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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.
Does anyone else have functionality issues using GT? I just started GT and last night it was working fine on my laptop. However, today, there is some issue...I can't view my calendar and also the answers don't show up when I'm trying to do the quizzes. I've used a different browser and still nothing. I noticed that when I use another computer (e.g. university computers) these issues are resolved. So, I'm thinking there may be some setting issues with my laptop..I'm not sure though. I sent GT support an email but haven't gotten a response. Anyone else experiencing this and/or any suggestions???
thanks.
I don't have any problems on my laptop, but if I try to use GT at school I need to use firefox not IE. I think the school's IE is an old edition and I can't update it without an administrator password, so I have to download firefox anytime I use a school computer for GT. Maybe try mozilla or upgrade your IE, because those issues (can't see the calendar, nothing appearing on the quizzes) are exactly what happens for me.
I just tried mozilla...still no luck w/ the issues...ie. the calender isn't showing and the quiz answers are not showing either. My IE is up to date and that doesn't help. I'm not sure what's wrong...It was working fine yesterday. As I mentioned previously, everything seems to work fine when I'm using another computer (e.g. university computers) despite the fact that they have an older version of IE. Unfortunately GT support hasn't been of any help thus far as I haven't gotten a response to my email that I sent them and so any other suggestions to help me with the issue will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
That's a little dickish IMO. Whenever I email their customer support I get a response in a business day, typically in a few hours. Did you try emailing them before putting them on blast on facebook?
thanks for the replies people, I really appreciate it....
Yes, I tried Google Chrome (which is my main browser), IE and Mozilla but the problem persists (i.e. I can't view the calendar or the answers on the quizzes. also, none of the shortcut keys are working either).
I guess I'll wait a couple days for an email reply. If nothing, maybe I'll send another email. I suppose last resort would be to leave a message on facebook.
If anyone else has had the same issue as me and/or for additional suggests, please either reply or even PM me.
These sound more like computer/browser setting problems.
I've used GT on an android phone browser in the last 24 hours and it works fine.
Here's the Penn Method in case anyone is interested.
Books needed:
First-Aid for the Boards - USMLE part 1
Lippincott's Biochemistry
Lippincott's Pharmacology
Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple
Microbiology and Immunology (by Lange..orange and dark grey book) BRS Pathology BRS Physiology High Yield Anatomy High Yield Embryology High Yield Neuroanatomy High Yield Behavioral Sciences High Yield Histology
Question Sources:
Kaplan's Q-bank (2500 questions + answers online), 1 month subscription Appletion and Lange's USMLE Step 1 (1200 questions + answers, including 2 full-length exams)
Schedule (First 25 days*) - Background Reading
* These days are meant to get your familiar with the material. Don't get caught up on trying to memorize every detail. These days are not for memorization. They are just meant for you to see all the material once and to distill out the most testable points in order to take notes upon for further study (see "last 5 days" below). These days are approximately 8-9 hours of studying/day. Make sure you sleep, eat, and work-out religiously during this time. Also, try and relax for 2-3 hours per night (i.e hang with significant other, watch movies, go out of the library).
2 days First-Aid for the Boards (only cursory reading - get a feel for what you are up against)
4 days Biochemistry + 50 biochem questions per night
1 day Histology + 50 histology questions
3 days Microbiology (Micro made ridic simple only) + 50 microbio questions/night
1 day Immunology (Lange's book) + 50 immuno questions
1 day Embryology + 50 embryology questions
3 days Physiology + 50 physiology questions/night
1 day Anatomy + 50 anatomy questions
4 days Pharmacology + 50 pharmacology questions
1 day Neuroanatomy + 50 neuroanatomy questions
3 days Pathology + 50 pathology questions/night
1 day Behavioral Sciences + 50 behavioral sciences questions
So for each of first 25 days of reading, you review (in 1 hour each morning) the corresponding section from First-Aid. While you are doing your readings for the day, you take all your notes in the margins of First-Aid on the section that relates to that day's readings. At night, you do 50 to 100 practice questions on the topic (i.e Biochemistry) that you read about that day and read ALL the explanations for each question at the back of the Book or on the Kaplan Website.
Schedule (Last 5 days*) ->
key to a 250+ score:
*WARNING: last 5 days are the absolute meat of getting the score.
Everything you've done before
this is just a warm-up. These days are approximately 12-14 hours of studying/day. Besides eating, sleeping and working-out, you are doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE BUT STUDYING.
Day 1 - review Biochemistry, Physiology sections of First-Aid (i.e deeply study these sections and all the notes you wrote in the margins). This should take approximately
5-6 hours. In the afternoon,
do 150-200 questions/answers related to Biochem, and Physiology.
Day 2 - review all small topics (i.e. Histology, Anatomy, Embryology, Neuroanatomy, Behavioral
Sciences) and Pathology sections of First-Aid plus your notes. Do 150-200 questions related to these topics.
Day 3 - review Pharmacology and Micro + Immuno sections of First-Aid plus your notes. Do 150-200 questions related to these topics.
Day 4 - review First-Aid sections/notes: Biochem, Physio, Path. Do 1 practice test from Appleton and Lange.
Do more questions related to these topics.
Day 5 (Last Day!!!) - Review First Aid sections/notes: Micro + Immuno, Pharm, and small subjects. Do second test from Appleton and Lange. Do more questions related to these topics.
That's an interesting post. Isn't the idea behind GT that once you have cemented certain concepts in your memory, achieving mastery, you click on "don't show me this again"?
That should cut down on a lot of maintenance - I'd like to think that by a month before the exam, I won't be doing 6 hrs a day of GT.
one person says 1 hour, another person says 5-6 hours? Big disparity.
That's an interesting post. Isn't the idea behind GT that once you have cemented certain concepts in your memory, achieving mastery, you click on "don't show me this again"?
That should cut down on a lot of maintenance - I'd like to think that by a month before the exam, I won't be doing 6 hrs a day of GT.
Perhaps those that have completed GT or are close to doing so can shed some light into this. I think feedback from those that have completely for a while now (reached steady-state as opposed to recently banked a boatload) would be most instructive.
I've banked 100% of the cards and I don't spend longer than 1 hour on GT per day for my maintenance review schedule quizzes. Once you bank all the material and reach 'steady state,' you get down to 100-150 review questions/day. It's absurd to think that the minimum amount of time for a 100% bank-er would be 3+ hours. If it takes you that long, you're thinking too hard about the cards and you need to be ranking them at 1's or 2's so you see them more frequently and get faster at remembering.
I posted about the Penn method in another thread but honestly I know myself and I know the way I study best, and the Penn method would not have worked for me. I'm not a crammer and I prefer having the wiggle room to study a topic as much or as little as needed, rather than pigeon-holing myself into "4 days of biochem, no more." I don't see any downside in knowing the details "far in advance;" I'd rather do that than run the risk of not having enough time to learn the details for actual test day. It's not like I'm forgetting the details because I'm learning them too soon; I think the repetition of seeing them so often has made a huge difference for me in terms of my performance on Qbank. I started GT last fall.
I find it interesting that GT added 200 new cards in the last ~6 months(?), yet as posters mentioned, people were already using GT to score 250 or 260+. Those 200 new cards are basically 2,000 more questions that must be maintained week after week. For a person to only use 30-60 min a day on GT with 10,000 questions, assuming an average speed of 80 questions per hour (which is very fair), you would go through the entire deck in 4 months (80 questions/hr x 125 sessions = 10,000).
I've banked 100% of the cards.
Damn, I am impressed. I can't wait for the day I do that (if that ever comes).
Bingo!!
Congrats on completion, that's freaking awesome! Did u pop open a bottle when u hit 100% ? I know i would! When's ur test date again?
This is why GT makes sense in the long run; there's light at the end of the tunnel, one's daily review become much more manageable, otherwise it'd be counterproductive especially in the final stretch of "dedicated studying".
I'm not a crammer either, I'm more conceptual and analytical (former engineer here) so GT helps me cram things over the long run, I could never do it in a month!
I think GT has to fit/complement one's learning style to justify the time investment.
I don't think the 200 new cards necessarily corresponds to all new questions. They used to have some cards loaded up with stuff and have since spread them out to multiple cards.
About question speed, I think the key thing with gunner training is to treat it almost like one of those personality test type things where you come up with the first answer that comes to mind right away. Don't take too long thinking through everything. If you don't get it correct right away, then mark it low and you'll see it again soon. This approach allows you to take advantage of the purpose of GT, which is repetition. This also let's you get through questions pretty quick; I hit 100-150/hr usually.
Anyways, best of luck with what ever method you use.
I've banked 100% of the cards and I don't spend longer than 1 hour on GT per day for my maintenance review schedule quizzes. Once you bank all the material and reach 'steady state,' you get down to 100-150 review questions/day. It's absurd to think that the minimum amount of time for a 100% bank-er would be 3+ hours. If it takes you that long, you're thinking too hard about the cards and you need to be ranking them at 1's or 2's so you see them more frequently and get faster at remembering.
I posted about the Penn method in another thread but honestly I know myself and I know the way I study best, and the Penn method would not have worked for me. I'm not a crammer and I prefer having the wiggle room to study a topic as much or as little as needed, rather than pigeon-holing myself into "4 days of biochem, no more." I don't see any downside in knowing the details "far in advance;" I'd rather do that than run the risk of not having enough time to learn the details for actual test day. It's not like I'm forgetting the details because I'm learning them too soon; I think the repetition of seeing them so often has made a huge difference for me in terms of my performance on Qbank. I started GT last fall.
My pace is around 80 cards in an hour if I'm fairly focused for that hour. I try to keep my pile around 160/day. Starting to think I need to bump that number up and try to get done sooner. I'm projected to hit 100% banked by mid May and then was planning on using the month off to just do Uworld and nothing else.
I'm avg 150 questions/day and this is a good 2 hrs of solid work every day. I find when I get up early and do it first thing, it feels like I have more time for class stuff. In addition, I get to correlate my massive amt of class material to a high yield source and I'm able to see the bigger picture which is helping me in my classes.
300 takes me about 4-4.5 hours. sometimes longer if i just banked a bunch of stuff the week before and it's coming up for the first review.
The highest I got to was about 380 questions in a day, and that was after a few catch-up weeks of banking 10-20 cards/day. I would say the average number of questions I was getting was closer to 200 (I was pretty much banking 10 cards/day consistently throughout fall semester of MS2).
After getting used to GT, I was able to get through ~100 or so questions in 30 minutes. The key is to just go through as quickly as possible so your recall gets faster. Also, if you're not a fan of sitting down to do hundreds of questions at once, you always have the option of doing 10 questions here and there throughout the day whenever you find yourself with some free time (e.g. waiting in line somewhere, on the bus, whatever).
Absolutely not true. When I started GT in the fall, I had mandatory class (none of our lectures are video taped) from 8:30 to 4pm every day, and I was also working in a research lab for maybe 10 hours a week to finish up my summer project. I woke up around 6 or 6:30 to finish my review questions before class started, would use some of my lunch hour to finish up questions if I had a ton of questions that day and/or sometimes would bank a new card or two, and would take an hour or so before bed to bank new cards. I also made it a point to get enough sleep (for me, 7-8 hours a night), take Friday night and Saturdays off to spend with my significant other or friends, and to go to the gym for a run at least 3 times a week (sometimes I would multitask and bring my phone to do GT while I was cooling down). I started in September and made it to 85% banked/63% mastered by winter break in December.
I think if you're organized and strategic about it, GT can work for you. E.g. bank the cards that go along with your classes so you're studying for boards + class at the same time. Have goals and stick to them. I wanted to be mostly done with GT by the end of fall semester, so I tried to bank 10 flashcards every day. If I had a rough week with exams, I tried to catch up with banking GT cards after exams were done. I never failed to do the scheduled review questions, though.
I'd also like to point out that by no means was I sacrificing school work to study GT. I ended up ranking 1st in my class in 3/4 of the courses I took in the fall. The first two years of med school are not about being smart. They are about being organized and having the willpower/endurance to keep trucking through an incredible amount of information.
hahaha thanks Bernoull & lrkoehle! It was a little anti-climactic to hit 100% because that same day they added some new cards and I had to go back and re-hit 100%
I'm taking the exam in June. Slow and steady hopefully wins the race? When are you guys taking the test? Hope to see you guys at 100% too
You're post saying you work @ 200 Q's an hour... which by the way is amazing. Anyone who has used the program can attest that 200 Q's an hour is intense (not even possible for me).
I credit GT with helping me do well in class, so studying for GT and doing well in class were not mutually exclusive at my school (might not be the case elsewhere).
My final thoughts on this:
I don't mean to discredit GT. I think it may be the way to gain the best score possible, but it comes at the cost of lots of time for most of us. I do understand that the challenge in medicine is attempting to retain all this material, yet somehow people did it before GT. It is the best at what it does, solidifying FA facts in your brain, I don't doubt this. I just wonder if, for people who aren't moving at 150 Q's/hr, like me and many other average users (closer to 80/hr), we need twice as much time, so that "couple hours" the high end users have are really 4 hours per day for average speed users. I would guess GT has more than 6,000 cards, as I recall that comparison when I first heard about this program a year ago, and to cover only 150 Q's per day is pretty amazing, seeing as I'm at less than 20% banked and I have almost as many Q's, it appears lrkoehle is around 50% banked and I would think he has at least 150 Q's per day. Ipizzy, To start GT and 100% bank it in 7 months while doing research is intense, let's be real. You definitely are in the top 5% as far as workload/pace, especially considering you're #1 in 75% of your courses. And surely you were spending 3-4 hours a day on GT during this time to get 100% and rate all these cards 4's and 5's.
Honestly, I'm just hoping to go 240+ and people have been doing that with simple prep (review books + qbanks in final 3-6 months). I know there are some legendary scores out there and GT probably can get you in that 250-260+ range, yet that's expected because you start studying 1 year in advance of the test, everyday for multiple hours on content alone. Any method, the Taus Method or Penn Method stretched out as long would be just as effective, IMO. I'm sure GT is the best, it's just that some of us aren't as motivated as others. I want GT to work because I paid for it for 18 months or whatever, but I'm not seeing the point in keeping classes like Biochem test ready for 18 months.
My final thoughts on this:
I don't mean to discredit GT. I think it may be the way to gain the best score possible, but it comes at the cost of lots of time for most of us. I do understand that the challenge in medicine is attempting to retain all this material, yet somehow people did it before GT. It is the best at what it does, solidifying FA facts in your brain, I don't doubt this. I just wonder if, for people who aren't moving at 150 Q's/hr, like me and many other average users (closer to 80/hr), we need twice as much time, so that "couple hours" the high end users have are really 4 hours per day for average speed users. I would guess GT has more than 6,000 cards, as I recall that comparison when I first heard about this program a year ago, and to cover only 150 Q's per day is pretty amazing, seeing as I'm at less than 20% banked and I have almost as many Q's, it appears lrkoehle is around 50% banked and I would think he has at least 150 Q's per day. Ipizzy, To start GT and 100% bank it in 7 months while doing research is intense, let's be real. You definitely are in the top 5% as far as workload/pace, especially considering you're #1 in 75% of your courses. And surely you were spending 3-4 hours a day on GT during this time to get 100% and rate all these cards 4's and 5's.
Honestly, I'm just hoping to go 240+ and people have been doing that with simple prep (review books + qbanks in final 3-6 months). I know there are some legendary scores out there and GT probably can get you in that 250-260+ range, yet that's expected because you start studying 1 year in advance of the test, everyday for multiple hours on content alone. Any method, the Taus Method or Penn Method stretched out as long would be just as effective, IMO. I'm sure GT is the best, it's just that some of us aren't as motivated as others. I want GT to work because I paid for it for 18 months or whatever, but I'm not seeing the point in keeping classes like Biochem test ready for 18 months.
Honestly, I wish I was in your shoes given the head-start you have.
I'm assuming you have ~18mo to ur exam, how about significantly cutting down on the # of cards you bank per day, this way GT won't take as much of your time. If you (@ 20% overall) have about as many Qs/day as someone at 50%, then perhaps you were going too fast?
There's 1056 cards as of today, by doing 2.3 cards/day you can knock off the remaining 80% in 12 months and still have 6 months to do other stuff (and have minimal maintenance Qs). Granted, they'll add more cards, but you have the luxury of time, you can slow things down and still finish way ahead of ur exam date...
just my $0.02
M it appears lrkoehle is around 50% banked and I would think he has at least 150 Q's per day.
it seems like GT is beneficial if you start during MS1 or at least beginning of MS2. Will it be effective if I start it 3 months prior to my exam? I feel confident with roughly 40-50% of FA but I need to work on patho and micro. Do you guys recommend gunning it with GT for these next 3 months? How many hours would I need to do per day in order to get good results? would GT be my only source?
My original plan was just to keep on rereading FA, Uworld & Rx qbanks, and using micro made easy and RR patho for further readings.
It will be very hard to use all of GT in three months, but if you have very specific needs like just path and micro, then you could definitely get through that and it would be very helpful. GT is especially good for those pure memorization type subjects.
I definitely agree with this. I used GT specifically to learn micro in the summer between M1/M2 since my school's micro was horrendous. Easily converted a big weakness into a big strength. GT is many million times more effective than reading a text for micro since micro is pretty much a pure memorization subject, and are you really going to retain all the details from a 300-400 page text? Maybe if you read through it 3-4 times, but I certainly don't have the attention span for something like that.
thanks guys. is the pathology in GT good enough where i don't need to refer back to RR or pathoma?
i really want to limit my resources to FA, Uworld, Rx, and GT. just the thought of having to read more is pretty intense.