I got this message recently and thought that my reply would be good for anyone that was interested in the program:
How do you like it so far? My main concerns were :
* how are you using it with First Aid? My exam is at the end of August and I'm doing kaplan right now and started uworld also. I'm 2 weeks into my prep. Do you find it easy to go through first aid?
* does this program require that you already have a strong basic science background?
* is this program really legit or is it a rehashed pool of facts anyone can find to make a quick $?
* are you doing all the questions that are given by this resource? how long do you think it'll take to complete? i.e. how many hours/day does one need to dedicate to it?
Alright, thanks for your time and if you have any input - please let me know. Thank you!
I've been meaning to post something on this for a while, but I just finished my test and have been enjoying being brain dead for the past week. OK, here's what I think at the end of all of this:
*I used the program along with FA 2008 (I had bought it first year and already marked it all up, so didn't want to buy 2009) and would go through it and FA very closely the first time through - I would read FA, then the GT page, then FA again, then bank the questions, then move to the next thing. The sections match really well, and sometimes the FA section is better, sometimes the GT section is better, but between the two, I felt pretty good on all of the subjects in FA. This method would take me about 6-8 hours to go through each section (with the questions and everything) but I felt pretty good about each section after I finished it and the pace made sure that I didn't skim through FA and the questions made sure that I didn't zone out while reading. For somebody with a low attention span, this was great - a friend and I joked that it was the closest thing to video games we could get while studying for Step 1.
*It's really like FA as far as background knowledge, meaning that for me I couldn't really understand what is going on without having learned things previously. However, having some background knowledge, I was able to really get the facts that FA is good at reinforcing, genes, inheritance, labs, all of that kind of stuff.
*Is it legit? I think so - the staff is pretty good at getting back to you about problems, are really devoted to making the site as good as possible, and it really helped me learn the millions of pain in the a** facts that are in FA.
*About the questions - the coolest feature and if you don't do it everyday the biggest pain in the a**. It's great b/c it constantly forces you to look at things that you may not be good at, and while I was keeping up with it I would have about 300-400 direct recall questions a day, which would take me about 3 hours to do (pretty much just quizzing you on facts, the inheritance of VHL, etc.) With the rating system, you get all the facts that you are bad at, and it's really the best way I found at remembering all those little things you tend to forget (a friend in the year ahead of me had a flashcard system where he would put things in piles depending on how well he knew the facts and then alternate piles, kind of the same idea). However, I missed about 5-10 days while I was on vacation and didn't have a chance to do my daily questions so they ended up really building up in the end. However, with the new function where you can remove cards that you don't need to look over again, I feel that this would not be a problem if I were to redo the system now. I didn't use the Q bank outside of the direct recall questions, as I had already purchased USMLE world and that was a more proven source, but the handfull of questions I did go through were good and seemed to be pretty tricky.
So, my final evaluation is that it was a great resource for being able to memorize FA, which is exactly what I was hoping for. With the way that I went through FA and then all of the questions, I was really able to recall most of the facts in FA on test day. For me it was great (also a good way to mix up the day instead of just reading constantly) but that could be b/c it really fit my style and addressed the part of my knowledge which was weakest - my direct recall of facts that I had a terrible time of memorizing. I hope this helps
PS - One other thing I like is that if you have a good mneumonic or facts about a subject, you can message the admins and if it is good they'll add it into the database, they are incredibly receptive to feedback.
