I did a bad bad thing

[Captopril]

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Last night, with the intoxication of insomnia wrapping it's heavy cloak around my brain, I did a bad bad thing. I signed up for kaplan qbank. Now it's the day after and I'm wondering if I threw $150 down the toilet. Someone help me not feel worthless, please.

 

[SplenoMegastar]

A bunch of my friends did well with Kaplan. And people did plenty well before UWorld came along. I must say that I thought UWorld was great, though. I used Kaplan during the year and not for boards so I can't speak from personal experience but I think you'll be fine if you study smart.

 

[TXDO]

Last night, with the intoxication of insomnia wrapping it's heavy cloak around my brain, I did a bad bad thing. I signed up for kaplan qbank. Now it's the day after and I'm wondering if I threw $150 down the toilet. Someone help me not feel worthless, please.

You can donate it to me if you don't want it.😀
Dude, you cracked me up.
It's ok man, at least you did not toss $$ out of window or used $$ to do some bad things.
Are you studying for step 1 or did you already take it?

Hope you feel better. 👍

 

[Whats_up_doc]

Last night, with the intoxication of insomnia wrapping it's heavy cloak around my brain, I did a bad bad thing. I signed up for kaplan qbank. Now it's the day after and I'm wondering if I threw $150 down the toilet. Someone help me not feel worthless, please.

Come on, many SDNers around here who score very well use both Uworld AND Kaplan. When you read their experiences it is like 100% Uworld complete and 50% or so Kaplan Complete and they nail the real thing. If you use both of them wisely and don't get at least your target score then I would say you did threw 150 down the toilet. It would be a shame.

 

[Deferoxamine]

Last night, with the intoxication of insomnia wrapping it's heavy cloak around my brain, I did a bad bad thing. I signed up for kaplan qbank. Now it's the day after and I'm wondering if I threw $150 down the toilet. Someone help me not feel worthless, please.

Don't worry, I did something far worse. Back in February with full mental capacity and while 100% sober (and poor), I signed up for Kaplan Qbank. 😱

Sorry, but I think I win.

 

[Captopril]

A bunch of my friends did well with Kaplan. And people did plenty well before UWorld came along. I must say that I thought UWorld was great, though.

I actually already have a UW subscription. Was just up late last night reading about how Kaplan doesn't get enough credit...I also did a few of the free questions they offer with their facebook app, and they seemed pretty intense. I mean I know it's a lot of minutae, but my reasoning at the time was that if those minutiae show up on the test, I'm gonna kick myself in the balls.

Are you studying for step 1 or did you already take it?

Still studying...probably gonna take it late Aug or early Sept.

Come on, many SDNers around here who score very well use both Uworld AND Kaplan. When you read their experiences it is like 100% Uworld complete and 50% or so Kaplan Complete and they nail the real thing. If you use both of them wisely and don't get at least your target score then I would say you did threw 150 down the toilet. It would be a shame.

Yeah after reconsidering I figure I can just focus mostly on UW info...use Kap as a sort of supplement.


Thanks for the support.

 

[McGillGrad]

The bad news is that it may not help that much if you already have UW.

The good news is that they have revamped it since UW gave them a reason to be better and the more questions you do, the more it helps in the end (but not at the expense of reviewing)

 

[tpw2k]

think of the bright side, at least you never signed up for UsmleRX.

 

[Captopril]

The bad news is that it may not help that much if you already have UW.

The good news is that they have revamped it since UW gave them a reason to be better and the more questions you do, the more it helps in the end (but not at the expense of reviewing)

I know this has been asked ad nauseum on this forum, but I still haven't really seen a straight answer: is the detail-oriented style of Kaplan any help at all for boards?

Allow me to clarify my question by hi-jacking my own thread. When I do UW, I do some bonehead moves that make me get a Q wrong. But fundamentally, the fact they are testing is in my knowledge base. Just a problem with critical thinking. I feel like UW doesn't really go beyond the scope of primary source material (RR Path, FA, Kaplan series, HY books, etc).

However when I do some Kaplan Qbank sample Q's, the utter detail is mind blowing. They are much less conceptual and much more straight-fact based.

So, to re-state my question: would using Kaplan Qbank to learn these tiny little minutiae be a waste of time? People say that the real exam is 'easier' than UW, which I find to be a lot less brain-frying than Kaplan to begin with.

I will now duck and cover to prepare for the flame throwers who will be up in arms over me essentially asking 'Kaplan Qbank vs UW' for the umpteenth time.😱

 

[Whats_up_doc]

I know this has been asked ad nauseum on this forum, but I still haven't really seen a straight answer: is the detail-oriented style of Kaplan any help at all for boards?

Allow me to clarify my question by hi-jacking my own thread. When I do UW, I do some bonehead moves that make me get a Q wrong. But fundamentally, the fact they are testing is in my knowledge base. Just a problem with critical thinking. I feel like UW doesn't really go beyond the scope of primary source material (RR Path, FA, Kaplan series, HY books, etc).

However when I do some Kaplan Qbank sample Q's, the utter detail is mind blowing. They are much less conceptual and much more straight-fact based.

So, to re-state my question: would using Kaplan Qbank to learn these tiny little minutiae be a waste of time? People say that the real exam is 'easier' than UW, which I find to be a lot less brain-frying than Kaplan to begin with.

I will now duck and cover to prepare for the flame throwers who will be up in arms over me essentially asking 'Kaplan Qbank vs UW' for the umpteenth time.😱

I think that if you know details you MUST know the basic concepts first. McGillGrad can orient you a little about the detail aspect of your question.

 

[fergustsi]

I know this has been asked ad nauseum on this forum, but I still haven't really seen a straight answer: is the detail-oriented style of Kaplan any help at all for boards?

Allow me to clarify my question by hi-jacking my own thread. When I do UW, I do some bonehead moves that make me get a Q wrong. But fundamentally, the fact they are testing is in my knowledge base. Just a problem with critical thinking. I feel like UW doesn't really go beyond the scope of primary source material (RR Path, FA, Kaplan series, HY books, etc).

However when I do some Kaplan Qbank sample Q's, the utter detail is mind blowing. They are much less conceptual and much more straight-fact based.

So, to re-state my question: would using Kaplan Qbank to learn these tiny little minutiae be a waste of time? People say that the real exam is 'easier' than UW, which I find to be a lot less brain-frying than Kaplan to begin with.

I will now duck and cover to prepare for the flame throwers who will be up in arms over me essentially asking 'Kaplan Qbank vs UW' for the umpteenth time.😱

I did qbank (90% of it) and Uworld. i found some stuff in qbank helpful. some of their path correlates with the medium and easy path questions on the real thing. qbanks micro is usually too detail oriented than the usmle i got. i think the immuno questions were pretty fair reprsentation of the knowledge base and detail you should have for the exam. The Psych and Stats questions are similar to the real thing. pathophys and phys are ok i guess, less arrow questions than the real thing. Pharma i thought was easier on the real thing. Qbank will give you a psych drug question and then 12 psych drugs as an answer choice, on the real thing the answer choices for drug questions were limited to no more than 6 questions (for the most part) and they represent different drug classes. Example: youd get 2-3 antibiotics, an antiviral and an antifungal. so that made the pharma much easier (not to mention they test more straightforward, whats the side effect, what drug is contraindicated, etc. etc.)

It wasnt a waste of time to do qbank (i know some people who did just qbank because our school includes access to it all of year 2 as part of our tuition and they did well on the nbme practice exams). that being said, i think uworld was close to the real thing. but qbank isnt a complete waste of time. qbank has even changed their format it seems to represent fred V2 (or at least the new step 2 qbank i have access too is fred v2 format)

 

[Captopril]

I did qbank (90% of it) and Uworld. i found some stuff in qbank helpful. some of their path correlates with the medium and easy path questions on the real thing. qbanks micro is usually too detail oriented than the usmle i got. i think the immuno questions were pretty fair reprsentation of the knowledge base and detail you should have for the exam. The Psych and Stats questions are similar to the real thing. pathophys and phys are ok i guess, less arrow questions than the real thing. Pharma i thought was easier on the real thing. Qbank will give you a psych drug question and then 12 psych drugs as an answer choice, on the real thing the answer choices for drug questions were limited to no more than 6 questions (for the most part) and they represent different drug classes. Example: youd get 2-3 antibiotics, an antiviral and an antifungal. so that made the pharma much easier (not to mention they test more straightforward, whats the side effect, what drug is contraindicated, etc. etc.)

It wasnt a waste of time to do qbank (i know some people who did just qbank because our school includes access to it all of year 2 as part of our tuition and they did well on the nbme practice exams). that being said, i think uworld was close to the real thing. but qbank isnt a complete waste of time. qbank has even changed their format it seems to represent fred V2 (or at least the new step 2 qbank i have access too is fred v2 format)

Awesome dude, this was a very helpful response. That's exactly the kind of info I was looking for...I guess spending some time on Qbank isn't such a bad thing after all.👍👍