Is psych genius worth it for boards?

[deleted1100659]

Whats everyones thoughts on their question bank+ vignettes? Ive started studying and already ran through boardvitals. That seemed good. I have BTB and those questions seem like poor quality imo. Im saving K&S for a bit down the road. Did psych genius help people? Thanks!

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[Animal Mother]

I honestly don't think qbanks help much.

 

[robellis]

I honestly don't think qbanks help much.

Then what help?

 

[DJKitty]

I have psychiatry genius and I think the questions are more difficult than will be on the actual board exam. I also use Beat the Boards and have used Board Vitals and Spiegel.

 

[Animal Mother]

Then what help?

Like other exams, I'd bet your performance is more closely correlated with with your innate ability and how well you've done in training up to this point rather than the amount of time spent doing exam prep. Despite this and the fact that most board pass rates fall in the 90-100% range, people continue to spend millions of dollars a year on these qbanks. So do whatever makes you feel good. You won't be alone. I'm just very skeptical.

 

[TexasPhysician]

Obviously there are no studies on this, so it’s more about acquiring anecdotal information here. Most of my colleagues and myself didn’t study and passed. I didn’t find it to be all that hard. The questions that stumped me were about topics/questions that I would have ignored with studying anyway - worthless from a clinical psychiatrist perspective. The few that I know that always struggled with standardized tests used multiple study aids from different companies and still failed round 1. Had I not known their history, I would have concluded that studying increases your board fail rate.

Many people don’t study as there is almost no consequence for failing. My positions gave no bonus or punishment to pass. I had 0 incentive and years later I still haven’t reached an incentive. If I failed, I would just sign up again next year. With a 90+% pass rate, odds are in my favor. If I study more than 3 days, I would have been better off failing and retrying next year from an opportunity cost perspective. 1 day testing and 1 additional entrance fee is earned in about 2 days or less.

 

[FlowRate]

Like other exams, I'd bet your performance is more closely correlated with with your innate ability and how well you've done in training up to this point rather than the amount of time spent doing exam prep. Despite this and the fact that most board pass rates fall in the 90-100% range, people continue to spend millions of dollars a year on these qbanks. So do whatever makes you feel good. You won't be alone. I'm just very skeptical.

Partially agree. If someone has consistently done better than all comparator cohorts on PRITE then they probably don't need to study. There are some topics that one might not have down to the level of specificity asked on the boards which are relatively frequent test items (mainly for those in therapy-weak programs, questions about therapy and for the opposite, questions about genes and neurotransmitters) that are covered well by making a pass or two through Spiegel+Kenny. No need for the more expensive q banks.

 

[JKinSC]

Personal opinion: it was worth it for me solely because it was another source for questions, though I think they were more granular than anything I saw on the exam. The multiple correct answer questions were fairly helpful, though.

 

[Fuzzy08]

I used their cases and did not find it very helpful. The most useful resource was kenny and spiegel.

 

[toros102]

Once a year my program sends an email with the top 5 scorers. It feels silly but I really want to be in that top 5...

 

[J ROD]

I found the questions harder and not really similar to real test.

 

[deleted1100659]

I

I used their cases and did not find it very helpful. The most useful resource was kenny and spiegel.

I ended up buying just the cases and wow they are ridiculously hard. I did pretty well on boardvitals and BTB but these questions are just ridiculous lol.