Gunner Training?

[hope2bpaindoc]

---

Members do not see this ad.

A

 

[Alvarez13]

For anyone who's done Neuro GT already, and especially those who did it WITH their Neuro module...how'd it compare? When I was doing cardio, it actually covered almost everything I needed to know, and it helped me seriously bump up my module grade (I'm talking like 12 percentage points compared to past modules, plus I didn't ever actually review individual lectures after watching them the first time OR read the book everyone else did. GT really helped me). That said, I'm wondering if that was the nature of Cardio and my professor...she wanted us to REALLY understand the fundamentals well, which GT helped me do, because (with cardio), then you can pretty much reason out / think through many of the situations. I know Neuro will be a bit different....a lot more memorization, to start with. Did you guys think that the Neuro GT cards/quizzes were super helpful during your module, or should I focus much more on the lectures and details and less on GT for neuro?

GT Neuro isn't detailed enough for classes. You should still do the cards and bank the mat'l while it's fresh in your mind though.

 

[hrain]

Thanks for the tips, guys. I've been trying to bank some neuro cards this week, and realized that (with the exception of the very basic cards) most of them sound like a completely different language to me right now. I think I definitely need to have a bit more basic understanding before I can remember most of them, unfortunately :/ Back to the grind of lectures and background reading, at least for a bit, and then hopefully GT can drill the info into my memory for good!

 

[Gunneria]

Hey guys,

I think for certain subjects I am going to use review books to cover my basis (i.e.- clinical micro made simple for micro, Levinson immuno for immuno)...but I was wondering how GT (and I'm sure some people looked at this) biochem compares with rapid review biochem, as well as GT anatomy with High Yield anatomy, and GT anatomy wiht High Yield embryo. I asked this because GT is essentially FA + a bit more but sometimes people say FA is inadequate in those subjects and recommend those books to supplement/annotate...but I was wondering if GT covers all the gaps from those books, thus making it unnecessary to use any other review books in biochem, anatomy, and embryo.

Also....how does GT path compare with the pathoma TEXT (I may just watch the vids but use the GT pathology notes)

Thanks.

 

[lrkoehle]

Well, I am blazing through by frenzy of banking new cards. So far, I have kept a pretty good pace: 32, 43, 34, & 34 new cards banked over the last 4 days. That's lower than the 40/day that I was thinking I might need, but after re-evaluating where I'm at right now, I need to do 37.667 cards/day to finish GT over the next 6 days. However, I am not going to do any more heme/onc stuff over the next 6 days as it is being covered in lectures this block at school, so I figure it would be best to do that as I get caught up with podcasts. That drops me down to only needing 34.667 new cards/day, which helps a little. Plus, there are some anatomy cards (like layers of the feet or something) that I may skip too. All in all, this phase of my "attack" plan on GT is going pretty well, and I think things may get easier during the week even with school interfering, because my wife will be at work and my 9 month old son will be at daycare/preschool (I love them, which is why having them around is distracting since I'd rather be with them than studying).

Looking ahead to the daily questions only phase, and that starts off pretty manageable so far with 328, 411, 455, and 439 questions waiting for me. Of course those numbers will increase as some of the daily questions I am doing now roll over into those days' question counts. Still, I think those are fairly manageable numbers so far, and as long as they don't exceed like 800 questions/day I won't be terribly worried about it.

Anyways, not sure if anyone cares about my progress, but as I said before, I am kind of using this thread as a form of public accountability to help force myself to power through this. Hopefully it works out as I am hoping it will.

 

[Bernoull]

Well, I am blazing through by frenzy of banking new cards. So far, I have kept a pretty good pace: 32, 43, 34, & 34 new cards banked over the last 4 days. That's lower than the 40/day that I was thinking I might need, but after re-evaluating where I'm at right now, I need to do 37.667 cards/day to finish GT over the next 6 days. However, I am not going to do any more heme/onc stuff over the next 6 days as it is being covered in lectures this block at school, so I figure it would be best to do that as I get caught up with podcasts. That drops me down to only needing 34.667 new cards/day, which helps a little. Plus, there are some anatomy cards (like layers of the feet or something) that I may skip too. All in all, this phase of my "attack" plan on GT is going pretty well, and I think things may get easier during the week even with school interfering, because my wife will be at work and my 9 month old son will be at daycare/preschool (I love them, which is why having them around is distracting since I'd rather be with them than studying).

Looking ahead to the daily questions only phase, and that starts off pretty manageable so far with 328, 411, 455, and 439 questions waiting for me. Of course those numbers will increase as some of the daily questions I am doing now roll over into those days' question counts. Still, I think those are fairly manageable numbers so far, and as long as they don't exceed like 800 questions/day I won't be terribly worried about it.

Anyways, not sure if anyone cares about my progress, but as I said before, I am kind of using this thread as a form of public accountability to help force myself to power through this. Hopefully it works out as I am hoping it will.

Awesome progress bruh!! I might jump on the bandwagon too!! I got 300 cards left so 30cards/day for 10 days and suffer the consequences for a couple of weeks is not a bad trade-off!!

So u're reading the cards, as u normally would, but u're just rating them a little higher (4s) so that u don't get bogged down with Qs during ur banking phase, right?

Honestly the beauty of GT is that even if u have to rate a bunch of cards low (2s) the next time u see them, by the 2nd, 3rd time those cards cycle around, it starts to stick... it's all about the repetition in the end, so I like ur strategy.

Keep it up and keep us posted!

 

[Shadowmoses]

Hey guys,

I think for certain subjects I am going to use review books to cover my basis (i.e.- clinical micro made simple for micro, Levinson immuno for immuno)...but I was wondering how GT (and I'm sure some people looked at this) biochem compares with rapid review biochem....

Thanks.

For biology, in my opinion GT biochem section compliments RR biochem well enough, but RR biochem is a more complete resource, and the diagrams alone make it worth looking into. For example when I'm reviewing GT biochem questions and my memory goes fuzzy, RR biochem does a good job of refreshing my memory again. GT's biohem section seems like it hits all the major points so far...but I only have 52% of biochem banked so far.

Can't speak on the other review books though.

 

[lrkoehle]

Awesome progress bruh!! I might jump on the bandwagon too!! I got 300 cards left so 30cards/day for 10 days and suffer the consequences for a couple of weeks is not a bad trade-off!!

So u're reading the cards, as u normally would, but u're just rating them a little higher (4s) so that u don't get bogged down with Qs during ur banking phase, right?

Honestly the beauty of GT is that even if u have to rate a bunch of cards low (2s) the next time u see them, by the 2nd, 3rd time those cards cycle around, it starts to stick... it's all about the repetition in the end, so I like ur strategy.

Keep it up and keep us posted!

Yeah, I expect it to be a worthwhile trade-off in the end (otherwise I wouldn't be doing it this way), but I'm still a bit nervous about how it will all work out in the end. Still, even though I'm not 100% ready to endorse this method as a way to finish up banking cards without having seen it all the way through personally, I think it's a good strategy to finish up with the banking part of GT, so it'd be cool to have some company doing it too. Just make sure you have 10 days that you can really dedicate to banking, because once you get to the end of that time, you'll be too bogged down with daily questions to bank more than 2-3 cards a day at best.

The big thing about the couple of weeks of suffering after the 10 day banking is that you are basically no longer banking new cards, so if you're spending 3-4 hours on daily questions, it's not a big deal, because you're not going to then try to spend another 2-4 hours banking a bunch of new stuff. If you podcast like me, then hopefully you can find those 3-4 hours in the morning to do you questions, and then spend the afternoon with an additional review book/source or studying lecture material.

When I am banking cards right now, I am keeping the same approach that I had before I started this undertaking. I thoroughly review each card and if necessary grab an outside source to add some additional depth to weak areas. Then I do the review quiz for it. Only difference is that I now hit 4 for everything, meaning I won't see it in my daily questions for 10 days. Then at the end of this 10 day period I will go back to rating everything accurately. That means a lot of things rated as a 2, but the beauty is that based on the algorithm, if you rate something initially as a 4 and then rate it as a 2 the second time you still won't see it for 8 days. That way it will still keep my daily questions from this banking frenzy spread out over about a week. The other thing is that a lot of the things I'm banking now (~25-30%) I will probably rate as a 4 next time as well, which means I won't see if for 30 days from that point. That will cut down on my next cycle through these questions. I'm hoping that, as you pointed out, after 2-4 cycles through the vast majority will be sticking and thus rated as a 4. Plus, since I won't be spending time banking new cards, I am hoping to be able to dedicate like an hour a day to shoring up my weak areas (e.g. endocrine).

Not sure if this is relevant, but I bank new cards at a rate of probably like 5-10 an hour (depends a lot on how dense the cards are), so it will be nice to not spend the huge amount of time I spend right now on banking. I'm not sure if others bank faster than that, but as I said above, I try to be thorough in my first pass through when banking.

Thanks for the words of encouragement. Hopefully tonight I can finish banking new cards before midnight...

 

[hrain]

I know we've all talked about wanting to be able to see our notes when answer quiz questions or review questions. I'm not entirely certain that this is a new feature, but I've never seen it before, and it seems like it answers all our problems: When you're on the "answer side" of a quiz or review question, you can click on the top right part of the card where it has a link to the section the question is from (ex: Neurology -> Physiology -> Arteries of the Brain and Spinal Cord). This will bring up the card without changing the page/question, and on the top right of this screen there's a little pages button that you can click to see your notes.

I hope those directions made sense, and I'm sorry if I'm just repeating something that everyone else knew. It was just an awesome discovery for me and I wanted to share just in case it's new or other people haven't realized it.

 

[NightOwly]

Nice!

Thank you, @Hrain. I've always seen the link above the answer, but I figured it would take me to the flashcard topic menu page.

Now I see it opens up in the same window, without refreshing, and it does indeed have a "your notes" button. I'll start to use that more often now...

 

[loveoforganic]

I know we've all talked about wanting to be able to see our notes when answer quiz questions or review questions. I'm not entirely certain that this is a new feature, but I've never seen it before, and it seems like it answers all our problems: When you're on the "answer side" of a quiz or review question, you can click on the top right part of the card where it has a link to the section the question is from (ex: Neurology -> Physiology -> Arteries of the Brain and Spinal Cord). This will bring up the card without changing the page/question, and on the top right of this screen there's a little pages button that you can click to see your notes.

I hope those directions made sense, and I'm sorry if I'm just repeating something that everyone else knew. It was just an awesome discovery for me and I wanted to share just in case it's new or other people haven't realized it.

AWESOME. Thank you!

 

[CatFactorial]

Yeah, I expect it to be a worthwhile trade-off in the end (otherwise I wouldn't be doing it this way), but I'm still a bit nervous about how it will all work out in the end. Still, even though I'm not 100% ready to endorse this method as a way to finish up banking cards without having seen it all the way through personally, I think it's a good strategy to finish up with the banking part of GT, so it'd be cool to have some company doing it too. Just make sure you have 10 days that you can really dedicate to banking, because once you get to the end of that time, you'll be too bogged down with daily questions to bank more than 2-3 cards a day at best.

The big thing about the couple of weeks of suffering after the 10 day banking is that you are basically no longer banking new cards, so if you're spending 3-4 hours on daily questions, it's not a big deal, because you're not going to then try to spend another 2-4 hours banking a bunch of new stuff. If you podcast like me, then hopefully you can find those 3-4 hours in the morning to do you questions, and then spend the afternoon with an additional review book/source or studying lecture material.

When I am banking cards right now, I am keeping the same approach that I had before I started this undertaking. I thoroughly review each card and if necessary grab an outside source to add some additional depth to weak areas. Then I do the review quiz for it. Only difference is that I now hit 4 for everything, meaning I won't see it in my daily questions for 10 days. Then at the end of this 10 day period I will go back to rating everything accurately. That means a lot of things rated as a 2, but the beauty is that based on the algorithm, if you rate something initially as a 4 and then rate it as a 2 the second time you still won't see it for 8 days. That way it will still keep my daily questions from this banking frenzy spread out over about a week. The other thing is that a lot of the things I'm banking now (~25-30%) I will probably rate as a 4 next time as well, which means I won't see if for 30 days from that point. That will cut down on my next cycle through these questions. I'm hoping that, as you pointed out, after 2-4 cycles through the vast majority will be sticking and thus rated as a 4. Plus, since I won't be spending time banking new cards, I am hoping to be able to dedicate like an hour a day to shoring up my weak areas (e.g. endocrine).

Not sure if this is relevant, but I bank new cards at a rate of probably like 5-10 an hour (depends a lot on how dense the cards are), so it will be nice to not spend the huge amount of time I spend right now on banking. I'm not sure if others bank faster than that, but as I said above, I try to be thorough in my first pass through when banking.

Thanks for the words of encouragement. Hopefully tonight I can finish banking new cards before midnight...

Also in a similar boat. Aggressively banked ~20% (now at about 85 total or so) in the last 3 days or so and have been absolutely swamped with daily review (700+). Almost done with school, will have 4 weeks of qbanks plus soon to be completed GT daily.

Hopefully this will work.

 

[Dr.CCM]

2 months out from test, high 70s percent banked (45% mastered) but am not banking Biochem or anatomy. Right now my focus in qbanks (150-200 questions a day) and then what I find HY in GT. Stuff where it works well--Micro, Immuno, and all the organ systems. Trying to limit my questions to under 300 a day. So my plan going forward is to knock out qbank questions then do the HY GT until the end of April. I'm no longer sticking to the daily review for all the questions, just those within the aforementioned subjects. Sound too ambitious?

 

[hrain]

Absolutely no worries guys, glad it was helpful!

 

[FIREitUP]

Also in a similar boat. Aggressively banked ~20% (now at about 85 total or so) in the last 3 days or so and have been absolutely swamped with daily review (700+). Almost done with school, will have 4 weeks of qbanks plus soon to be completed GT daily.

Hopefully this will work.

jeez that's an insane amount of bankage! Good luck dude.

 

[gravitywave]

jeez that's an insane amount of bankage! Good luck dude.

seriously i can't imagine this. the best i could ever do was 85-90 qs/hr and i was only any good for about 4 hours before my brain didn't want to do it any more. i think once i did 400 in one day, and it was awful. i was slower (60-70/hr) when working through the second pass at 10 days.

so yeah, i'm impressed.

 

[lrkoehle]

Also in a similar boat. Aggressively banked ~20% (now at about 85 total or so) in the last 3 days or so and have been absolutely swamped with daily review (700+). Almost done with school, will have 4 weeks of qbanks plus soon to be completed GT daily.

Hopefully this will work.

That's some rough stuff. That's why I am trying to get it spread out over a week. Good luck. Soon you'll have that stuff beaten into your brain and mastered, and then it will all have been worth it...at least that's the goal anyhow.

 

[lrkoehle]

Check out these guys, they really helped me out <snip>
http://club99percent.com/

Forgive my skepticism, but I don't think I will. A relatively new user (4 total posts) listed as a "resident" who comes on a random thread to post a link without any details other than to check them out. Why not start a new thread about it? Is it because it would get deleted right away and you'd get banned for spamming? Forgive me for being so blunt here, but go peddle your crap somewhere else. If this is a legit site, please provide some actual details (preferably in a new thread).

 

[Bernoull]

Check out these guys, they really helped me out <snip>
http://club99percent.com/

Forgive my skepticism, but I don't think I will. A relatively new user (4 total posts) listed as a "resident" who comes on a random thread to post a link without any details other than to check them out. Why not start a new thread about it? Is it because it would get deleted right away and you'd get banned for spamming? Forgive me for being so blunt here, but go peddle your crap somewhere else. If this is a legit site, please provide some actual details (preferably in a new thread).

Definitely a spammer!

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=12244061#post12244061
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=12244065#post12244065
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=12329250#post12329250
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=12329251#post12329251

 

[JackShephard MD]

I've never understood companies who advertise like that.

If anything, they've advertised their inherent dishonesty.

Is any publicity good publicity? I would say no.

 

[lrkoehle]

Definitely a spammer!

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=12244061#post12244061
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=12244065#post12244065
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=12329250#post12329250
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=12329251#post12329251

This is why I like websites that don't let posters post links until they have X number of posts.

I've never understood companies who advertise like that.

If anything, they've advertised their inherent dishonesty.

Is any publicity good publicity? I would say no.

I totally agree. It's just annoying. If I am choosing between two fairly similar products/stores, then I definitely will choose the one that did not annoy me with their advertising approach (e.g. those "nuh-nuh-nuh NAPA know how" commercials...).

Back on the actual topic of GT, my 10 day frenzy is still coming along nicely. Starting Monday I have banked 52 (the subjects I did that day had less dense cards), 35, 20, and 30. Wednesday, when I only banked 20 cards, was the day I was most concerned about out of this whole 10 day stretch, because I knew I had required things at school all freaking day. Even getting 20 done that day was rough (which I knew it would be, hence the push to do 50+ on Monday).

I still haven't broken the 1000 cards banked barrier yet, but I will no doubt do so later today. Currently, I sit at 975 cards banked (91.6%), with 2 days left in the 10 days I set aside for banking. As I said previously, I am saving the last 18 of the Heme/Onc cards to go over when I get caught up with lecture podcasts, so I really only have 71 more cards to bank over the next 2 days (35.5/day). That should be doable, and even if I go into an 11th day of banking, my first day of the "questions only" part of my plan only has 361 questions anyways, so I could easily bank the last few cards that day if I needed/wanted to do so.

What I have left to bank: 5 cards in micro (an absurdly long topic), 1 in pharm (long ass toxicity card that I've put off for months), 9 immunosupressant cards in immuno, 19 in embryology, 39 in anatomy, and the 18 aforementioned heme/onc cards. I am really dreading the embryo cards. I have never liked embryology, and that's why even during these 10 days I have repeatedly opened that section, looked at a card and then said to myself, "no thanks, maybe later..." Now that later has come, I am not happy about it.

So far I am still pleased with my decision to go on a banking frenzy. I have identified some definite weak spots (endocrine, biochem, immunodeficiencies, etc.), so next week when I am just doing questions, I hope to be able to spend an extra hour a day reading up on those areas and making them into strengths. If I had waited to bank slowly, I wouldn't have known just how much reviewing I needed in some of those areas until later when I want to be focusing much more on just doing Qbanks.

Back to the grind.

 

[ipizzy]

You are a beast. I tip my hat to you, sir.

 

[owlegrad]

Hey guys, sorry to edit your posts, didn't want all that spam around to start to go bad and stink up the place. 😉

 

[lrkoehle]

You are a beast. I tip my hat to you, sir.

Thanks, I only wish I had been smarter like you and done this months ago...I wanted to go banking crazy over winter break, but instead I slept...😎

Hey guys, sorry to edit your posts, didn't want all that spam around to start to go bad and stink up the place. 😉

Thanks, we don't need that rotten spam messing up our groove...When Stella lost her groove, they made a whole movie about what she had to do to get it back. We don't wanna go through that.

 

[lrkoehle]

So I am finishing up the last bit of banking tonight, and I came to these neck anatomy cards. Does anyone here think neck musculature (outside of the obvious CN XI muscles) are worth bothering with? I don't remember them really being emphasized at my school when we were doing neck anatomy, so I feel like knowing something like the omohyoid is not worth the time to learn now when I don't ever remember learning it previously. I just kind of want some others' thoughts before I mark these questions as "perfect recall cuz I'm an effing gunner, so don't show me this crap again!"

 

[Brasco888]

You are a beast. I tip my hat to you, sir.

X 2..

Good stuff!

 

[loveoforganic]

So I am finishing up the last bit of banking tonight, and I came to these neck anatomy cards. Does anyone here think neck musculature (outside of the obvious CN XI muscles) are worth bothering with? I don't remember them really being emphasized at my school when we were doing neck anatomy, so I feel like knowing something like the omohyoid is not worth the time to learn now when I don't ever remember learning it previously. I just kind of want some others' thoughts before I mark these questions as "perfect recall cuz I'm an effing gunner, so don't show me this crap again!"

We learned them in gross. Can't comment beyond that

 

[JackShephard MD]

So I am finishing up the last bit of banking tonight, and I came to these neck anatomy cards. Does anyone here think neck musculature (outside of the obvious CN XI muscles) are worth bothering with? I don't remember them really being emphasized at my school when we were doing neck anatomy, so I feel like knowing something like the omohyoid is not worth the time to learn now when I don't ever remember learning it previously. I just kind of want some others' thoughts before I mark these questions as "perfect recall cuz I'm an effing gunner, so don't show me this crap again!"

I don't think it's that important. Focus on clinical applications or qbanks for that. I banked all the anatomy and often it was very factual/less conceptual/clinical.

Just be sure to note all the questions you practice with H&N anatomy.

 

[lrkoehle]

Just now finished up banking everything...(except the heme/onc stuff that I'm going to do as I get caught up on podcasts). I let 100 of today's questions rollover to tomorrow so I could finish up banking, so tomorrow I have 500 questions...at least I won't be banking anything? Off to bed now; tomorrow the real work begins. Still hoping I haven't totally screwed myself...

 

[Bernoull]

Just now finished up banking everything...(except the heme/onc stuff that I'm going to do as I get caught up on podcasts). I let 100 of today's questions rollover to tomorrow so I could finish up banking, so tomorrow I have 500 questions...at least I won't be banking anything? Off to bed now; tomorrow the real work begins. Still hoping I haven't totally screwed myself...

Congrats!! U're da man!! This is freakin awesome, I can't wait to be done too!!

I've only been able to bank a meager amount over the past week!! I hate it when exams get in the way of GT!

I've also been having trouble keeping with my daily reviews and I've hit the roll over button, shamefully, more than I should..😳😳

I have about 275 cards left, so I think i'm just gonna bank ~20/day and i'll be done latest in 14 days, hopefully earlier... I have two big exams coming up in the next 2wks, i think I can handle ~20cards/day along daily Qs and exam prep...

Are u gonna start doing Qbanks right away or are u gonna let the daily Qs subside a bit? When is ur exam again?

 

[Alvarez13]

Congrats!! U're da man!! This is freakin awesome, I can't wait to be done too!!

I've only been able to bank a meager amount over the past week!! I hate it when exams get in the way of GT!

I've also been having trouble keeping with my daily reviews and I've hit the roll over button, shamefully, more than I should..😳😳

I have about 275 cards left, so I think i'm just gonna bank ~20/day and i'll be done latest in 14 days, hopefully earlier... I have two big exams coming up in the next 2wks, i think I can handle ~20cards/day along daily Qs and exam prep...

Are u gonna start doing Qbanks right away or are u gonna let the daily Qs subside a bit? When is ur exam again?

Isn't it annoying when school keeps getting in the way of you actually learning something?

 

[seira]

Just now finished up banking everything...(except the heme/onc stuff that I'm going to do as I get caught up on podcasts). I let 100 of today's questions rollover to tomorrow so I could finish up banking, so tomorrow I have 500 questions...at least I won't be banking anything? Off to bed now; tomorrow the real work begins. Still hoping I haven't totally screwed myself...

Congratulation! I respect you so much for your accomplishment. Im just curious but how far out are you from your exam date? I'm asking this bc I'm about 7 weeks out at this point with approximately 17% left on GT to bank. I'm right now focused more on completing GT in the next two weeks and I feel like I often ran out of time in a day and don't get to do qbank. It's making me nervous and I was wondering if people think its more important at this time to finish GT or spend more time on qbank. Thanks!

 

[CatFactorial]

Congratulation! I respect you so much for your accomplishment. Im just curious but how far out are you from your exam date? I'm asking this bc I'm about 7 weeks out at this point with approximately 17% left on GT to bank. I'm right now focused more on completing GT in the next two weeks and I feel like I often ran out of time in a day and don't get to do qbank. It's making me nervous and I was wondering if people think its more important at this time to finish GT or spend more time on qbank. Thanks!

I have 4 weeks before D day.

83% banked (only 50% embryo, all of anatomy, and derm/msk path remain).

I still find GT immensely useful, and now that more is banked, I feel this is when it will be most helpful. So while the daily questions make me tear out my hair, weep, and gnash my teeth, I am trying to manage that as well as 2 blocks of world a day.

I wish I were further along, but I will stay the course for now.

 

[lrkoehle]

Congrats!! U're da man!! This is freakin awesome, I can't wait to be done too!!

I've only been able to bank a meager amount over the past week!! I hate it when exams get in the way of GT!

I've also been having trouble keeping with my daily reviews and I've hit the roll over button, shamefully, more than I should..😳😳

I have about 275 cards left, so I think i'm just gonna bank ~20/day and i'll be done latest in 14 days, hopefully earlier... I have two big exams coming up in the next 2wks, i think I can handle ~20cards/day along daily Qs and exam prep...

Are u gonna start doing Qbanks right away or are u gonna let the daily Qs subside a bit? When is ur exam again?

Thanks man. The banking was rough and I had multiple nights up til 1:30 or 2 in the morning (which is super late for me, especially with a 9 month old serving as an alarm clock at like 5:30 every morning), so I sympathize with what you're going through. I was lucky that this happened to be a 10 day period where school was kind of light for me. The other motivation was that my school gives us an NBME administered, 150 question practice step-I ("free 150" or whatever it's called), and I wanted to have one pass through everything by the time I took that today. That's why I really wanted to be finish by yesterday and hastily came up with this plan to do so.

20 a should be reasonable. Just make sure you pass those exams, or studying GT and for Step-I may not matter...

As for Qbanks, it will prbably be at least a week before I get to those, because I need to get caught up in class (litterally 3 weeks behind on lectures). I figure once I get caught up on lecture then I should be able to spend like 3-4 hours on daily GT questions, 2-3 hours on actual school crap, 2-3 hours on my Kaplan qbank (~50 q's/day plus reviewing), and maybe another hour reading another review source (8-11 hours a day). That will get me through about half of kaplan by the time school let's out for step-I study time for me. Then I can really step it up.

Isn't it annoying when school keeps getting in the way of you actually learning something?

Drives me freaking crazy. I really wish my school had dropped our case-based instruction and small group stuff for this last block. We've learned how to function in a small group setting and think critically about a case, so why spend another 4 hours a week doing more of it?

Congratulation! I respect you so much for your accomplishment. Im just curious but how far out are you from your exam date? I'm asking this bc I'm about 7 weeks out at this point with approximately 17% left on GT to bank. I'm right now focused more on completing GT in the next two weeks and I feel like I often ran out of time in a day and don't get to do qbank. It's making me nervous and I was wondering if people think its more important at this time to finish GT or spend more time on qbank. Thanks!

Thanks. I am 73 days out from my exam according to my official countdown on my phone (that means I take it June 13th if you don't want to count out when 73 days from today is).

If you have 17% of GT left to get through and you're in your dedicated step-I time, then it may not be a bad idea to make a strong push to finish that up quickly, so you can then just do some daily review questions and move on to qbanks. I wouldn't spend too much time getting through the last bit of GT though, and you may want to prioritize weak areas/higher yield topics and skip banking some topics (e.g. if you haven't banked any of cardio, you wanna do that ASAP, but anatomy may not be as high yield).

Based on what I've read repeatedly on here, the most important part of preparing for step-I is doing as many step-I-style questions as possible, so make sure you don't sacrifice completing UWorld to bank a few more GT cards. GT is really just a tool to help you review everything and build a solid foundation of knowledge, but the qbanks will bring everything together and if you have a weak spot they should bring that to your attention too. Then you can review that separately at that time.

Good luck with the studying!

 

[ipizzy]

Has anyone heard anything about how the step 2 program is coming along? I'm really excited to see what they do...and I know I'm a huge nerd for it

 

[894rty]

I decided to throw in the towel w/ regards to GT. Although I love the concept and set up of the program, there are just some things that I really HATE. For example, not being able to see your notes while doing questions, too into depth on some areas vs what step 1 would require, having to deal w/ another source of info/reference etc. So, I decided to make my own flashcards using a third party software that is based off of same type of learning system. I like it much better now since I can change and edit my flashcards to better serve me.

Initially I thought it would take waaaayyyy tooo long but it's not that bad. What I do is type up my own info on a particular topic (combine pathoma, first aid, goljan RR) and then write up questions pertaining to that info. Since I've already consolidated my info and have it written up, I then just copy and paste the entire flashcard of facts related to that particular question and 'bold' the specific answer. What I really love about this method is that I can later add/delete the flashcards depending on what I need while going through Qbanks. I think this works for me better personally.

 

[Bernoull]

I decided to throw in the towel w/ regards to GT. Although I love the concept and set up of the program, there are just some things that I really HATE. For example, not being able to see your notes while doing questions, too into depth on some areas vs what step 1 would require, having to deal w/ another source of info/reference etc. So, I decided to make my own flashcards using a third party software that is based off of same type of learning system. I like it much better now since I can change and edit my flashcards to better serve me.

Initially I thought it would take waaaayyyy tooo long but it's not that bad. What I do is type up my own info on a particular topic (combine pathoma, first aid, goljan RR) and then write up questions pertaining to that info. Since I've already consolidated my info and have it written up, I then just copy and paste the entire flashcard of facts related to that particular question and 'bold' the specific answer. What I really love about this method is that I can later add/delete the flashcards depending on what I need while going through Qbanks. I think this works for me better personally.

It's always best to figure out what works best for oneself and go with that.

I just wanted to point out that there's a feature to view one's notes in GT, someone posted about it recently, u need to click the weblink on the top-right corner of the card (Anatomy>Head n Neck>Anterior neck triangle etc etc). Seems like you're happy with the flashcards u made, so this comment is more for others who still don't know that there's a feature to view one's notes.

Goodluck!

 

[lrkoehle]

I decided to throw in the towel w/ regards to GT. Although I love the concept and set up of the program, there are just some things that I really HATE. For example, not being able to see your notes while doing questions, too into depth on some areas vs what step 1 would require, having to deal w/ another source of info/reference etc. So, I decided to make my own flashcards using a third party software that is based off of same type of learning system. I like it much better now since I can change and edit my flashcards to better serve me.

Initially I thought it would take waaaayyyy tooo long but it's not that bad. What I do is type up my own info on a particular topic (combine pathoma, first aid, goljan RR) and then write up questions pertaining to that info. Since I've already consolidated my info and have it written up, I then just copy and paste the entire flashcard of facts related to that particular question and 'bold' the specific answer. What I really love about this method is that I can later add/delete the flashcards depending on what I need while going through Qbanks. I think this works for me better personally.

To echo what Bernoull said, you've gotta do what works best for you. It sounds like you're still a first year, so you have plenty of time to put together those flash cards. Best of luck.

For me personally, I recognize the GT is not perfect, but I just can't stand making flash cards. The price of a 12 month GT subscription has been more than worth it for me. I know sometimes they are overly detailed on somethings, but you can cut yourself a little slack on those less than high yield type of points and just rate it a little higher. I figure that way I've seen it, and if it does pop up on Step-I, hopefully my recognition of it will be good enough to answer the question. For that reason, I prefer the added level of detail even if it doesn't all show up on boards. Plus, those details are what separate the gunners from just the regular med students, and it is called GUNNER training after all. 😛

Has anyone heard anything about how the step 2 program is coming along? I'm really excited to see what they do...and I know I'm a huge nerd for it

I have not heard anything about it, other than that they were working on something for it. With 3rd year coming up quickly, I hope they roll it out soon so I can test it out...hopefully with another free month. I wonder how good it's going to be. Step-I GT works because it's a lot of lecture based stuff with a fair amount of time to study on our own. I can't imagine a 12+ hour day in the OR on surgery rotation being followed up by GT for Step-2, but that's why I wanna test it out.

 

[loveoforganic]

What did you guys use/plan to use for Qbanks?

I was thinking Kaplan throughout second year, doing just subject-specific Q's according to current block, then doing world during dedicated study time, hopefully 2x (have 6 or 7 weeks of dedicated time), while finishing banking (a hopefully tiny amount) of GT and keeping up with the reviews.

Rx seems like it would be kind of a waste if it really sticks to FA pretty spot on, no?

 

[lrkoehle]

What did you guys use/plan to use for Qbanks?

I was thinking Kaplan throughout second year, doing just subject-specific Q's according to current block, then doing world during dedicated study time, hopefully 2x (have 6 or 7 weeks of dedicated time), while finishing banking (a hopefully tiny amount) of GT and keeping up with the reviews.

Rx seems like it would be kind of a waste if it really sticks to FA pretty spot on, no?

From what I hear, Rx, like you said, sticks to FA pretty closely (I believe it's actually made by the FA people). It's supposed to be good for beating FA into your head, but if you're keeping up with GT, then that material and then some should be pretty we beaten into your head by then.

The first qbank I plan on using is Kaplan. My school decided to get this year's 2nd year class a 12 month Kaplan and 4 week UWorld qbank subscription (as well as 2 NBME's) for reasons that aren't really important. I figure, if I have the Kaplan qbank at no cost to me, then I should use it. I'd like to be finishing it up a good month before my exam date. Then maybe do an NBME.

Then with the last 4 weeks, I plan on using UWorld as my main study tool; focusing on doing a boat load of questions. I'd like to get through it once fully, and then go back and re-do the questions I missed. I need to map out the timing of questions, but I figure 150-200 questions/day would mean I'd spend 2-3 weeks getting through all of UWorld the first time. I will probably do a second NBME after my first full pass through UWorld, and then with that last week to week and a half, just re-do the questions I missed.

That's my plan for Qbanks. My hope is that I will have a strong enough foundation heading into my dedicated step-I time that I can focus on doing Qbanks and letting them help shape what I study after reviewing my right and wrong answers. This approach, IMO, is far better than just setting aside 3 days for neuro, 3 for cardio, etc. etc., because, similar to GT, it will force me to focus on my weak areas without wasting time on my strengths because "that's what my study schedule tells me to do."

I haven't met with my school's academic advisers yet to discuss this plan, so hopefully it is reasonable.

 

[Alvarez13]

From what I hear, Rx, like you said, sticks to FA pretty closely (I believe it's actually made by the FA people). It's supposed to be good for beating FA into your head, but if you're keeping up with GT, then that material and then some should be pretty we beaten into your head by then.

The first qbank I plan on using is Kaplan. My school decided to get this year's 2nd year class a 12 month Kaplan and 4 week UWorld qbank subscription (as well as 2 NBME's) for reasons that aren't really important. I figure, if I have the Kaplan qbank at no cost to me, then I should use it. I'd like to be finishing it up a good month before my exam date. Then maybe do an NBME.

Then with the last 4 weeks, I plan on using UWorld as my main study tool; focusing on doing a boat load of questions. I'd like to get through it once fully, and then go back and re-do the questions I missed. I need to map out the timing of questions, but I figure 150-200 questions/day would mean I'd spend 2-3 weeks getting through all of UWorld the first time. I will probably do a second NBME after my first full pass through UWorld, and then with that last week to week and a half, just re-do the questions I missed.

That's my plan for Qbanks. My hope is that I will have a strong enough foundation heading into my dedicated step-I time that I can focus on doing Qbanks and letting them help shape what I study after reviewing my right and wrong answers. This approach, IMO, is far better than just setting aside 3 days for neuro, 3 for cardio, etc. etc., because, similar to GT, it will force me to focus on my weak areas without wasting time on my strengths because "that's what my study schedule tells me to do."

I haven't met with my school's academic advisers yet to discuss this plan, so hopefully it is reasonable.

You could give your qbank away for free to your old buddy Alvarez13 as an act of good faith and friendship 😍

I'm down with the only doing questions in the 4 wks up to the exam and going in with a solid base of knowledge. Congrats on finishing the banking. I'm ~78% complete and need to pick up the pace this month. I'm so weighed down with self reflection BS though, I can't find the time.

 

[loveoforganic]

From what I hear, Rx, like you said, sticks to FA pretty closely (I believe it's actually made by the FA people). It's supposed to be good for beating FA into your head, but if you're keeping up with GT, then that material and then some should be pretty we beaten into your head by then.

The first qbank I plan on using is Kaplan. My school decided to get this year's 2nd year class a 12 month Kaplan and 4 week UWorld qbank subscription (as well as 2 NBME's) for reasons that aren't really important. I figure, if I have the Kaplan qbank at no cost to me, then I should use it. I'd like to be finishing it up a good month before my exam date. Then maybe do an NBME.

Then with the last 4 weeks, I plan on using UWorld as my main study tool; focusing on doing a boat load of questions. I'd like to get through it once fully, and then go back and re-do the questions I missed. I need to map out the timing of questions, but I figure 150-200 questions/day would mean I'd spend 2-3 weeks getting through all of UWorld the first time. I will probably do a second NBME after my first full pass through UWorld, and then with that last week to week and a half, just re-do the questions I missed.

That's my plan for Qbanks. My hope is that I will have a strong enough foundation heading into my dedicated step-I time that I can focus on doing Qbanks and letting them help shape what I study after reviewing my right and wrong answers. This approach, IMO, is far better than just setting aside 3 days for neuro, 3 for cardio, etc. etc., because, similar to GT, it will force me to focus on my weak areas without wasting time on my strengths because "that's what my study schedule tells me to do."

I haven't met with my school's academic advisers yet to discuss this plan, so hopefully it is reasonable.

Thanks for the info - forgot about the NBME's, but toss them in there too. This is pretty much in line with what I had reasoned out.

Let us know how it works out for you!

 

[lrkoehle]

You could give your qbank away for free to your old buddy Alvarez13 as an act of good faith and friendship 😍

I'm down with the only doing questions in the 4 wks up to the exam and going in with a solid base of knowledge. Congrats on finishing the banking. I'm ~78% complete and need to pick up the pace this month. I'm so weighed down with self reflection BS though, I can't find the time.

Haha, maybe after I finish up the qbank I could pass it along to you, but I don't know how the timing would work out.

I'm really hoping I can get my base of knowledge solidified this month, because the past week and a half of banking showed me just how much I had forgotten (although some of that is to be expected based on the detail GT expects of us).

Good luck with the banking and self-reflections, I'm am really glad my school does not make us do that kind of stuff. 😎

 

[amaprez]

I know we've all talked about wanting to be able to see our notes when answer quiz questions or review questions. I'm not entirely certain that this is a new feature, but I've never seen it before, and it seems like it answers all our problems: When you're on the "answer side" of a quiz or review question, you can click on the top right part of the card where it has a link to the section the question is from (ex: Neurology -> Physiology -> Arteries of the Brain and Spinal Cord). This will bring up the card without changing the page/question, and on the top right of this screen there's a little pages button that you can click to see your notes.

I hope those directions made sense, and I'm sorry if I'm just repeating something that everyone else knew. It was just an awesome discovery for me and I wanted to share just in case it's new or other people haven't realized it.

There's an easier shortcut. Just press "S" when you're doing your quiz and "Esc" to return back to question.

Pressing "s" then clicking the little note icon is still one step too far. If I'm zipping through my daily review I'm not going to remember which cards I made notes for. And it's way too much of a hassle to check for notes on every single question just in case I made notes for it's corresponding card.

This aspect still needs improvement imho.

 

[lrkoehle]

There's an easier shortcut. Just press "S" when you're doing your quiz and "Esc" to return back to question.

Pressing "s" then clicking the little note icon is still one step too far. If I'm zipping through my daily review I'm not going to remember which cards I made notes for. And it's way too much of a hassle to check for notes on every single question just in case I made notes for it's corresponding card.

This aspect still needs improvement imho.

I totally agree. I haven't and at this point probably won't use the notes function at all. For me, adding notes is not really a priority or even really important at all, so even if it was more accessible I don't know how much I would be adding notes anyways. Part of the problem is that the current notes function is for an entire "card," so if you add a note for one thing on a card but get a question on another part of the card you don't really want to see that note anyways. I don't know how they can make this so that notes are more specific for certain points within a given card. For instance, the toxicology card about drug toxicities, you may add a note about causes of aplastic anemia, but when you're answering a question on that card about disulfram like reactions with alcohol (e.g. metronidazole) you don't want to see that note.

It's clearly an imperfect system, but the things I consider strengths far out weight the things I consider weaknesses.

 

[Chirurg]

I totally agree. I haven't and at this point probably won't use the notes function at all. For me, adding notes is not really a priority or even really important at all, so even if it was more accessible I don't know how much I would be adding notes anyways. Part of the problem is that the current notes function is for an entire "card," so if you add a note for one thing on a card but get a question on another part of the card you don't really want to see that note anyways. I don't know how they can make this so that notes are more specific for certain points within a given card. For instance, the toxicology card about drug toxicities, you may add a note about causes of aplastic anemia, but when you're answering a question on that card about disulfram like reactions with alcohol (e.g. metronidazole) you don't want to see that note.

It's clearly an imperfect system, but the things I consider strengths far out weight the things I consider weaknesses.

100% agree.

 

[dontFREToverit]

did my first few blocks of World this week, and feeling very relieved - seems like those months and months of GT actually worked.

Is anyone else who is finished or nearly finished banking planning to stop using GT at some point before their exam? Just figure what I know I know, and focus on reading/qbanks exclusively?

 

[secants]

I'm at 66% banked but I plan on getting most of it done by May, before my dedicated time period. I don't really plan on using it that much after, or maybe limit it to an hour and just zoom through all the review questions regardless if I know it or not. GT is fairly handy as a reference tool while doing Qbanks IMO.

 

[lrkoehle]

did my first few blocks of World this week, and feeling very relieved - seems like those months and months of GT actually worked.

Is anyone else who is finished or nearly finished banking planning to stop using GT at some point before their exam? Just figure what I know I know, and focus on reading/qbanks exclusively?

Glad to hear the GT seems to be paying off for you. This past Sunday, I took a 150 question NBME that my school makes all students take (not sure if that is normal elsewhere), and I felt pretty good about it. We don't get our scores back on that for a like 2 weeks though, because they analyze it and compare it to past students. I'm hoping I did as good on it as I felt I did. I will probably start my Kaplan qbank before I get that back, so hopefully my results are as good on that as yours seem to be.

I am not sure what I am going to do regarding continuing/discontinuing with GT. I feel like the big selling point of the program is that its algorithm forces you to repeatedly study those areas that you're weak in until you get it, so based on that, if I still have weak areas during my dedicated Step-I study time, then I better get those issues ironed out quick! What better way than GT to do that? Otherwise, you may not recognize and therefore review a weak area until you get a question on it in a qbank. Also, for me, when I review things by reading, it is far too easy to read something, more or less recognize it, think you got it, and move on. GT doesn't let me do that.

Still, if I am stuck with like 4 hours of GT during my dedicated time, then that will eat into other things like qbanks. I think 2 hours/day (400 or less questions) would be doable to work into my schedule, and would be worth it to beat that last bit of information into my head. After all, you never know what might pop up on your exam, and every correct answer matters.

 

[ipizzy]

did my first few blocks of World this week, and feeling very relieved - seems like those months and months of GT actually worked.

Is anyone else who is finished or nearly finished banking planning to stop using GT at some point before their exam? Just figure what I know I know, and focus on reading/qbanks exclusively?

I've been done banking for a little over a month now, and I still keep up with my daily review questions. For me, I think it's still incredibly useful to get the repetition. There is stuff that I've seen literally 20+ times, but I'm constantly surprised at how stupid stuff can slip through the cracks. (Today, I had to think harder than I would have liked in order to remember S3 vs S4).

I plan on sticking with the daily GT review right up til test day (June for me). Right now I'm focusing on UWorld and reading (currently RR Path). Since RR Path is kind of a b*tch to get through, I like to take a break every 2-4 pages and do 10 GT questions. That way I feel compelled to keep reading RR Path until my daily question load is up...lol

 

[Bernoull]

I've been done banking for a little over a month now, and I still keep up with my daily review questions. For me, I think it's still incredibly useful to get the repetition. There is stuff that I've seen literally 20+ times, but I'm constantly surprised at how stupid stuff can slip through the cracks. (Today, I had to think harder than I would have liked in order to remember S3 vs S4).

I plan on sticking with the daily GT review right up til test day (June for me). Right now I'm focusing on UWorld and reading (currently RR Path). Since RR Path is kind of a b*tch to get through, I like to take a break every 2-4 pages and do 10 GT questions. That way I feel compelled to keep reading RR Path until my daily question load is up...lol

When i grow up, I want to be like you 😀! The slow n steady banking is just the way to go with GT, less stress, more time to let things sink in, and u're done banking early and can incorporate other things! Way to go!

What's ur daily GT load like?