Internal medicine boards

[ubulu big]

Hey anyone with input for Int med board review courses and texts, which ones are the best. Any updates per preps and exam?

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[Gastrapathy]

Hey anyone with input for Int med board review courses and texts, which ones are the best. Any updates per preps and exam?

I'm a big fan of MKSAP. The new version has must better text than previous versions and the questions are great practice. I'd recommend doing as many questions as you can stand (maybe find a mksap 13 cd kicking around too).

A lot of people like Medstudy. I personally found that it was too dense, too much info packed into each sentence for my learning style.

As a frame of reference, I scored in the mid 70% range on MKSAP and was 90+ percentile on the boards (the boards are scored on a 800 pt scale normalized to a score of 500 with a SD of 100, so you have to do a little math to estimate your percentile).

 

[Hernandez]

My program has been doing a combo of things. We read Medstudy during the week, then we will sit down and go through questions out of MKSAP, it seems to work well.

I also know programs using the Mayo board review book, it seems to work well for those programs.

does anyone know about the Cleveland clinic board review series?

 

[stillman]

The best thing to study for IM Boards in the shortest possible time is 'Medstudy'. I am not sure if you will find it in online bookstores such as BookstoreMD, amazon etc but you can definitely order it from www.medstudy.com. ? can we or should we put URLs here...?

 

[Annette]

I think if you get enough people together, you can get a discount on the medstudy stuff. I took the ACP board review- some good speakers, but too many people rambling on about their personal treatment prefrences. I liked the Medstudy intensive review in Colorado.

 

[elwademd]

what a lot of former residents/current attendings have told me is to read medstudy for content, and to do mksap for questions. seems like the majority of people say that the questions on mksap are much harder than the actual board exam. as i'm in the same boat as you, i don't know that to be a truth, but have certainly heard it time and time again.

rather than physically go to a course, i actually ordered the dvd's for the acp course, and looked at a few of the med study course dvd's as well. schedule-wise, dvd's were a better fit for me than going to a course.

 

[Equatorial]

Bit of a sub-question: Anyone with thoughts on MKSAP 14 vs 15 to prep for the 2010 boards? Bought 14 when it was the latest version and am trying to convince myself it's not worth shelling out again for 15. I can't find an official ACP or similar statement on whether 14 is 'still good', and the updates seem to only be self-assessment questions. Thanks much.

 

[dragonfly99]

I would just use the MKSAP 14. I doubt the 15 is much different. The frequent updates...13...14...15 are mostly a way for them to make money. The IM boards aren't that hard to pass for most people...those who don't pass either are very sucky test takers, go to crappy residencies or basically didn't study at all, I'll bet.

 

[sarakh]

Anyone interested in doing online study for reviewing mksap 14 qs. you can contact me at [email protected]
thanks

 

[Seahorse]

Anyone have an opinion about the "Unique Board Review Course" by Dr. Satish Dhalla at NJ? Is it good?

 

[Passtheboards]

I am having such a hard time passing the boards. I did medstudy videos and mksap 16 questions and yet flunked. Can someone guide me please?

 

[gutonc]

I am having such a hard time passing the boards. I did medstudy videos and mksap 16 questions and yet flunked. Can someone guide me please?

We can guide you to the currently active ABIM 2014 thread which is 10 pages long with 469 posts. Go read it.