How did your school support you?

[medgirl13]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Hi all! I was just curious about the structured support for Step 1 prep your individual schools gave you before taking boards. You don't have to specify which school you go to, but basically I'm wondering the following things:

1. How much time does your school give you (max) to study for boards? Do people usually use all the time they are allotted?
2. Does your school seem to "teach to the boards" more or less?
3. Was there an integrated component throughout MS1/2 that emphasized which topics were high-yield for boards? (I know people are gonna say, but MS1/2 *is* the best preparation for boards! But I'm looking for a dedicated component designated for boards prep)
4. Do you feel there was there a lot of hand-holding through the prep process?
5. What resources did your school provide? Did they purchase/offer free study resources, i.e. qbanks, or did they have their own study tools available for students (online modules, webcasts, etc)?
6. Did you have to submit a study plan or meet with an advisor about your prep?
7. Did your school offer a practice exam? Did you think this helped or hurt you?
8. Do people tend to do well/poorly on boards at your school? If you know of any experiences of other people at your school, what do you think most influenced their performance?

Any experiences you could provide would be awesome...I am getting very curious how the various schools fare in comparison to each other. Thanks in advance for anything you have to offer!!!

 

[Lizloveslilies]

I've often wondered about this myself.

1. 7 Weeks maximum of "free" study time. Most students use 4-5 weeks for final preparations for their Step 1 and then take the rest of the time off before their clerkships.

2. Some subjects such as Pharmacology, Pathology, and Anatomy are taught with the boards in mind. I wish more subjects were taught this way. What I mean is that the professors in these courses will emphasize the high yield points of each lecture at the end of most lectures. I also thought that the exam questions in these subjects were most like the questions in my prep materials and the real Step 1 exam.

3. No integrated component dedicated solely towards the Step 1 exam. However, we do take a school sponsored CBSE at the start of our study period before the boards.

4. No hand-holding. However we are reminded about the big picture (step 1) every now and then because we take the NBME subject exams at the end of each course. Gross anatomy (and the developmental/embryo section), neuroanatomy, biochemistry, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, microbiology (and immunology) and finally the CBSE.

5. The school provides a question bank membership through our library (not sure which one, but I've heard that it stinks). We also receive a free CBSE and subject exams. As far as study materials: none.

6. Yes, but it was not required. We have faculty advisors that we can approach about this. Not really sure how helpful this was...

7. Yes, CBSE. Yes I'm pretty sure it helped. A lot of students were able to gauge their strengths and weaknesses based on the results of the exam. I found it very helpful to have an exam in school that simulated the Step 1 well (in my opinion).

8. Students tend to do pretty well on their boards and our Step 1 average is a few points above the national average and a first-time pass rate higher than the national average as well. I've heard that the same trend is present for Step 2 CS and CK.

Hope that helps!

 

[qmcat]

Hi all! I was just curious about the structured support for Step 1 prep your individual schools gave you before taking boards. You don't have to specify which school you go to, but basically I'm wondering the following things:

1. How much time does your school give you (max) to study for boards? Do people usually use all the time they are allotted?
2. Does your school seem to "teach to the boards" more or less?
3. Was there an integrated component throughout MS1/2 that emphasized which topics were high-yield for boards? (I know people are gonna say, but MS1/2 *is* the best preparation for boards! But I'm looking for a dedicated component designated for boards prep)
4. Do you feel there was there a lot of hand-holding through the prep process?
5. What resources did your school provide? Did they purchase/offer free study resources, i.e. qbanks, or did they have their own study tools available for students (online modules, webcasts, etc)?
6. Did you have to submit a study plan or meet with an advisor about your prep?
7. Did your school offer a practice exam? Did you think this helped or hurt you?
8. Do people tend to do well/poorly on boards at your school? If you know of any experiences of other people at your school, what do you think most influenced their performance?

Any experiences you could provide would be awesome...I am getting very curious how the various schools fare in comparison to each other. Thanks in advance for anything you have to offer!!!

1-max 6 weeks, min 4 weeks, you don't get a choice for when you take it cuz your date is via lottery

2-nope. Some classes were great, others were poorly taught. In the poorly taught classes, they emphasized random stuff like lifestyle modification and nutrition for smokers, DM, obesity -- sometimes profs made us memorize random genes and proteins that are part of their research but aren't in FA.

3-no integrated component. We don't have shelf exams after every course. All of our exams are written by the profs and the questions are nothing like boards. They're usually like "what is the name of the random protein involved in this disease" and you have 4 answer choices that all look the same, or they give us a histo picture and they ask "this is taken from a female 34 y/o, what is the diagnosis" and they don't tell us what organ it came from or what symptoms the patient had

4-no hand holding

5-my school has a subscription to the exammaster qbank. nobody uses it though.

6-we're not required to meet with an advisor, but those advisors eventually email you to meet with them, and if you don't it looks bad, so yea everyone has to do it. It's pretty useless meeting with them though cuz all they do is print out a blank calendar and tell you to fill it in on your own and make sure you cover all the subjects before you test.

7-we have a CBSE at the end of second year, but nobody prepares for it because they make us take it two days after our last final. good thing it doesn't count for a grade.

8-depends on what your definition of "poorly" is. My school's pass rate is 90%, so about 10 people fail every year. Our average is the same as the national average. Most people from my school go into primary care.

If you can't tell already, I hate my school.

 

[Vertices]

1-max 6 weeks, min 4 weeks, you don't get a choice for when you take it cuz your date is via lottery

2-nope. Some classes were great, others were poorly taught. In the poorly taught classes, they emphasized random stuff like lifestyle modification and nutrition for smokers, DM, obesity -- sometimes profs made us memorize random genes and proteins that are part of their research but aren't in FA.

3-no integrated component. We don't have shelf exams after every course. All of our exams are written by the profs and the questions are nothing like boards. They're usually like "what is the name of the random protein involved in this disease" and you have 4 answer choices that all look the same, or they give us a histo picture and they ask "this is taken from a female 34 y/o, what is the diagnosis" and they don't tell us what organ it came from or what symptoms the patient had

4-no hand holding

5-my school has a subscription to the exammaster qbank. nobody uses it though.

6-we're not required to meet with an advisor, but those advisors eventually email you to meet with them, and if you don't it looks bad, so yea everyone has to do it. It's pretty useless meeting with them though cuz all they do is print out a blank calendar and tell you to fill it in on your own and make sure you cover all the subjects before you test.

7-we have a CBSE at the end of second year, but nobody prepares for it because they make us take it two days after our last final. good thing it doesn't count for a grade.

8-depends on what your definition of "poorly" is. My school's pass rate is 90%, so about 10 people fail every year. Our average is the same as the national average. Most people from my school go into primary care.

If you can't tell already, I hate my school.

I really like this post. There's too much of this random nonsense from professors that ends up on our tests and has pretty much no use as we move forward through boards and on. Academia will likely always be plagued by this, though. "Those who can't do...teach." Not always true, but it helps me cope with the BS. My school and, from what my friends tell me, several other schools seem to have no real guidance when it comes to step 1 prep. They just expect us to do what we need to do. Fine with me, but I think it hurts a lot of other students. I'm only beginning my 2nd year, though, so I may not know the whole story. That's my 2 cents...don't spend it all in one place.

 

[RapplixGmed]

I've often wondered about this myself.

1. 7 Weeks maximum of "free" study time. Most students use 4-5 weeks for final preparations for their Step 1 and then take the rest of the time off before their clerkships.

2. Some subjects such as Pharmacology, Pathology, and Anatomy are taught with the boards in mind. I wish more subjects were taught this way. What I mean is that the professors in these courses will emphasize the high yield points of each lecture at the end of most lectures. I also thought that the exam questions in these subjects were most like the questions in my prep materials and the real Step 1 exam.

3. No integrated component dedicated solely towards the Step 1 exam. However, we do take a school sponsored CBSE at the start of our study period before the boards.

4. No hand-holding. However we are reminded about the big picture (step 1) every now and then because we take the NBME subject exams at the end of each course. Gross anatomy (and the developmental/embryo section), neuroanatomy, biochemistry, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, microbiology (and immunology) and finally the CBSE.

5. The school provides a question bank membership through our library (not sure which one, but I've heard that it stinks). We also receive a free CBSE and subject exams. As far as study materials: none.

6. Yes, but it was not required. We have faculty advisors that we can approach about this. Not really sure how helpful this was...

7. Yes, CBSE. Yes I'm pretty sure it helped. A lot of students were able to gauge their strengths and weaknesses based on the results of the exam. I found it very helpful to have an exam in school that simulated the Step 1 well (in my opinion).

8. Students tend to do pretty well on their boards and our Step 1 average is a few points above the national average and a first-time pass rate higher than the national average as well. I've heard that the same trend is present for Step 2 CS and CK.

Hope that helps!

This comment is for WashU (you can probably figure out where I go based on my past posts so I might as well tell everybody so there is no selective advantage for those who don't know how to do a search)

1. We get 4 weeks of break between end of 2nd year and start of 3rd year. Most people study for 3 weeks and vacation for 1 week. You have the option of pushing back the start of rotations by another 4 weeks if you feel like you need more time. The time gets pulled from 4th year vacation time.

2. This is highly dependent on the block. Genetics 1st year stands out as a class that was particularly useless but that was only because we had a new coursemaster; I heard the old genetics course was actually rather good. 2nd year pulmonary was also pretty bad. In general though, 2nd year classes cover everything on the boards plus much much much more. The extra stuff is usually stuff that would be helpful for step 2 or 3rd year and not useless minutae. The extra pharmacology often does feel like useless minutae but eventually you realize that it is actually helpful in real life. The difficult part is figuring out what is essential for step 1. The tests are usually highly clinically relevant and many exams are set up so that most questions have clinical vingettes. When the classes are good, they are more meant to make you a beast in 3rd year and in real life patient care. There are no nbme shelf exams in 1st and 2nd year. That they prepare you decently well at step 1 if you can somehow memorize everything is a side effect.

3. There is no dedicated series for board prep. Sometimes, upon request, a lecturer from a block will come back and do a board-relevant review of the entire block. A very very cool renal guy did a renal review in 3 hours and I never missed a renal question again after that.

4. There is no hand holding 2nd year. You are on your own. This isn't kindergarten.

5. We get the exam master qbank as well. It is nearly useless.

6. We get a career adviser 1st year and we can talk to a general academic adviser at any time if we wish. It is your responsibility to find a mentor in your field of choice but nobody has trouble doing it since the faculty here are all extremely nice.

7. No practice exam.

8. In general, our students do well above the average on step 1 but it is almost certainly due student selection rather than any emphasis on step 1 prep. In other words, WashU selects for students that would do well regardless of what you teach them so the administration made some sort of executive decision to teach stuff that is geared towards 3rd year. Often it seems like nobody at WashU cares about your step 1 because no matter how high your score is, they've seen higher before. You just can't impress them with that number. In fact, you don't even have to take or pass step 1 or 2 to advance in years or to graduate. Taking step 1 and step 2 are only " highly suggested."

 

[C5toC9]

5 weeks between 2nd and 3rd year. No hand holding. Minimal guidance, except to sprinkle into lectures and conferences vague references to Step 1 and "know this, this is def gonna be on your boards"

 

[jcrewtriathlete]

Hi all! I was just curious about the structured support for Step 1 prep your individual schools gave you before taking boards. You don't have to specify which school you go to, but basically I'm wondering the following things:

1. How much time does your school give you (max) to study for boards? Do people usually use all the time they are allotted?
2. Does your school seem to "teach to the boards" more or less?
3. Was there an integrated component throughout MS1/2 that emphasized which topics were high-yield for boards? (I know people are gonna say, but MS1/2 *is* the best preparation for boards! But I'm looking for a dedicated component designated for boards prep)
4. Do you feel there was there a lot of hand-holding through the prep process?
5. What resources did your school provide? Did they purchase/offer free study resources, i.e. qbanks, or did they have their own study tools available for students (online modules, webcasts, etc)?
6. Did you have to submit a study plan or meet with an advisor about your prep?
7. Did your school offer a practice exam? Did you think this helped or hurt you?
8. Do people tend to do well/poorly on boards at your school? If you know of any experiences of other people at your school, what do you think most influenced their performance?

Any experiences you could provide would be awesome...I am getting very curious how the various schools fare in comparison to each other. Thanks in advance for anything you have to offer!!!

1. max 6 weeks, but the first two we all had a scheduled Step II clinical simulation (don't ask me why), which knocked out a couple of days of studying for me, and a cumulative final for a two year long class; another 10 days were eaten up by kaplan review (which they didn't deem mandatory but put the fear of god in us to go to in the event we failed step 1). so it really boiled down to perhaps a week of studying, then two weeks of kaplan, plus up to two weeks on your own. then the admin had 6 weeks of mandatory vacation while we wait for our scores (i.e. rip out whatever hair i have left). some people did take theirs right after out kaplan course ended, others took up the two weeks allowed to study.

2. there were certain profs who would mention something was high yield among our in-house staff, and several guest lecturers who did the same. our path and neuro professors made the biggest efforts to point those concepts out. in OPP lab we were pretty consistently told what the focus of Step I and II would be. other than that there was no obvious pandering to the boards that i picked up on.

3. no, not a dedicated component. just comments by professors when they felt like discussing something they felt was high yield.

4. yes in the sense that they "provided" us with kaplan, no due to scheduling issues - they would not allow us the option of an extra four weeks if we needed it, so we had a hard deadline to take step I, and they pushed the deadline up two weeks from the previous class, which crunched our free study time significantly. also, we didn't have to meet with our advisors (unless the advisor him/herself made a point of it) - not a major complaint, but just an observation that the admin didn't really feel like coddling us through comlex.

5. kaplan was provided, along with kaplan books. and lots and lots of reminders that studying m1/m2 "IS" studying for boards........

6. no

7. yes - but it was the kaplan exam. it definitely helped calm me down, but i have a funny feeling i did better on that than the real thing... :/

8. can't really speak to that since i avoided comlex discussion with classmates as much as possible - i can't stand listening to people who like to freak out their audience by mentioning it's their third time through FA and it's only february. but i'm keeping my fingers crossed that everyone in my class passed 🙂 as for past performance, the first time pass rate is ~80% based on what i've heard from classmates. i think the overall pass rate is pretty high - i haven't heard of many people we lost due to step 1.

 

[ArcGurren]

Hi all! I was just curious about the structured support for Step 1 prep your individual schools gave you before taking boards. You don't have to specify which school you go to, but basically I'm wondering the following things:

1. How much time does your school give you (max) to study for boards? Do people usually use all the time they are allotted?
2. Does your school seem to "teach to the boards" more or less?
3. Was there an integrated component throughout MS1/2 that emphasized which topics were high-yield for boards? (I know people are gonna say, but MS1/2 *is* the best preparation for boards! But I'm looking for a dedicated component designated for boards prep)
4. Do you feel there was there a lot of hand-holding through the prep process?
5. What resources did your school provide? Did they purchase/offer free study resources, i.e. qbanks, or did they have their own study tools available for students (online modules, webcasts, etc)?
6. Did you have to submit a study plan or meet with an advisor about your prep?
7. Did your school offer a practice exam? Did you think this helped or hurt you?
8. Do people tend to do well/poorly on boards at your school? If you know of any experiences of other people at your school, what do you think most influenced their performance?

Any experiences you could provide would be awesome...I am getting very curious how the various schools fare in comparison to each other. Thanks in advance for anything you have to offer!!!

1. Up to 8 weeks. The more obsessive compulsive gunner types use the whole time, but having an extra 2 weeks for me would not have raised my score at all in retrospect (that being said I have no idea what my score is yet). On an average I'd say most people spend 6 weeks of dedicated study time and 2 weeks or so of break/vacation.

2. We teach i'd say 80-85% of the boards material. The rest is memorization and integration, and perhaps deeper learning.

3. No, other than offhand remarks from professors re: "this is important for the boards". Sometimes the clinical ones would get confused and say things that were more step 2 relevant but it was okay.

4. Yes and no. We had mandatory lectures where everyone had to come and listen to the timeline of registering and studying for boards, and we were given ideas on whether to take the Kaplan course or not, how to structure our days, etc. However they left a lot of it open. They did have us take the CBSE prior to the actual study period to get a "baseline" reading of where we were at.

5. We have a couple of well-known faculty who gave us some special lectures. That's about it.

6. Yes, I met with my advisor about my study plan following my CBSE. He was actually very helpful and supportive.

7. As stated earlier, we were given the standard CBSE to do. It did help to give us a sort of baseline of where we were at, what we knew and didn't know, etc.

8. I think at most 2-3 people fail the first time in each class (out of 160) and on second retaking they pass it. Our average ranges from 222-225, and we have a lot of people who score very high on the exam. Most people match their specialties of choice, including the very competitive ones and it reaches 100% (99% or so before scrambling).

In all, our school is not a high-fly rich school with tons of NIH funding, but the education is way above average and par for the course. We traditionally do very well on the step 1, we match at prestigious locations in good residencies, and our clinical training is phenomenal.

 

[DrYoda]

1. How much time does your school give you (max) to study for boards? Do people usually use all the time they are allotted?
2. Does your school seem to "teach to the boards" more or less?
3. Was there an integrated component throughout MS1/2 that emphasized which topics were high-yield for boards? (I know people are gonna say, but MS1/2 *is* the best preparation for boards! But I'm looking for a dedicated component designated for boards prep)
4. Do you feel there was there a lot of hand-holding through the prep process?
5. What resources did your school provide? Did they purchase/offer free study resources, i.e. qbanks, or did they have their own study tools available for students (online modules, webcasts, etc)?
6. Did you have to submit a study plan or meet with an advisor about your prep?
7. Did your school offer a practice exam? Did you think this helped or hurt you?
8. Do people tend to do well/poorly on boards at your school? If you know of any experiences of other people at your school, what do you think most influenced their performance?

1. 8 weeks max. Most of my classmates I've talked to have used 5-6.
2. Mostly.
3. A few faculty members had board review lectures. I never went to any, so I can't say how good they were.
4. No.
5. A practice exam.
6. No.
7. They did, if anything it helped.
8. We do about average.