Gunner Training?

[hope2bpaindoc]

---

Members do not see this ad.

A

 

[iCY]

Finished that mother ****er!!! Just got out of the interrogation room at the NBME headquarters...they had agents waiting for me when I walked out from my exam; wanted to know how I got a 100% on that thing if I didn't cheat. I told them it's all GT baby! 😎

More seriously though, it wasn't too bad at all (though definitely some curve balls as you'd expect). Also, there was at least 2-3 questions that I had on my exam that I only got because of GT. I didn't see them in my classes, didn't see them in FA (big surprise there 🙄), and never saw them on UW or Kaplan qbanks either. I can honestly say my performance on that exam was dramatically better thanks to GT. I'm absolutely not predicting a 260+ or even a 250+ (I'm really in too much of a daze to think about that crap anyways; my score will be what it will be at this point), but I give the system/structure provided by GT a lot of credit. Finishing up banking a month or two earlier may have helped, but it doesn't matter now.

Anyways, I feel like I've gotten to kind of know some of you guys from this thread, so I wanted to come touch base with you here first. If you trust in the GT system and put in the work it requires, I think your knowledge base will put you in position to be successful. Now off to go work out...if I can remember how after not being to the gym in over a month...😡).

congrats on finishing. you were able to get through 2 qbanks & bank all of GT? How did you manage that? How much time did you have to study/did you ignore school work.

 

[iCY]

At my school, the last 10% on exams is typically minutia. So for me to score 10% higher, I usually have to double the time I study.

What are suggesting? To complete GT in 2 months?

honestly my view of GT is a mix. Theres some parts that are good & some that might be good if you have alot of extra time on your hands. I'll give a more thorough breakdown of my method/thoughts on GT after my test in 10 days t.t. I really think it should be used differently depending on the amt of free time a person has.

I don't think theres enough time for it in the school year for AMG students unless you make that your main priority (then again, i spent 90% of my time during the year getting through about 200-300 clinical vignettes (robbins book, rubins book, kap Q bank, robbins flash cards) per organ system ontop of lectures, so I focused alot more on diagnosing dz & using that to teach me the necessary details)

I'm going to try to bank all/master as much as possible of pharm/micro in the next 6-7 days. I haven't seen these sections of GT before, but considering i busted my ass to get 90+ in both classes/finals, I have a preety solid background already & mostly just need a good Q/A refresher.

 

[loveoforganic]

Congrats on finishing! See from the other thread you got to almost 90% mastery, that's sick. Enjoy waiting around for a month! 🙂

 

[JackShephard MD]

honestly my view of GT is a mix. Theres some parts that are good & some that might be good if you have alot of extra time on your hands. I'll give a more thorough breakdown of my method/thoughts on GT after my test in 10 days t.t. I really think it should be used differently depending on the amt of free time a person has.

I don't think theres enough time for it in the school year for AMG students unless you make that your main priority (then again, i spent 90% of my time during the year getting through about 200-300 clinical vignettes (robbins book, rubins book, kap Q bank, robbins flash cards) per organ system ontop of lectures, so I focused alot more on diagnosing dz & using that to teach me the necessary details)

I'm going to try to bank all/master as much as possible of pharm/micro in the next 6-7 days. I haven't seen these sections of GT before, but considering i busted my ass to get 90+ in both classes/finals, I have a preety solid background already & mostly just need a good Q/A refresher.

Yeah, I'm playing with my GT strategy. But I honestly don't care too much about our classes and would rather use other high quality materials than trust my school to teach/cover everything with the right detail and clarity.

Congrats on finishing! See from the other thread you got to almost 90% mastery, that's sick. Enjoy waiting around for a month! 🙂

Yeah, lrkoehle did great. He put in a disciplined solid work ethic which will lead to success regardless of his score. Getting a few more questions right here or there doesn't really matter as much as the character/work ethic that got you there.

 

[GTP]

Congrats lrkoehle 🙂

 

[lrkoehle]

congrats on finishing. you were able to get through 2 qbanks & bank all of GT? How did you manage that? How much time did you have to study/did you ignore school work.

Thanks iCY! I didn't actually finish UW, which is one of my regrets; however, I felt like spending more time that last week reviewing was more important than more questions. Hopefully my score would've been great either way, but I won't know now. I'm not too worried about it though, between Kaplan, the practice NBME's, and what I did of UW I calculated being around 4,300 practice questions. Add in the GT questions (not exactly step 1 style, but whatever) and I am looking at 10,000+ questions. A few hundred more certainly could've helped, but how many points on my final score would it have amounted to? Probably not many, if any at all, to be honest.

Banking all of GT was just a fairly consistent effort throughout MSII combined with a big final push at the end of March. GT should be banked at a consistent pace to maximize its effectiveness. Try to avoid the big final push that I had if at all possible, but I'd suggest trying to finish up your banking a good month out from your dedicated study time (so your daily question load can be lower while doing qbanks).

Last, I did ignore school, especially during my big final push. I literally did almost nothing school related for 10 days and focused on GT. The rest of the year was obviously more balanced, but I did still make sure to focus on GT a fair amount too. I go to a P/F school, so it really doesn't matter what grade I get between 70-100%. That made it a no brainer to focus on reviewing material with GT as I learned, so that come time for step 1 I didn't have to do what a lot of my classmates did, which was relearn a lot of stuff. IMO, I don't care how well you learn it the first time, if you don't see something for a year or year and a half (our neuro block is the late fall MS-I), then there is no possible way you will remember it in enough detail to do well on the boards. I imagine many of my classmates weren't even able to name all the cranial nerves any more, let alone describe all the various functions each one performed when our board review period started. That's just one example though. Anyways, it did require some swallowing of the pride to see myself sitting at or just below the average on a lot of class exams, because I didn't bother with the minutiae or give 100% of my attention to class material. With GT though, I think a lot of things we learned in class I knew as well or sometimes even better after our block exams, because I had that subsequent GT review to keep hammering it in.

Congrats on finishing! See from the other thread you got to almost 90% mastery, that's sick. Enjoy waiting around for a month! 🙂

Thanks LoO! The mastery is weird though. I think their numbers are messed up, because I finished with a mastery of 106.4% in pharmacology (my highest area by far) which I'm pretty sure isn't possible. So, maybe that percentage is calculated off of an old total number of questions. For example, it thinks the total is like 6000, but instead there may actually be 7000 questions, so the number is inflated.

Yeah, lrkoehle did great. He put in a disciplined solid work ethic which will lead to success regardless of his score. Getting a few more questions right here or there doesn't really matter as much as the character/work ethic that got you there.

Thanks Jack! I know I'm not the most intellectually gifted person in my class, but my goal is to never be outworked by anyone. Give your maximum effort, and that's all anyone can ask of you.

 

[Brotato]

I need to maintain a 3.0 GPA to keep a partial scholarship. Oh and my school is non P/F with no plus/minuses. So an 89% on a test is the same as an 81% (both B's). How am I going to handle next year with GT on the side every day? 😱 I'm scared. Hopefully by banking as much as I can during this summer I can lessen the pain.

 

[iliketurt1es]

I need to maintain a 3.0 GPA to keep a partial scholarship. Oh and my school is non P/F with no plus/minuses. So an 89% on a test is the same as an 81% (both B's). How am I going to handle next year with GT on the side every day? 😱 I'm scared. Hopefully by banking as much as I can during this summer I can lessen the pain.

Yeah going off of that, say we bank 50 -75% of it this summer while rating things mostly 3s and 4s, about how many daily questions would that put you at during the school year?

 

[lrkoehle]

I need to maintain a 3.0 GPA to keep a partial scholarship. Oh and my school is non P/F with no plus/minuses. So an 89% on a test is the same as an 81% (both B's). How am I going to handle next year with GT on the side every day? 😱 I'm scared. Hopefully by banking as much as I can during this summer I can lessen the pain.

That's brutal man. Luckily studying GT and class aren't totally mutually exclusive, so hopefully GT can help boost your grades too.

 

[loveoforganic]

I need to maintain a 3.0 GPA to keep a partial scholarship. Oh and my school is non P/F with no plus/minuses. So an 89% on a test is the same as an 81% (both B's). How am I going to handle next year with GT on the side every day? 😱 I'm scared. Hopefully by banking as much as I can during this summer I can lessen the pain.

Where are you at in GT now? Seems like you've been doing it a while. I'm doing the desperately banking over summer thing to try to make 2nd year easier (no scholarship to hold onto, but not at p/f either). Also, I had intended to do all of micro and immuno + watch pathoma vids, but it just wasn't feasible (based on how much I wanted to work this summer). I initially dropped pathoma vids, but am now dropping micro and going back to pathoma vids. Will have banked all of the normal immuno (through hypersensitivities), a few micro cards, some miscellaneous path/pharm concepts that I feel comfortable with, and behavioral. Looking at somewhere between 50 and 60% banked by the start of second year, with hopefully a fair mastery as well, but we'll see. I'm hoping to not be at much more than 120 review cards/day average by the start of classes (currently at ~250/day). Will hopefully have a decent enough acquaintance with 2nd year material to compensate for the increased time spent with GT cards

I'm not sure how you've been doing gradewise, but I would think keeping and 80 average would be reasonable with super solid GT maintenance and minutiae cramming

 

[Brotato]

Where are you at in GT now? Seems like you've been doing it a while. I'm doing the desperately banking over summer thing to try to make 2nd year easier (no scholarship to hold onto, but not at p/f either). Also, I had intended to do all of micro and immuno + watch pathoma vids, but it just wasn't feasible (based on how much I wanted to work this summer). I initially dropped pathoma vids, but am now dropping micro and going back to pathoma vids. Will have banked all of the normal immuno (through hypersensitivities), a few micro cards, some miscellaneous path that I feel comfortable with, and behavioral. Looking at somewhere between 50 and 60% banked by the start of second year, with hopefully a fair mastery as well, but we'll see. I'm hoping to not be at much more than 120 review cards/day average by the start of classes (currently at ~250/day). Will hopefully have a decent enough acquaintance with 2nd year material to compensate for the increased time spent with GT cards

I'm not sure how you've been doing gradewise, but I would think keeping and 80 average would be reasonable with super solid GT maintenance and minutiae cramming

So far I've been above, but I'm worried about a freak test or two that will pull me below. That scholarship, it's 50% of my tuition, so I'm screwed financially if I lose that. So far I'm at 40% banked, 19% mastery. I started at the beginning of 2012. The way I've been handling it so far is to let questions build up if I'm too busy on a weekday, then either power through it on the weekend or just give up and clear the built-up pile over the next 30 days. I've been doing this regularly. I don't know how I can have the efficiency and discipline to finish my questions every single day without fail.

edit: of course, it helps knowing that as my credits accumulate, it gets harder and harder to influence the cumulative gpa. I just have to keep reminding myself that 🙂

 

[loveoforganic]

Efficiency is the big thing I've been working on as well. I don't have a hard time putting in crazy hours, but I do have a hard time not having dickoff bursts throughout that time. Oh well, slow and steady progress. As far as GT and next year, I would just do the best you can for 1st test along with GT, busting ass, and see where you come out. If it isn't feasible to maintain GT, the time that's been put in certainly wasn't for naught (and it should be kept in mind that GT is probably as excessive a prep regimen as anyone can possibly do if they're taking the test in short order after second year - 99.99% of people prep without it). If it's feasible to maintain GT, great, you can continue burning your retinas out looking at flashcards with me (assuming I can keep 2nd year in check as well!)

 

[GTP]

Wow you guys are talking about being 50-75% banked before ms2?

 

[bluv1212]

Hey everyone,

I'm new to this thread and considering starting GT early in my M1 year, maybe on lite mode. Has anyone done this to really positive results? I see a lot of mixed reviews, but I did an SMP and I used a couple board prep books to supplement the curriculum to much success, so I'm not really sure why people recommend GT later on. Thanks for any input.

 

[jhamaican]

Wow you guys are talking about being 50-75% banked before ms2?

I think it is certainly possible. We are about 1.5 weeks in to a 10 week summer and I stand currently at 33/40. I am hoping to achieve around 40/50 or higher before MS2 starts. I didn't even bank extraneous info, only things we learned during MS1.

 

[GTP]

I think it is certainly possible. We are about 1.5 weeks in to a 10 week summer and I stand currently at 33/40. I am hoping to achieve around 40/50 or higher before MS2 starts. I didn't even bank extraneous info, only things we learned during MS1.

You are at 33% mastery of 40% banked? Fml. I have a 7 week summer and I'm in the lab daily. My break started less than a week ago and I'm at 9.6% completion with 7% mastery. I tend to bank most things a 1 or 2 for the first 3-4 days until I'm 100% comfortable I can go up to 4-5. I also have 160 questions as "never see again"

Is this a good pace? You sdn gunners scare me yo

 

[loveoforganic]

Hey everyone,

I'm new to this thread and considering starting GT early in my M1 year, maybe on lite mode. Has anyone done this to really positive results? I see a lot of mixed reviews, but I did an SMP and I used a couple board prep books to supplement the curriculum to much success, so I'm not really sure why people recommend GT later on. Thanks for any input.

I recommend at least waiting til late in first semester or early in second semester to make sure you can handle med school

You are at 33% mastery of 40% banked? Fml. I have a 7 week summer and I'm in the lab daily. My break started less than a week ago and I'm at 9.6% completion with 7% mastery. I tend to bank most things a 1 or 2 for the first 3-4 days until I'm 100% comfortable I can go up to 4-5. I also have 160 questions as "never see again"

Is this a good pace? You sdn gunners scare me yo

I'm at ~40/30 as well. There's more stuff in those cards that are reasonable to do as a 1st year than you would think. Also, I personally don't recommend using the 'never see again' feature, unless it's for a reason other than mastery of the content (e.g. it's a long question stem, and you want to just knock out the memorization ones)

 

[GTP]

I recommend at least waiting til late in first semester or early in second semester to make sure you can handle med school



I'm at ~40/30 as well. There's more stuff in those cards that are reasonable to do as a 1st year than you would think. Also, I personally don't recommend using the 'never see again' feature, unless it's for a reason other than mastery of the content (e.g. it's a long question stem, and you want to just knock out the memorization ones)

How long have you been banking for? The things I chose to never see again are questions asking me the different layers of the meninges or which nerve impingement is associated with Carpal tunnel syndrome. Unfortunately, these are things I can't ever forget even if I try to ;-) I'll probably end up restoring them 2 months before writing the exam just to be sure.

 

[loveoforganic]

I started banking after my first test 2nd semester. As far as the perfect recall thing, I think of it this way - if I really have it down that pat, I'm going to rank it nothing but 5's, and it's only going to get seen once every 3 months. That's so infrequent, I don't see the downside in taking the time to make sure I know it still once every 3 months

 

[GTP]

I started banking after my first test 2nd semester. As far as the perfect recall thing, I think of it this way - if I really have it down that pat, I'm going to rank it nothing but 5's, and it's only going to get seen once every 3 months. That's so infrequent, I don't see the downside in taking the time to make sure I know it still once every 3 months

Cool so uve been banking way longer than me. Hopefully I can reach 40/50 before ms2. Im only like 5 days in. Thanks 🙂

 

[iliketurt1es]

Cool so uve been banking way longer than me. Hopefully I can reach 40/50 before ms2. Im only like 5 days in. Thanks 🙂

You're only 5 days in and you're already at 10%? You are flyyyying through this. No worries, you're going to get there. I'm at 10% and I've been randomly doing this for the past couple months, off and on.

 

[GTP]

You're only 5 days in and you're already at 10%? You are flyyyying through this. No worries, you're going to get there. I'm at 10% and I've been randomly doing this for the past couple months, off and on.

Cool cool. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't behind. It was easy to bank a lot because I had just finished exams and still remembered a lot of the material. Easier to maintain than learn it all over again.

 

[Brotato]

Cool cool. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't behind. It was easy to bank a lot because I had just finished exams and still remembered a lot of the material. Easier to maintain than learn it all over again.

10% in 5 days....so you'll be done in less than 2 months right? Don't let us down.

 

[Gunneria]

ahhh im 12% in guys and im shooting for the 40/50% range too...although im pausing to conceptually learn the stuff using the kaplan vids (super helpful) which understand the rote memorization/efficiently review some key concepts from 1st year

Are you guys planning on doing any qbanks or is that all second year for you guys?

 

[GTP]

10% in 5 days....so you'll be done in less than 2 months right? Don't let us down.

That's funny

 

[GTP]

ahhh im 12% in guys and im shooting for the 40/50% range too...although im pausing to conceptually learn the stuff using the kaplan vids (super helpful) which understand the rote memorization/efficiently review some key concepts from 1st year

Are you guys planning on doing any qbanks or is that all second year for you guys?

I'm definitely not doing Qbanks this summer. I need to have some sort of a summer.

 

[JackShephard MD]

I wouldn't worry so much about what everyone else is doing.

Get advice from the best, develop your own plan and stick to it.👍

 

[GTP]

i wouldn't worry so much about what everyone else is doing.

Get advice from the best, develop your own plan and stick to it.👍

+1

 

[loveoforganic]

ahhh im 12% in guys and im shooting for the 40/50% range too...although im pausing to conceptually learn the stuff using the kaplan vids (super helpful) which understand the rote memorization/efficiently review some key concepts from 1st year

Are you guys planning on doing any qbanks or is that all second year for you guys?

Not til 2nd year

Edit: congrats on finishing ipizzy, didn't realize you were up

 

[GTP]

What do you guys do about really low yield gt Cards? I just came across some examples in anatomy. I will definitely NOT be learning lists of random muscles so I don't want to keep rating them 1 because they will keep coming up and wasting my time. On the other hand, I don't want to rate them a 5 and overestimate my mastery. Thoughts?

 

[ipizzy]

Not til 2nd year

Edit: congrats on finishing ipizzy, didn't realize you were up

Thanks 🙂

What do you guys do about really low yield gt Cards? I just came across some examples in anatomy. I will definitely NOT be learning lists of random muscles so I don't want to keep rating them 1 because they will keep coming up and wasting my time. On the other hand, I don't want to rate them a 5 and overestimate my mastery. Thoughts?

I would just learn them! They came up on my test, so I'm biased 😛

 

[GTP]

Thanks 🙂



I would just learn them! They came up on my test, so I'm biased 😛

Wait are you serious?! You had those low yield questions about which muscle the posterior interosseus artery crosses deep or superficial to? How many? Fml! I'm going for a jog.

 

[ipizzy]

Wait are you serious?! You had those low yield questions about which muscle the posterior interosseus artery crosses deep or superficial to? How many? Fml! I'm going for a jog.

Well, we aren't supposed to talk about specifics of questions but I had a few questions on my test that surprised me due to the level of detailed anatomy knowledge required. Of the 6-8 gross anatomy questions I had, only one was not in GT. And that one was f'ing ridiculous

 

[Gunneria]

Ipsizzy howd you supplement gt path with pathoma during classes and board review...what was gour strategy and opinion of gt Path?

 

[ipizzy]

I didn't use Pathoma; I thought GT path was OK. I read Goljan RR Path once; took 2 weeks during classes and powered through it while taking notes on it into FA. I didn't think path on the exam required anything beyond GT and FA though. I never felt that path was a major weak area for me so I am not the best person to ask for path resources, sorry!

 

[mgorman85]

Can someone PM me a promo code? I'm looking to try out GT since it seems like it fits my studying style, but I want to try it out first.

 

[mgorman85]

Got one. Thanks! I'm looking forward to giving this a try.

 

[AGLAIA]

Can someone PM me a promo code? I'm looking to try out GT since it seems like it fits my studying style, but I want to try it out first.

Can I get one, too?
Thanks.

 

[Gunneria]

gts getting tedious now the more you bank even though im banking at a moderate pace...whats the way to limit your cards to <200 a day, just giving out more 4s and 5s?

 

[GTP]

gts getting tedious now the more you bank even though im banking at a moderate pace...whats the way to limit your cards to <200 a day, just giving out more 4s and 5s?

How many cards are you banking a day?

 

[Gunneria]

it just varies, im in a beast bank mode for micro but i'll try to get 0.5%-1% a day

 

[lrkoehle]

gts getting tedious now the more you bank even though im banking at a moderate pace...whats the way to limit your cards to <200 a day, just giving out more 4s and 5s?

Yes, more 4's and 5's will spread the questions out over a longer period, thus lowering your daily question load. However, you don't want to artificially rate things a 4 or 5, or the next time you see if you won't recognize it and it will take longer to review it. This is why a slow steady banking pace is key. Doing topics that you're stronger in will allow you to more quickly rate things a 4 or 5, so if you're daily question total is getting out of hand but you still want to bank 5-10 cards a day, maybe try switching to an area you're stronger in.

 

[AGLAIA]

Can I get one, too?
Thanks.

Got one. Thanks!

 

[mgorman85]

So, what's the best way to start using this? I looked at some cards and added to the quiz, but I'm not really sure on the best way to begin approaching adding to the quizes and such. Is there like a youtube video showing the process?

 

[GTP]

So, what's the best way to start using this? I looked at some cards and added to the quiz, but I'm not really sure on the best way to begin approaching adding to the quizes and such. Is there like a youtube video showing the process?

Lol I had the same question over a week ago when I started. I started by reading 10-15 cards a day. Immediately after reading the card, you add the number of questions available to the quiz. You do the quiz immediately and rate your recall between 1-5. IMHO, don't rate a card with material you have never seen before a 5 even if you remember the answer. That's simply short term memory. I rate those BRAND NEW cards 1 or 2. Gt shows them to me 5 more times in a week before I rate it a >4.

Once you read/bank all your cards and their corresponding quizzes, go to the dashboard and do your daily review questions. You could do them a day at a time or do 2-3 days in advance if you are going away for the weekend or something. The daily review questions start at around 10-15 for the first few days and then increase. I'm at 140 questions now after 1.5 weeks, but I've been rating a lot of new cards 1 or 2.

I hope I didn't confuse you

Also, depending on the how fast you are banking, at some point, gt will suggest that you switch from lite to comprehensive mode, which is a lot more rigorous but worth it. It suggested this change for me after 2 days.

 

[JackShephard MD]

Here's a question.

I've used GT for quite a while but have never used their "Exam simulation" or "Build a New Exam" features. Can those that have banked at least 30-50%+ comment on this feature?

Is it worth using or are these exam questions just built into the daily review Q's (multiple choice Q's).

 

[GTP]

I did the exam simulation for immunology. There were only 30 questions at the time. Some were old but a lot were new. It's multiple choice. It may be worth doing before your unit exams.

 

[JackShephard MD]

I did the exam simulation for immunology. There were only 30 questions at the time. Some were old but a lot were new. It's multiple choice. It may be worth doing before your unit exams.

What % banked are you?

 

[GTP]

What % banked are you?

I'm only 18% banked right now. I did the immuno simulated exam when I was about 7% banked. I just wanted to see what it was like.

 

[Slack3r]

Didn't there used to be a 24-month plan? I was gonna sign up in August for a 24-month plan and all I see now are 12 month plans. Did they do away with them?