Histology Shelf Exam

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Ravendown

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Question about this shelf. Are there light microscope questions? or is it just electron micrograph questions? or either of them? Not too sure about it. Thanks for the input.
 
Question about this shelf. Are there light microscope questions? or is it just electron micrograph questions? or either of them? Not too sure about it. Thanks for the input.
I would be really surprised if there were only electron micrographs on the shelf. I don't think that is right. I believe I only had a few and they were pretty classic.
 
There are both LM and EM questions, but I don't recall there being too many of either. I think there were *maybe* a dozen picture questions in total. As guile said, the pictures are usually very obvious.
 
There are both LM and EM questions, but I don't recall there being too many of either. I think there were *maybe* a dozen picture questions in total. As guile said, the pictures are usually very obvious.

Yeah, This year there were quite a few of both but like you said, they were pretty obvious what they were. Even when you couldnt tell what it was, there were other clues in the picture to at least clue you in on what organ its in. Only thing is that there arent that many straight "identify" questions. They are usually 2-3 level questions where you have to know about the normal functions of whatever structure is in the picture.

Overall, it was my least stressfull NBME shelf.
 
Oh, that's right. I remember hearing last year that they were working on adding more pictures (in color!) to the test.

Yep. Glossy color images that look like magazine covers.
 
Thanks for the replies. I was concerned, as the light microscope slides weren't really my strong point in my histo class. Hopefully when i take it in 2 weeks, it won't gave significantly more pictures.
 
No worries. Our "histology" class isn't really a true histology class. We looked at a couple of slide images a week as our "lab" on the computer. I still scored above average. I just scanned over roadmap histo or something the night before for an idea.
 
Finished the exam 2 weeks ago. Soooooo much cell bio. Good thing we learned alot of it in biochem. overall, the easiest shelf exam i have taken [out of biochem, anatomy, and of course, histology]. Thanks for the replies all the time.
 
Finished the exam 2 weeks ago. Soooooo much cell bio. Good thing we learned alot of it in biochem. overall, the easiest shelf exam i have taken [out of biochem, anatomy, and of course, histology]. Thanks for the replies all the time.

Well the official topic of that NBME Shelf Exam is "Histology and Cell Biology," hence probably why you had a lot of cell biology on your test. But you're right, usually the areas of Cell Biology and Genetics (both which have LWW High-Yield review books) fit into Biochemistry vs. Histology fits more into Anatomy.

This will probably help for the rest of your shelf exams you have to take.
..
http://www.nbme.org/PDF/NBME2010SubjExamsPaperAndWeb.pdf

At least unlike medical students at other schools, you have a better idea of how Step 1 questions are like.
 
^ yeah i already use those questions to get an idea, but they tend to be on the really easy side. I figured there would be a bunch of cell bio on it, given the name of the course and exam, but the exam i took felt like at least have of it was cell bio concepts, as opposed to the 35% that was supposed to be on the exam. I'm grateful though.
 
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