free for all members with the coupon code. So you can add it to your existing account.

Coupon ends March 1st at midnight!



What do I search to find their fb page? I tried "gunner training" but nothing came up.

Also thanks for the heads up on the code, it worked like a charm
 
I wonder if users could talk about how quickly they add cards, understanding that some cards have 20 Q's on them and others only 3, how many cards on average would you say you can add each day or week? How many cards on average do you do in an hour?

Just curious as I'm beginning to amp up a bit, I'm only around 15% banked.
 
I wonder if users could talk about how quickly they add cards, understanding that some cards have 20 Q's on them and others only 3, how many cards on average would you say you can add each day or week? How many cards on average do you do in an hour?

Just curious as I'm beginning to amp up a bit, I'm only around 15% banked.

I don't have an exact answer for you to be honest, but Step I is only a few months away for me now (~115 days) so my approach is changing. I started GT last summer and figured I had plenty of time to do it, so I was going slow, especially at first. Then last semester I was kind of bogged down with class stuff, so GT wasn't a major priority and I focused on class stuff. There were multiple instances last Fall where I didn't bank a card for like a week.

This semester things have changed somewhat to where I am emphasizing GT more. I made sure I do my daily questions first thing in the morning, so I get them done and don't have multiple days rolling into each other because I ran out of time at night to get through my cards. Then during the rest of the day I would do what I needed to to get through school stuff, so that at night I could spend time adding more cards. Unfortunately, it didn't really happen that way, so a lot of nights I didn't add very many cards if any at all (I'm married with an 8 month old son, so I preferred spending my evenings focused on them rather than GT).

More recently, I have placed a greater emphasis on banking new cards, because I realize I am getting short on time. The past week or two I have been able to add like 5-10 cards/day and stay up with school work and my daily questions pretty well. I have a block final tomorrow, so banking cards has been kind of put on the back burner right now, but over spring break I am going to go hardcore at GT. I am hoping without stupid med school in the way my GT can really get rolling. Looking at where was at about a week ago, I think I had like 600 cards left, which at a pace of 15 cards/day would have taken me 40 days or ~6 weeks to get through. At this point, 6 weeks will be mid-April, which I figure is about the latest I can allow myself to be finishing GT if I want to be able to review everything a couple more times over with their program during dedicated Step-I time. Unfortunately, 15 cards/day is freaking intense! Even at an average of ~10 questions/card, that is 150 new cards/day or over ~1050/week! Hopefully most of it is stuff I remember from the past two years so I can rank it a 4 and not have like 1000 questions/day.

Anyways, that's been kind of my experience with GT. I didn't bank quickly enough early on because I thought I had plenty of time. However, if you make sure you keep a steady pace of banking, you should have no trouble getting though GT. If you bank a lowly 3 cards/day, you should be finished with GT by this time next year (for first years). If you're MS-II like me, then just decide when you want to be finished with GT, look at the main page to figure out how many cards you have left, then divide the number of cards left by the number of days until your goal end date. Then keep your nose to the grindstone and get it done...It doesn't matter how many cards anyone else is doing, just get your **** done!
 
I wonder if users could talk about how quickly they add cards, understanding that some cards have 20 Q's on them and others only 3, how many cards on average would you say you can add each day or week? How many cards on average do you do in an hour?

Just curious as I'm beginning to amp up a bit, I'm only around 15% banked.

Depends on a lot of factors, I think, including: endurance/discipline/organization skills, desire/ability to do well in school at the same time as banking GT, length of time until test date, goals for GT (bank 100%? or just certain weak sections?). Speed of banking cards will of course depend on your baseline familiarity for the material and the length of the card (some cards are ridiculous and should probably be broken up a bit lol. I'm looking at you, pharyngeal arch/groove/pouch cards...).

I banked 10 cards a day on average. Each day I tried to bank a mix of short cards (e.g. those with <4 questions/card) with longer cards so that overall, I would add approximately the same number of questions to the bank every day. Based on my recall ranking style (which is typically bell shaped for any given review quiz), this worked out well for me because I never got more than 380 review questions/day during my banking period, which seemed manageable with school at the time.
 
some cards are ridiculous and should probably be broken up a bit lol. I'm looking at you, pharyngeal arch/groove/pouch cards...

I totally agree with that. Interestingly enough, I just did the pharyngeal arch/etc. cards last night, and I think they must've broken it up recently. I feel like the main pharyngeal arch card in the embryo section was only like 11 questions and didn't seem that bad to me. I think that may be where a number of "new" cards they've added over the past year have come from, because I didn't think they had like 100-200 cards worth of missing material that needed to be added given that people scoring 270 were crediting GT with playing a big part in their success.
 
Celiac Sprue question:

GT says- Celiac sprue is duodenum
Pathoma says - Celiac sprue is jejunum

Which is right?

You reversed who said what and Pathoma took a more conservative approach: GT says damage to the jejunum (no hint of anything else) but Pathoma says it's mostly duodenum but other 2 parts of intestines may be involved. FA says jejunum is mostly affected but Robbins says second portion of duodenum on and proximal jejunum are exposed to the most dietary gluten. I've been remembering it as duodenum and jejunum
 
You reversed who said what and Pathoma took a more conservative approach: GT says damage to the jejunum but Pathoma says it's mostly duodenum but other 2 parts of intestines may be involved. FA says jejunum is mostly affected but Robbins says second portion of duodenum on and proximal jejunum are exposed to the most dietary gluten

Thanks- that was stupid mistake considering both are open in front of me.

Since so many different sources are disagree I guess its not a board relevant fact, it was only brought to my attention because the Pathoma lecture keeps stressing it.
 
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