How much studying in Med School?

[NickNaylor]

There are students at every medical school in the country that are frustrated, mad, and jaded over their medical education structure, content, and delivery. You are not special in this regard, and you're certainly not the first one to jump on a post like this and preach that you're school is so radically different than all the other schools.

Go ask your MS1 and MS2 course directors about the LCME visits and accreditation process. It's not something trivial like you make it out to be.

Lol, y u mad bro. I'm not even disagreeing with you. I'm simply saying that your generalized claim that doing better in classes correlates to higher step 1 scores is likely not true everywhere, and the correlation varies between schools.

As far as the LCME goes, are they actually reading the lecture slides/notes from a typical year to verify that the information being taught is what is supposed to be taught? And even if they are, how do you account for differences in what is emphasized? In our pathology course, sure, we learned about the response to injury, neoplasia, immunology, etc. etc.. These are likely the standard topics that the LCME expects schools to teach. However, a significant portion of the course focused on things that I have never seen again - protein structures, super nitty gritty details on the etiologies of diseases, etc.. We had to learn a lot of this stuff to pass, and more of it if you wanted to do well. So how does that fit in with your theory? What is the benefit to me to learn that the cleavage site for the protein encoded by the ATM23 gene is Ser-235 (made up point, but not that far from reality)?

I'm not preaching that my school is radically different. I don't know where you got that. In fact, I said the exact opposite - which is that my experience is likely shared by students at many schools because of how frequently the preclinical curricula are criticized for being clinically irrelevant at best and a huge waste of time at worst. You make this exact point yourself, so I'm not sure what exactly you're trying to show me up about. That's fine if you have to justify to yourself that wasting time learning that nonsense was worth it because it earned you a higher step 1 score. That does not make it a universally true statement or correlation.

IMO, at best preclinical grades simply represent your willingness to memorize what the professors put in front of you. In many cases that likely mirrors what is tested on step 1, in which case I agree with you. In many other cases, though, that likely isn't the case, and memorizing 60% of worthless information you will never see again vs. 90% will yield you very little, if anything, beyond getting that shiny H on your transcript.

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[fahimaz7]

Lol, y u mad bro. I'm not even disagreeing with you. I'm simply saying that your generalized claim that doing better in classes correlates to higher step 1 scores is likely not true everywhere, and the correlation varies between schools.

As far as the LCME goes, are they actually reading the lecture slides/notes from a typical year to verify that the information being taught is what is supposed to be taught? And even if they are, how do you account for differences in what is emphasized? In our pathology course, sure, we learned about the response to injury, neoplasia, immunology, etc. etc.. These are likely the standard topics that the LCME expects schools to teach. However, a significant portion of the course focused on things that I have never seen again - protein structures, super nitty gritty details on the etiologies of diseases, etc.. We had to learn a lot of this stuff to pass, and more of it if you wanted to do well. So how does that fit in with your theory? What is the benefit to me to learn that the cleavage site for the protein encoded by the ATM23 gene is Ser-235 (made up point, but not that far from reality)?

I'm not preaching that my school is radically different. I don't know where you got that. In fact, I said the exact opposite - which is that my experience is likely shared by students at many schools because of how frequently the preclinical curricula are criticized for being clinically irrelevant at best and a huge waste of time at worst. You make this exact point yourself, so I'm not sure what exactly you're trying to show me up about. That's fine if you have to justify to yourself that wasting time learning that nonsense was worth it because it earned you a higher step 1 score. That does not make it a universally true statement or correlation.

IMO, at best preclinical grades simply represent your willingness to memorize what the professors put in front of you. In many cases that likely mirrors what is tested on step 1, in which case I agree with you. In many other cases, though, that likely isn't the case, and memorizing 60% of worthless information you will never see again vs. 90% will yield you very little, if anything, beyond getting that shiny H on your transcript.

Sent from my Nexus 7

1. I'm impressed that you typed that on a mobile device.
2. There is a ton of material that is presented in medical school that is not ever seen again during MS3 or MS4 (including step 1).
3. Some of the detail that you "don't need" is the same material that separates the "average" step 1 score from the "excellent" step 1 score. There are posts about this on the step 1 forum. Can't fault your medical school for trying to give you a thorough and quality medical education, which hopefully translates to a better understanding of disease process, drug development/theory, and treatment options. And no, I'm not saying that you will ever need to know the ATM gene or it's serine cleavage site, but you may need to be familiar with the concepts of gene activation, cleavage, protein folding, and manipulating these structures/sites for drug development and/or disease manifestation. The pre-clinical years are to prepare all the students for a variety of different fields/interests. You are amongst future pathologists, researchers, hem/onc, etc.

 

[NickNaylor]

1. I'm impressed that you typed that on a mobile device.
2. There is a ton of material that is presented in medical school that is not ever seen again during MS3 or MS4 (including step 1).
3. Some of the detail that you "don't need" is the same material that separates the "average" step 1 score from the "excellent" step 1 score. There are posts about this on the step 1 forum. Can't fault your medical school for trying to give you a thorough and quality medical education, which hopefully translates to a better understanding of disease process, drug development/theory, and treatment options. And no, I'm not saying that you will ever need to know the ATM gene or it's serine cleavage site, but you may need to be familiar with the concepts of gene activation, cleavage, protein folding, and manipulating these structures/sites for drug development and/or disease manifestation. The pre-clinical years are to prepare all the students for a variety of different fields/interests. You are amongst future pathologists, researchers, hem/onc, etc.

I agree 100% with your post - I think we have slightly different opinions simply because of our experiences and how well executed the "details" part of the curriculum was. I have absolutely no problem learning these details when they are presented in a clinical context or in a way that makes it clear why these details are relevant. In my experience, that didn't happen with the M1 material, and as a result I felt like we didn't really learn information that was all that useful (except perhaps physio and micro); our tests emphasized regurgitation of random facts rather than integrating the information in a way that made it clear why this material matters. Obviously some material that is not clinically relevant needs to be learned, and obviously First Aid doesn't contain all of the information you need to be a great (or even mediocre) clinician, but I have to wonder why some of this information is taught when it is quite clear that it has exactly zero relevance to anything other than it is conveniently sorted into a subset of knowledge that we happen to be studying at that particular time. I suppose my point was that depending upon on how much of the curriculum at your particular school is filled with that kind of nonsense, performance in M1/M2 will be more or less relevant to your performance on step 1. I thought our M2 courses prepared us very well for step 1, but I can't really say the same for M1.

 

[FSU2013]

Lol yeah that's pretty extreme. On the bright side, with tons of questions you can miss like 25 Qs and still do well.

I think the longest exam we ever had was about 80 Qs. However, the vast majority were paragraph long clinical case scenario based questions w/ multiple subsections.

Some of our exams had as little as 40 Qs. For those, you really had to know your $hit b/c you couldn't miss more than 5 or 6 and still do well.

Whoa. 40-80Qs? Really? Did you not have 'block' exams?

During MS1 our tests were 150 questions once a month, every month. During MS2, they were 180-220 once a month, every month. Technically you could miss 18-20 questions a test and still get an 'A', but it wasn't really broken up like that. We'd have a 200 Q test broken up into two sections that were all mixed up with like 60-80 path, 30-40 microbio, 30-40 pharm, 20-30 physical exam, then the rest the 'soft' stuff (public health/policy, touchy-feely patient-centered stuff). Because of some overlap, you weren't always sure which question came from which course. We also had weekly quizzes of anywhere from 12-40 questions every week except test week.

 

[NickNaylor]

Whoa. 40-80Qs? Really? Did you not have 'block' exams?

During MS1 our tests were 150 questions once a month, every month. During MS2, they were 180-220 once a month, every month. Technically you could miss 18-20 questions a test and still get an 'A', but it wasn't really broken up like that. We'd have a 200 Q test broken up into two sections that were all mixed up with like 60-80 path, 30-40 microbio, 30-40 pharm, 20-30 physical exam, then the rest the 'soft' stuff (public health/policy, touchy-feely patient-centered stuff). Because of some overlap, you weren't always sure which question came from which course. We also had weekly quizzes of anywhere from 12-40 questions every week except test week.

Our longest exams were in MS2, but even then they weren't longer than 150 questions (most were in the 110-130 range). Sounds like you got the short end of the stick.

 

[Ismet]

Whoa. 40-80Qs? Really? Did you not have 'block' exams?

During MS1 our tests were 150 questions once a month, every month. During MS2, they were 180-220 once a month, every month. Technically you could miss 18-20 questions a test and still get an 'A', but it wasn't really broken up like that. We'd have a 200 Q test broken up into two sections that were all mixed up with like 60-80 path, 30-40 microbio, 30-40 pharm, 20-30 physical exam, then the rest the 'soft' stuff (public health/policy, touchy-feely patient-centered stuff). Because of some overlap, you weren't always sure which question came from which course. We also had weekly quizzes of anywhere from 12-40 questions every week except test week.

I think our longest exam so far was 90 questions, most of them are around 60-80. We only have one science course at a time, so we had 2 anatomy exams and then a final, one biochem exam, one genetics exam, one micro exam, one immuno exam, etc. Now that we're in the organ systems, there are a few pharmacology and a few physical exam questions thrown into our exams that will accumulate through 2nd year exams, but that's really the extent of "integration" in our exams. We have separate "soft" courses with separate exams. Just goes to show how variable medical school education is...theoretically we all come out learning the same core material, but the route to get there varies greatly.

 

[fahimaz7]

I think our longest exam so far was 90 questions, most of them are around 60-80. We only have one science course at a time, so we had 2 anatomy exams and then a final, one biochem exam, one genetics exam, one micro exam, one immuno exam, etc. Now that we're in the organ systems, there are a few pharmacology and a few physical exam questions thrown into our exams that will accumulate through 2nd year exams, but that's really the extent of "integration" in our exams. We have separate "soft" courses with separate exams. Just goes to show how variable medical school education is...theoretically we all come out learning the same core material, but the route to get there varies greatly.

Integration is the key. Our blocks were like MSK, Neuro, Cardio/Pulm, GI, GU, Endocrine as MS1 (basic science, anatomy, physiology, development, etc)

As a MS2 you redo the organ systems, but add pathology, micro, and pharm to the mix as well as more clinically relevant material.

We took 1 test ever 2-3 weeks + histology lab exam and anatomy lab exam (both as MS1 only).

 

[alpinism]

Whoa. 40-80Qs? Really? Did you not have 'block' exams?

During MS1 our tests were 150 questions once a month, every month. During MS2, they were 180-220 once a month, every month. Technically you could miss 18-20 questions a test and still get an 'A', but it wasn't really broken up like that. We'd have a 200 Q test broken up into two sections that were all mixed up with like 60-80 path, 30-40 microbio, 30-40 pharm, 20-30 physical exam, then the rest the 'soft' stuff (public health/policy, touchy-feely patient-centered stuff). Because of some overlap, you weren't always sure which question came from which course. We also had weekly quizzes of anywhere from 12-40 questions every week except test week.

For the first 2/3rds of M1 we had traditional courses with 3-4 exams in 1 wk every month (physio, genetics, biochem etc..). Each individual exam had about 50Qs on average (so basically about 175 total Qs combined).

For the last 1/3rd of M1 and during M2 we had block systems (derm, heme/onc, renal, etc..) with 1 exam every 4 wks. Each exam usually had about 60-80Qs.

All of our exams (including our PDS/clinical skills course) were timed at 60-120min and were taken on computers in the USMLE format.

 

[Ismet]

Integration is the key. Our blocks were like MSK, Neuro, Cardio/Pulm, GI, GU, Endocrine as MS1 (basic science, anatomy, physiology, development, etc)

As a MS2 you redo the organ systems, but add pathology, micro, and pharm to the mix as well as more clinically relevant material.

We took 1 test ever 2-3 weeks + histology lab exam and anatomy lab exam (both as MS1 only).

We do basic science MS1, start organ systems with Neuro and Psych in April-May, and do all the organ systems in MS2. I know a lot of schools have a similar system. I believe there is more integration in MS2, as clinically relevant basic science material will show up in the organ systems.

 

[Wordead]

Our longest exams were in MS2, but even then they weren't longer than 150 questions (most were in the 110-130 range). Sounds like you got the short end of the stick.

Man that must be nice....we had tests in the 300 range near the end of the year, I suppose to train our endurance for Step 1.

 

[Narmerguy]

Everyone says this, and obviously n=1 yadda yadda, but at my current progress I expect to get somewhere between 240-260 and I barely passed most of my M1 exams and even failed an anatomy exam. I think the strength of the correlation is VERY curriculum dependent. I don't doubt that it approaches 1 at some places, but there are also many places IMO where the correlation is weak at best.

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Well, even if the correlation holds that's not some statistical indicator that there's causation. The students that do well in their class are likely the same students that are willing to work hard for the test. It's entirely possible they could have still done well on the test even without doing well in the class.

It's like the MCAT. Many of the top SAT performers also have high GPAs, but that doesn't mean that doing well in class is a prerequisite to doing well on the SAT (more people take the SAT so the examples of exceptions are numerous and well understood vs the Step).