How is Anatomy tested in dental school?

[DMD12345]

Dumb question, but I'm matriculating this coming year. What are the questions like on the anatomy exams? I understand there is a practical portion with identifying labeled structures on a cadaver, but I'm not sure what to expect for the non-practical. Are they along the lines of "Here's a picture. What structure is this?" or "What type of synovial joint is the metacarpophalangeal joint?" or more medically clinical like "A patient presents with jaundice. Which of the following would not be a likely cause?"

Follow up dumb question. Do professors typically give practices problems or something to give the students an idea of what the exams will be like so we're not going in blind?

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[#cariology]

Don't expect pictures. Mostly clinical scenarios. An example I remember is "A boxer is punched in tbe face and experiences an orbital blowout. Which bone is least likely to have been injured?"

 

[knewstance]

Dumb question, but I'm matriculating this coming year. What are the questions like on the anatomy exams? I understand there is a practical portion with identifying labeled structures on a cadaver, but I'm not sure what to expect for the non-practical. Are they along the lines of "Here's a picture. What structure is this?" or "What type of synovial joint is the metacarpophalangeal joint?" or more medically clinical like "A patient presents with jaundice. Which of the following would not be a likely cause?"

Follow up dumb question. Do professors typically give practices problems or something to give the students an idea of what the exams will be like so we're not going in blind?

I think that will heavily depend on which school you are attending. Some schools have dissection, some (mine) used cadavers that were dissected by the MD students, and others will use digital cadavers/photos.

During most of my anatomy exams, I had questions very similar to all of your examples. Sometimes anatomical diagrams with the labels erased and then asked to label them, sometimes photos of cadavers asking 2nd or 3rd order questions regarding the mentioned structure. There were some questions as listed above, but usually only 5-10 on an exam of 40-60 questions.

In regards to practice questions - answering this broadly... It depends on the professor (and school). For some subjects, we were going into the exam blind. Other subjects, we would have an entire practice exam that sometimes was or was not at all similar to the exam.

 

[DentGent13]

Dumb question, but I'm matriculating this coming year. What are the questions like on the anatomy exams? I understand there is a practical portion with identifying labeled structures on a cadaver, but I'm not sure what to expect for the non-practical. Are they along the lines of "Here's a picture. What structure is this?" or "What type of synovial joint is the metacarpophalangeal joint?" or more medically clinical like "A patient presents with jaundice. Which of the following would not be a likely cause?"

Follow up dumb question. Do professors typically give practices problems or something to give the students an idea of what the exams will be like so we're not going in blind?

At my school, we had about 20% clinical questions like "patient comes in complaining of X. What is the likely cause of this?"

The other 80% is more straight up memorization but it's not as simple as "what type of joint is in this?" Instead, they will give you multiple options and ask you to determine which ones are true/false, so you need to be well rounded.

Example: Which of the following statements are false: 1) the inferior alveolar nerve is a branch of the posterior mandibular nerve 2) The nerve of the pterygoid contains both sympathetics and parasympathetic fibers 3) The long buccal nerve innervates the buccinator. 4)... 5)...

Roughly all the straight up memorization of anatomy questions were like that. Sometimes, they make you choose all of the false/true statements, so a 5 choice question becomes a 20 choice question due to different combinations, and don't give you partial credit if you get it wrong. Ergo you have to really know your stuff.

A "what structure is this?" question would probably be seen in our lab practical and those were the easiest tests we had, with averages in the low to mid 90s and those were the things that drove our grades up. The lecture exams would have maybe averaged in the low 80s, I think our first anatomy exam averaged an 81?

 

[dentalinthemental]

At my school, we had about 20% clinical questions like "patient comes in complaining of X. What is the likely cause of this?"

The other 80% is more straight up memorization but it's not as simple as "what type of joint is in this?" Instead, they will give you multiple options and ask you to determine which ones are true/false, so you need to be well rounded.

Example: Which of the following statements are false: 1) the inferior alveolar nerve is a branch of the posterior mandibular nerve 2) The nerve of the pterygoid contains both sympathetics and parasympathetic fibers 3) The long buccal nerve innervates the buccinator. 4)... 5)...

Roughly all the straight up memorization of anatomy questions were like that. Some instances, they make you choose all of the false/true statements and don't give you partial credit if you get it wrong, so you have to really know your stuff. A "what structure is this?" question would probably be seen in our lab practical and those were the easiest tests we had, with averages in the low 90s. The lectures would have maybe averaged in the low 80s, I think our first anatomy exam averaged an 81?

I can tell we go to the same school hahaha

 

[DMD12345]

At my school, we had about 20% clinical questions like "patient comes in complaining of X. What is the likely cause of this?"

The other 80% is more straight up memorization but it's not as simple as "what type of joint is in this?" Instead, they will give you multiple options and ask you to determine which ones are true/false, so you need to be well rounded.

Example: Which of the following statements are false: 1) the inferior alveolar nerve is a branch of the posterior mandibular nerve 2) The nerve of the pterygoid contains both sympathetics and parasympathetic fibers 3) The long buccal nerve innervates the buccinator. 4)... 5)...

Roughly all the straight up memorization of anatomy questions were like that. Sometimes, they make you choose all of the false/true statements, so a 5 choice question becomes a 20 choice question due to different combinations, and don't give you partial credit if you get it wrong. Ergo you have to really know your stuff.

A "what structure is this?" question would probably be seen in our lab practical and those were the easiest tests we had, with averages in the low to mid 90s and those were the things that drove our grades up. The lecture exams would have maybe averaged in the low 80s, I think our first anatomy exam averaged an 81?

Holy s***. If they pull that “Which of the following are false? More than one answer may be correct.” ... 3 questions into the exam I’ll be like:

 

[DMD12345]

I can tell we go to the same school hahaha

Can you pm me which school this is? I’m taking it off my list if it’s on there 😂 joking not joking

 

[DentGent13]

Can you pm me which school this is? I’m taking it off my list if it’s on there 😂 joking not joking

NYU lmao, we all complained but they didn't change anything.

100 questions, 2 hours, about 80 of them were "which is false" and maybe 20 of them would be multiple answers. At a certain point, we just all power studied that course. It really is the stuff of nightmares.

 

[DMD12345]

NYU lmao, we all complained but they didn't change anything.

100 questions, 2 hours, about 80 of them were "which is false" and maybe 20 of them would be multiple answers. At a certain point, we just all power studied that course. It really is the stuff of nightmares.

Jeeeeeez

Residency interviewer: “I see you got a 67 in Anatomy”

You: “Yes but I ranked 4th out of 300 in that class”

(ik that’s not how it works)

 

[DentGent13]

Jeeeeeez

Residency interviewer: “I see you got a 67 in Anatomy”

You: “Yes but I ranked 4th out of 300 in that class”

(ik that’s not how it works)

That's how I feel lol, but here's the thing. I don't think this is harder than any other dental school. I believe all dental schools will be hard and will ask questions that show you really learned the information. It's just that my questions may be a different type than another school's. I have a friend at another school and we both go like "wtf" to each other's anatomy questions. We can work out the questions but it's just that we aren't really used to each other's question styles. You got in and it's good that you're asking what to expect, but likely, you will be in the same situation as all of us. Don't worry though, just study hard and do practice questions if they exist and you will be fine.

Good luck.

 

[DMD12345]

That's how I feel lol, but here's the thing. I don't think this is harder than any other dental school. I believe all dental schools will be hard and will ask questions that show you really learned the information. It's just that my questions may be a different type than another school's. I have a friend at another school and we both go like "wtf" to each other's anatomy questions. We can work out the questions but it's just that we aren't really used to each other's question styles. You got in and it's good that you're asking what to expect, but likely, you will be in the same situation as all of us. Don't worry though, just study hard and do practice questions if they exist and you will be fine.

Good luck.

Very true. Thank you, and thanks to the other responders as well

 

[Blueshirts]

Make sure you hit the ground running in anatomy class and start putting the work in starting the first week or you'll end up behind quickly. I know this is kind of common sense, and you may likely be told this by your professor on the first day of class, but it is both true and crucial because you'll need to the time to not only learn the material, but to learn how to study the material effectively and then understand how it applies clinically. Personally, I found arm/hand and leg/foot to be a lot harder than the abdomen/thorax and head/neck, but I know that is just related to my waning interest in those topics vs the latter.

 

[Biofilm preventer]

Don't expect pictures. Mostly clinical scenarios. An example I remember is "A boxer is punched in tbe face and experiences an orbital blowout. Which bone is least likely to have been injured?"

Temporal

 

[Big Time Hoosier]

Just don’t get behind. Trying to play catch-up will give you some serious diarrhea.

Big Hoss

 

[CharlieAF]

This thread is giving me PTSD flashbacks.

So my class was a mash-up of all the methods.

We had weekly quizzes that were usually pictures or drawings projected one at a time on a screen, and we had to identify the indicated structure.

We had written exams that were, as people mentioned, typically NOT visually based. “Which of the following correctly identifies, in order, the foramina through which the buccal nerve passes on its way back to the brain (or something like that)?” “You accidentally inject anesthetic into the parotid gland during an IAN block. What nerve(s) are likely to be affected?”

Then there were the practical sections: labeled cadavers. And these were the bodies we dissected ourselves as first year dental students. Let me just say that the quality of the dissections was somewhat variable. So some structures were neatly identifiable and others were not. You’d have to make an educated guess based on surrounding anatomy.