HELP! failed step 1 3x, dismissed from school

[pmkin]

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i have failed step 1 3 times...and this last time i was so close with 181/73 . Now i have been dismissed by my school. can anyone tell me which schools accept transfers in situations like mine. come to far to give up now. thank you

 

[Law2Doc]

this is an old thread, but you might find it useful since it deals with the same situation:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=356718

Good find. The advice seems equally applicable today -- pass the test and then try to get back in someplace. I like how the thread seemed to have a happy ending. 🙂

 

[domer621]

No, I agree with Mil. FA is crap for the boards because it doesn't tell you WHY anything happens. The boards don't test facts anymore. They test the "why."

It's your responsibility to know/annotate the "why" behind every fact in that book. As stated in the preface to the book, IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE A COMPREHENSIVE RESOURCE. If it were, it would be 1000 pages long.

Also, there were plenty of pure fact questions on my test.

 

[psychfriend]

thanks for the encouragement from some of you.
as for what i did, i basically went thru fa over and over, memorizing the detail. looked thru kaplan for my weak areas, and did uw.
and no, my school wont let me write again. this las time..i was ready, but i lost a family member 3 weeks b4 my exam. i should have rescheduled my exam, but unfortunately did not.

I don't think you are lying but I do think you are being less than honest with yourself. I think if you genuinely read First Aid 3 times and did USMLEWorld, you should at the very least have passed this exam. I too know people who have failed this exam multiple times and claim they did everything they could to pass. But if you really get to know these people, you will discover they procrastinate or take really long breaks or study with the television around. Anyone can say they studied 8 hours because they arrived at the library at noon and left at 8 PM but he or she may have only studied 4-5 hours with breaks and chatting with friends etc.

If you genuinely committed to this exam and failed it, then it could be due to several issues. You might have issues concentrating. Have you seen a psyciatrist for ADD or ADHD? Or the problem could be your learning style. Often people who fail these exams have difficulty understanding the concepts so reviewing subjects repeatedly will not help them. Standardized exams hurt these candidates because they test concepts as opposed to testing material directly.

If I were you, I would take a year off and really spend some time with physiology, pathology and biochemisty. Understand the concepts. Get tutoring if you have to. If you have a mastery of physiology, pathology and biochemistry, it's much easier to study for Step I. Once you understand these subjects, then you need to practice doing questions; you should probably do a minimum of 3000 questions. Most of the students in this forum already understand these subjects fairly well. Thus for them, it's simply a matter of reviewing them. First Aid is great for people who really understood what they were learning during their first two years. Once you have understood those subjects, reapply to another Carribbean school and start over.

 

[psychfriend]

I disagree. First Aid contains many diagrams that do explain why things happen. In addition, a large portion of the USMLE is still remembering stupid little facts and First Aid excels at helping you learn those facts. On top of that First Aid gives structure to all that information and makes it easier to digest.

I disagree as well. If you want a quick example, refer to the Acid Base physiology in the Renal Section. They just have arrows indicating what occurs in Metabolic Acidosis/Alkalosis etc. without explaining why those levels were increased or decreased.

 

[Pinkertinkle]

I disagree as well. If you want a quick example, refer to the Acid Base physiology in the Renal Section. They just have arrows indicating what occurs in Metabolic Acidosis/Alkalosis etc. without explaining why those levels were increased or decreased.

Did I say it contains ALL explanations? No, because it can't do that without being overly long. Does it contain a lot of high yield stuff the boards likes to test on? Yes.

 

[psychfriend]

Did I say it contains ALL explanations? No, because it can't do that without being overly long. Does it contain a lot of high yield stuff the boards likes to test on? Yes.

The author you originally disagreed with didn't state that it lacked ANY explanations either. And I never stated that it didn't contain high yield stuff for the boards or that it was an ineffective source. "Overly long" is a relative term. There are several people who read multiple texts in addition to First Aid. If someone is going to read Goljan, all the BRS books and/or Kaplan plus First Aid, I'm sure they wouldn't mind reading a more comprehensive version of First Aid even if it was a 1000 pages. They could produce two versions(the original and the new comprehensive version) and I'm sure the authors would be able to sell enough of each. I personally think First Aid is written well but it doesn't do enough to explain the "why" as others have mentioned.

 

[Ambs]

Did I say it contains ALL explanations? No, because it can't do that without being overly long. Does it contain a lot of high yield stuff the boards likes to test on? Yes.

I agree... First Aid saved my life. FA is ALL I studied - other than doing around 35% of QBank. Granted I did study very hard the first two years of med school and form a good foundation, FA was still right on for me. But like I said before, FA's value is really individual-dependent.

 

[psychfriend]

First Aid used to contain half the information it does now. Prior to 2006, the book was not even systems based. These changes were made as a result of criticisms it received. I think it's safe to say there is merit to these criticisms. As others have mentioned, the book lacks explanations. Maybe some of you could survive without them but it doesn't change the fact that explanations are lacking. Why do you think Goljan is so popular? He basically capitalized on FA's failure to explain the "why"

 

[FrogE7]

I'm a second year and I owned first aid since first year. From time to time I did like flipping to the FA section that correlated with class and look at it. I feel like First Aid is a check list. It's like, did we cover this, yes. This, yes. Oh no I don't recognize this word...did the prof not talk about this? Okay I should look that up.

So I haven't taken the beast yet, but from what I can tell, its a great check list of things to know.

 

[Pinkertinkle]

The author you originally disagreed with didn't state that it lacked ANY explanations either. And I never stated that it didn't contain high yield stuff for the boards or that it was an ineffective source. "Overly long" is a relative term. There are several people who read multiple texts in addition to First Aid. If someone is going to read Goljan, all the BRS books and/or Kaplan plus First Aid, I'm sure they wouldn't mind reading a more comprehensive version of First Aid even if it was a 1000 pages. They could produce two versions(the original and the new comprehensive version) and I'm sure the authors would be able to sell enough of each. I personally think First Aid is written well but it doesn't do enough to explain the "why" as others have mentioned.

The author I originally disagreed with said, and I quote

FA is crap for the boards because it doesn't tell you WHY anything happens. The boards don't test facts anymore. They test the "why."

Now I'm not too great at English, but I think that equates to him stating it lacks ANY explanations.

Anyhow, I said that First Aid contains many explanations, but by citing one example you implied I was wrong. This led me to believe that you believed that I claimed it had ALL explanations.

I believe making a comprehensive First Aid would be redundant in this market. It would end up looking a lot like Kaplan's note set. First Aid is not supposed to be comprehensive, that is why its called FIRST Aid. It's market nitch is to be a fast balanced summary you can look at multiple times and memorize.

Lastly its not just several people that are looking at other sources. EVERYONE should look at other sources. However, I do attribute a large part of my very satisfactory performance on the boards to the many times I read First Aid.

 

[Kazema]

I think FA makes for a pretty good outline of what you need to know for Step 1. If as you go through your other materials (eg Goljan) and follow along with FA, making sure you understand each diagram/table/etc in FA and annotating in the gaps, then you've more or less got it all covered. Then reading through FA afterward should be just a review.

Reading FA by itself probably doesn't do too much good, because as everyone says, it has a ton of gaps and doesn't explain much. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone as the only book to use for studying. But as a framework I think it works fine.

I also disagree with the idea that there's a market for a comprehensive FA. That's not what FA is for, there's plenty of other resources out there that are comprehensive reviews already.