How relevant are question banks to the real boards?

[jamochacreampie]

Among Boardsvitals, aad board prep plus, DermInReview, Derm101, are any more or less similar to the real boards? Is ITE most predictive of what the real boards will be like? I am asking about the current, unchanged format for this year.

Separate but related question, any idea above which percentile takers pass? I imagine it is extraordinarily low since most people pass and the standard deviation is so big.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[asmallchild]

Among Boardsvitals, aad board prep plus, DermInReview, Derm101, are any more or less similar to the real boards? Is ITE most predictive of what the real boards will be like? I am asking about the current, unchanged format for this year.

Separate but related question, any idea above which percentile takers pass? I imagine it is extraordinarily low since most people pass and the standard deviation is so big.

Hopefully someone with more recent insight can chime in

I used DermInReview and while it was helpful to highlight areas I needed to brush up on, I did not think it was particularly representative of what was on the real boards. I do think they took a couple questions from here word for word on both the real exam and the ITE.

I used Derm101 and didn't find it helpful at all. That could have been more of my bias against the website which I didn't think was as well designed as DerminReview.

The ITE is in many ways the best glimpse at the real boards but I still found the real thing to be harder than the ITE

I don't know the most recent numbers but in the 2-3 years during and prior to when I took it, pass rate was reportedly 95%+

 

[Skindoc83]

I took it a few years ago and found the binder that was sponsored by a drug company was great prep for the ITE. They had questions on their online question bank that were used word for word on the ITE. With that said, I don’t think the binder or the question bank was helpful for the real board exam. Granted, there’s like a 99% pass rate, so it must be somewhat useful. But I found the real boards to be nothing like the ITE

 

[asmallchild]

I took it a few years ago and found the binder that was sponsored by a drug company was great prep for the ITE. They had questions on their online question bank that were used word for word on the ITE. With that said, I don’t think the binder or the question bank was helpful for the real board exam. Granted, there’s like a 99% pass rate, so it must be somewhat useful. But I found the real boards to be nothing like the ITE

I believe that binder is now known as DermInReview

It used to be Stieffel, then Galderma, now DermInReview

 

[Sophia88]

Curious about this as well! With the big caveat that I haven't taken boards yet (taking next week as well) I've heard from others that Board Vitals is very high yield (although easier than the real thing) Derm in review is less relevant and better for ITE or subject specific reviews. Haven't heard much about Derm 101 or used it personally. The AAD bank just came out so hard to know since we'll be the first people who used it to take boards. I've found it helpful (especially the applied knowledge type questions) but harder than the other qbanks with some glitches/errors and a few very esoteric genoderms. Good luck! I guess we'll find out soon! Would appreciate any additional input as well!

 

[jamochacreampie]

Curious about this as well! With the big caveat that I haven't taken boards yet (taking next week as well)

Good luck!! Almost there =)

 

[Skindoc83]

In terms of high yield, there used to be a dermpath board review course that listed basically all of the diagnoses that they test on. I also found looking at as many picture atlases as you can find. There were a lot of pictures from what I recall. And if you look at enough pictures you start to recognize the tell tale signs for a diagnosis.