Has Anyone Else Experienced The "Black Monday" Setup For Medical School Exams?

[16846]

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Has anyone else experienced the "Black Monday" setup for medical school exams?

For anyone that is wondering, the "Black Monday" setup is where all the exams for your various classes take place on the same day, typically a Monday so you have the weekend to study (i.e.: You are taking Embryology, Cell Biology, Medical Ethics, Histology, and Gross Anatomy. The exams for all these classes take place on the same day.)

My medical college uses this format and I think it?s an awful idea. We typically have to take 4-5 exams on various subjects on the same day. Taking one exam with such a large amount of material is difficult enough, but I don't know how they expect us to take and pass five different exams that each covers such large amounts of disparate material on the same day. If other medical students experience similar testing situations, I will just have to suck it up, but if this is more of a rare occurrence, the students at my medical college will have to see if a change of policy can be implemented to make this testing situation more tolerable. Any insight/information is appreciated.

Mike

 

[auster]

At Pitt we only take one class at a time, and then a "soft" class one day a week in the afternoon - a TERRIFIC idea... I can't imagine having to divide my time up between classes. Right now I focus all my energy on Cardiology, then renal, etc... It means I am only ever studying for one exam at a time - we don't even have the setup of having four or five finals all at once... It is a complete stress relief.
This year, our first several blocks have tests on Monday, which I don't like, but would much prefer just having ONE 60 question test on a Monday than having 3-4...
I didn't know when applying how important the "one class at a time" schedule would be to me - I am VERY glad I ended up choosing a school that teaches that way...

 

[Janders]

At UF we have three large exams during this semester, I believe they are generally on "Black Fridays." All of our tests are computerized (minus the practicals), and they suggest this, along with the length of the test, is to get us used to what the boards will be like. Its not fun taking such a huge exam (around 8 hours), but it does mean we only get exams every 5 or so weeks... i'd hate to have an exam everyweek. We also get a reading day or two before the exam, and thus have the following weekend to "relax."
-jsa

 

[lola]

that's awful!! we do not have that at uci -- thank god. i guess we have exams more frequently than every 5 weeks, probably every 2 weeks or so. every once in a while we'll have a few lumped together but never on the same day! they try their best to go easy on us. in general we take 2 hard science classes at a time in the morning, and 1 "soft" class on some afternoons. our exams are on mondays usually, which kills the weekends, but i'd prefer it that way b/c i'm too tired during the week to study for hours and hours.

 

[DALABROKA]

We have exams about every 3 weeks. We have the block style, in which you take the exams for all of the classes over a two day period. For our first test block, we had the biochemistry exam at 1:00pm on Thursday. We then had a physiology exam at 9:00am Friday, and a CTB (cell biology, histology, & embryology) exam at 1:00pm on Friday. The reasoning behind scheduling the exams in blocks (so they tell us) is so that we don't have to worry about learning new material in some classes while taking exams in others. I actually kind of like how it works out, but there are some in the class that hate it😕

DALA

 

[Sessamoid]

"Black Monday"

Sounds like UTMB. Don't stress too much. Everybody else is going through it too. You'll survive it as well. Plus you get adequate decompression time afterwards--plenty of time to slack off before the next Black Monday.

 

[Sweet Tea]

We're similar-- we have biochem and histo on monday, then gross (written and practical) and ethics on tuesday. i'm not excited about it, but at least they'll be over quickly.

good luck to you!

 

[noy]

can anyone list the schools that do this, because I will cross them off my list...

8 hour exams? every 5 weeks for 2 years?

*shudder* 🙁

 

[Sessamoid]

Originally posted by noy
can anyone list the schools that do this, because I will cross them off my list...

8 hour exams? every 5 weeks for 2 years?

*shudder* 🙁

My alma mater (Univ Texas Medical Branch in Galveston) does (or did) black mondays. Not sure if they still do. One very stressful day, to be sure. But the parties that night were NOT TO BE BELIEVED! Plus the school was a short walk from the beach, so parties were often carried to the beach afterwards.

Re: passing 5 exams in one day. Believe it or not, passing 5 exams isn't that difficult if you qualified to get in. Doing well on all 5 is a whole different story, but if you're worried about passing you probably shouldn't be. I could have passed all my basic sciences without cramming for Black Mondays. It was only the desire to stay near the top of the class that kept my nose in the books. Plenty of my classmates didn't study that much before the tests and nearly all of them are practicing physicians today.

 

[Arginine]

At UCLA, my class is the guinea pig class for the new curriculum. Everything is organized in 8-week blocks, with finals spread over 3 days every 8 weeks, as well as weekly "self-assessment" quizzes that we take over the internet. The scores for the weekly quizzes don't count (everything is pass/fail anyway) , they're just used to find out if anyone is having great difficulty with the material & needs extra help.

 

[ItsGavinC]

Originally posted by auster
At Pitt we only take one class at a time, and then a "soft" class one day a week in the afternoon - a TERRIFIC idea...

This is exactly how my dental school operates (and we have exams each Monday). Interestingly, we have several instructors that teach us from Pitt.

 

[auster]

Originally posted by ItsGavinC
This is exactly how my dental school operates (and we have exams each Monday). Interestingly, we have several instructors that teach us from Pitt.

You have exams every week? Ours are just about every 3-5 weeks, which is definately doable. I don't think I would like to have an exam every week - particularly not on Mondays... But I think that we all learn how to study and take our tests (however they are set up) without stressing out completely, after a few months of experience...

 

[souljah1]

on average, we take one multiple choice exam (usually atleast 50 but less than 100 questions) with some short answers about every three weeks. one exam will cover everything from anatomy to pharm to biopsych to epi etc for the organ block that we are in. no separate exams except during the 1st 9 weeks we had lab practicals and written exams. also it is strictly pass/fail. pretty cush if you ask me. some of the stories i hear sound like absolute nightmares. not trying to rub anything in, but damn..i feel for you guys who have separate exams all piled up.

 

[::Seabass::]

hmm, we have 2 hr tests in each of our subjects every 6 weeks. tues is embryo, wednesday we have histo practical and written, thursday gross written and practical, and friday we have biochem (3 hrs.) this all breaks down to 3 blocks and then finals. ICM is just a running thing with only a final at the very end.

2nd year however we only have tests every 8 weeks. (2 blocks)

 

[kaos]

My very first "Black Monday" is tomorrow. I've pretty much studied all freaking weekend.

 

[16846]

It's comforting to know that I am not the only one suffering through this arcane and impractical/illogical process...

Good luck to everyone else that also has to suffer through various "Black" days of the week. I am sure we will all get through it one way... or another...

 

[Jalby]

My school is done in blocks. We have 2 10 week blocks at the start of first year, where you get the last 1.5 weeks off and the last week of each block you would have 4 100 question multiple choice tests on different days.

From there we have blocks of 4-7 weeks, mostly 5 week blocks testing different organ systems. We have class up until monday of the final week, then there are reviews, then one 3-4 hour 100-130 question test friday morning. Not to bad.

 

[sophRI]

before you go marking off all the "black monday" schools - i kind-of like the system... we have exams ("quizzes") every two weeks so you never fall behind... and when you have them all at once it means that once you're done you can go out, have a beer, and forget about the whole thing. i guess it depends on your personality, but i like to have everything over with at once. the last thing i want to do after an exam is go home and study...

 

[Street Philosopher]

MONDAY BLOODY MONDAY!

 

[carrigallen]

At Jefferson, we have 12-week blocks, with only one class, one grade. The blocks are further divided into 4 week chunks, with an exam at the end of each. There is an online quiz two weeks before the exam, to make sure we keep up.