How helpful is Basic Sciences Shelf?

[Wednesday]

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Hi,

We don't take shelf exams at my school, so I don't have any experience with them at all. We are being offered a chance to take the basic sciences shelf as a self assessment tool to prepare for Step I. They are going to get us the results in some sort of timely way. Just wondering if any of you have taken it and if you think it might be helpful. It takes 3 1/2 hours so I don't want to take it if it will be a waste of time.

Thanks!

 

[Stinger86]

I thought it was useful. It's designed in a similar fashion to the NBME self-assessment exams and the Step 1, so you'll be able to get used to both the question format as well as answering lots of questions in the standard amount of time (1 hour for 50 questions).

Here's how I used it: I didn't study for it at all. That way, when I got my score back, I knew exactly where I stood and how much material I actually retained from the past two years. I ended up doing really well, which helped me decide on how long and how much to study each science for the Step 1. Hope this helps

 

[ispic]

Hi,

Although I will not be taking the step until next year, we've taken a few of the shelves (and have the neuro tomorow) so far, and they mimick many of the questions that you'll find on the BRS's or other similar materials. Some of the first year basic science shelves don't integrate very much, except in the case of the Physiology exam, but for the most part, they were well written and not as "nit-picky" as the other exams that we took during the year. In second year we will take the shelves for pharm, micro, path, and pathophys, and I guess that they will be a little more integrative. Check out usmleasy.com, they're the "qbank" that McGraw hill runs, it has a lot of grat questions and they have been helping me in class. They're free until the begining of June and they have several thousand questions from every topic that we might see. Gook luck on the step!