Impressions of question quality for USMLERx

[Tajima]

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I've been using USMLERx as my initial QBANK before I start with full-blown World usage.

The reviews of Rx from before basically said its a good first-aid memorization agent, nothing more.

I'm finding a lot of questions, however, that are a bit beyond that, getting into third order principles and, oddly enough, referring to facts that are NOT in FA including for correct answers. Maybe they're based on the upcoming 2016 version? Maybe they're trying to pawn-off their Express video series or something.

What are some opinions of Rx at present. For those who have used it recently and switched to World, or who are using World concurrently, what are your thoughts?

 

[Transposony]

I have also noticed that some recently added questions in Rx are top notch.
Maybe Phloston has something to do with it.

 

[spicysoup55]

I've also noticed how there are questions testing content that is not in FA 2015. Do you guys think it's necessary to memorize that content?

 

[Tajima]

Does Phloston work for them now? So I'm not thinking that I'm way behind when I have to turn the gears a bit to get some of those correct then. That's reassuring.

 

[Entadus]

It's a good question bank and has been serving me very well for class exams and NBME shelf tests.

(I have not taken Step 1)

 

[Phloston]

It's an ongoing vacillation/consideration to create and update questions with info strictly from the textbook (reinforces the book but wouldn't add anything new) versus incorporating more information. It really comes down to editor preference/judgement ("liberal vs conservative"; I'm liberal), and there are multiple layers of teams involved in this type of thing. The net result is a generally good QBank that reinforces FA but also assesses things on the Step exam not straight verbatim from the book. That's why Qmax + FA, as a combo, is a good collective resource.

 

[Focused1]

It's an ongoing vacillation/consideration to create and update questions with info strictly from the textbook (reinforces the book but wouldn't add anything new) versus incorporating more information. It really comes down to editor preference/judgement ("liberal vs conservative"; I'm liberal), and there are multiple layers of teams involved in this type of thing. The net result is a generally good QBank that reinforces FA but also assesses things on the Step exam not straight verbatim from the book. That's why Qmax + FA, as a combo, is a good collective resource.

I second this.. Rx is a great resource..
Just out of curiosity.. are you on the Rx team too ?

( I remember you mentioning you are an author of FA step 1 itself.. after which i opened my FA and found a bio of an author which mentioned UQ and SDN.. I am pretty sure that's you.. though for the sake of anonymity of this forum I am not going to say the name.. 😉 )