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In contrast to a post I had made on the Scores thread earlier today, where I said I'd wait a few days to write a UWorld review, I decided that I'm currently in one of my "I don't feel like studying right now b/c my brain is going to implode"-mindsets, so I thought I'd just write the quick review now.
------------
Firstly, UWorld took a lot longer than I had anticipated. That being said, everyone approaches it differently. Some do it in tutor-mode alongside MS2 coursework; some do it timed during the final month of prep; some don't even finish it (you'd have to be insane). I went through it at ~50 Qs/day x ~ 6-7 wks in timed-random. I wanted to go faster, but I couldn't. I knew this QBank is the most important resource alongside FA, so I decided to sacrifice a little time for a bit of extra careful reading (and re-reading and annotating).
Cons:
As people have already mentioned before, you can't copy and paste anything, nor can you PrntScr an image. Despite Uworld's scare that people would illegally distribute their product, for the sake of personal-use, it's rather vexing when you actually do want to save an image or tidbit for later. I'm too lazy to use an external camera, so I just made sure to annotate extra well from anything of high value.
In addition (as people have also already mentioned), the UWorld interface subjugates your entire computer screen, and you cannot Wiki nor PubMed anything without closing out the UWorld block. This would mean that for every block I would review, I would need to close and then re-open it probably at least 20 times.
This might not be an issue with everyone, but for me, it seemed as though ~10% of the questions would improperly load such that the answer choices would be widely spaced apart. I would then need to arrow either to the prior or subsequent question, then back to the question I was working on, in order to get the spacing of the answer choices back to normal. It seems like a minor data-loading glitch that they have. I also have a new computer and good internet, and I haven't experienced that problem on the other QBanks, so it's definitely UWorld.
For blocks that have media-questions, there would be a message box that would pop up prior to commencing them that would remind you to make sure you have headphones, etc. Anyway, given what I've written above, considering the UWorld platform requires you to close a block in order to Wiki/PubMed something, that also meant that every time I'd re-enter the block, the same message would pop up, and I'd have to repeatedly click through it in order to resume my work. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal, but none of us need to see the same message box 20 separate times, particularly when the block's already been finished.
Uworld severely lacks in the biostats and behavioral departments. I did the entire QBank on timed, random assessment, and I exhausted all of the behavioral and biostats questions at ~1500 Qs through (there are 2153 total). Not only that, but are you ready for this one? They offer a separate biostats and epidemiology package, that you can pay for in addition to the QBank, that includes additional biostats questions. It's as though they removed a solid one-third of the user-expected biostats questions from the QBank, and then just placed them into an external platform in order to be lucrative. Not only is this inconvenient, but the quality of the package is far below that of the QBank. It consists of ~30-40 questions sub-divided into sets of 3-6. Following each set of questions, there are a couple of paragraphs that summarize the concepts within those questions, but there isn't actually a critical analysis of each individual answer choice within each independent question. I just didn't understand this at all. It's as though some of the UWorld question-writers didn't want to take the time to analyze each question, so they curtailed their effort, and in the end, just charged people more money. Congratulations.
Anatomy is also weak within the QBank. It is not heavy on CT-scans whatsoever. Kaplan was way better for this. To that effect, Kaplan dominates UWorld with regard to anatomy, behavioral science, biostats and physiology. And are you ready for the hard blow? USMLE Rx beats UWorld for biostats. In general, I thought UWorld biostats was just very disappointing.
Some might view this aspect as a pro, but another con is that I believe the explanations were just way too long. Moreover, the definition of circumlocution is UWorld's explanations. On average, they were about 1-1.5 pages in length per question. I know UWorld is a learning platform, but I don't need to read 1.5 pages on PTH and vitamin D at least 30 separate times within the QBank. Cut to the chase already. One thing that I now realize I liked about Kaplan QBank is that their explanations were much more succinct than UWorld's.
The UWSAs are identical to UWorld QBank. Now let me make a point very clear: the UWorld QBank is only 2153 questions (or 2154 given that they just added a question yesterday). This is already fairly truncated relative to the 3000 in USMLE Rx and the 2994 in Kaplan (Kaplan QBank technically is 2200, but they don't charge you extra for their diagnostic test or two full-length exams), so the fact that UWorld charges extra for the biostats package and the UWSAs is a malfeasance quite frankly. They take advantage of us as consumers because they know everyone needs their product. FA, for instance, could charge $100 per new copy of their book, and guaranteed everyone would still buy it, because we all know we need it. The difference is that the FA authors just aren't as avaricious; they're error-prone instead (ahem, 30-page errata, ahem).
The QBank is not invincible. I encountered ~20-30 errors. The worst part about this is that since UWorld is supposed to be the supreme resource, whenever I'd encounter an error, suddenly I'd freak out and think I was wrong and that I didn't know what I was doing. Then I'd have to go on an unnecessary research tangent for 20 minutes. A couple of simple examples that I can think of off the top of my head: I made a post a few days ago (the QID# is in that post), where UWorld had said ventilation is greater at the lung apices, but it actually increases apex --> base (now imagine if your pulmonology physio is weak; that doesn't help anyone out); just yesterday, I read in one of the UWSA explanations that iron poisoning creates a non-anion gap acidosis, but it's anion-gap --> MUDPILES).
Out of the score sub-divisions, histology accounted for only 17 questions in the entire QBank!! Now how does that make any sense? While going through the QBank, I noticed that I had exhausted all of the histology-category questions very early on, and yet I would still encounter ones that would have a vague single-line vignette, followed by an image of cells and a subsequent question that relied on an ability to analyze the picture. How in the world that isn't classified as histology blows me away. There were probably at least 50 (arbitrary number) pure histo questions in the QBank, so I wasn't able to track my progress in that category accurately at all. I think those questions were generally classified as pathology or anatomy, but not appropriately as histo.
There were no four-stethoscope-location heart sound questions, as there had been in Kaplan. Also, the heart sound questions that UWorld did have, it would almost be impossible sometimes to really hear what was going on, let alone the fact that the sound would play for, no joke, about 1.8 seconds, then stop (whereas Kaplan or Rx might play it for 10 seconds).
I might just have severe retrograde amnesia at the moment (it's the middle of the night here in Australia), but I don't recall there having been any video questions in UWorld, apart from maybe 10, at the most. In general, I found there to be a dearth of media questions.
Pros:
The power of UWorld is in its explanations. When everyone says that UWorld is the best QBank and that nothing else compares, there's isn't, nor has there ever been, a prevarication. UWorld elaborates on concepts and fills in gaps that you probably should have had patched a long time ago in MS1. I had done lots and lots of practice questions before having milked UWorld, and I definitely had quite a few shockers sometimes when I'd get questions wrong that >70% must have thought were cake-easy.
As I said above, I felt the explanations in UWorld were a bit long. They could have conveyed the exact same points in about 80% of the text, but nevertheless, the explanations were generally strong. I'd say ~15% were fantastic, 15% very good, 35% good, 25% fair, 10% poor.
If there's anything I can thank the UWSAs for, it's that their explanations are about 2/3 the length of the QBank ones.
It would never be the brevity of a particular explanation that would reduce its quality; sometimes the question-writer just didn't address my thought process, or he or she would be too loquacious over some banality at the expense of even a cursory discussion of an important topic. However, as I've said, ~30% of the explanations were solid.
There are many multi-step questions that require significant integration of knowledge. I wasn't too surprised by many of these because I had already done lots of questions prior to UWorld, but they definitely make sure you know how to apply the material rather than just regurgitate it.
I felt many of the questions were very similar to USMLE Rx's. USMLE Rx definitely got me many points in UWorld- lots of simple tricks that I would have gotten wrong months ago but was now vigilant for.
The integration of cardiovascular pharmacology and physiology is pretty good. If you're a little uncertain as to the absolute specifics regarding where and how the different anti-arrhythmics act/work, rest assured that you'll come out of UWorld knowing that stuff. This is very good because CVS pharmacology is exceedingly high-yield.
Now there's a million reasons why we get questions wrong: ******ed errors, misreading, simply not knowing the info, tricks, etc. I'd say that ~ 1/20 questions or so that I'd get wrong, I'd find myself saying "hm wow. That was a very very good question." The translation of that statement = a question where it would have been nothing that I had encountered through any of the prior practice questions I had ever done, and yet was a very creative way of assessing the knowledge. In other words, UWorld has a few rare questions that are of extremely high value.
There's a comment box. Hurray! If you've done Kaplan QBank and noticed that there's no comment box, at least there's one in UWorld. The only down-side is that they don't pay you like USMLE Rx does to correct their errors (so where's the real incentive? Because you're a good person?).
UWorld has solid biochemistry, microbiology, pathology and neurology.
They give you percent-breakdowns next to every answer choice with regard to how many students chose which (this is in contrast to Kaplan, which just tells you the % answering the question correctly overall). I feel this is important because it teaches you how other people think and/or approach questions. Sometimes you can be proud of yourself for your giftedness. Other times you can realize you're ******ed and need third-grade remediation. It goes both ways.
----------
Anyway, some people have PMed me about wanting me to post about my progress with this QBank and the UWSAs, etc. I list the following scores, not for the sake of self-aggrandizement (by all means, here on SDN, there are probably many genius-lurkers who laugh at how much better they're doing), but just to give people an idea as to the relative difficulties of the question resources:
USMLE Rx (tutor-mode, random; March-April): ~85%
FA Q&A (May): ~94%
Kaplan QBook (May): ~84%
GT QBank (timed, random; June-July-ish): ~85%
NBME3 (end of July): 250
Kaplan QBank (timed, random; August): ~81%
Kaplan full-length tests #1 & 2: ~81%, ~80%
UWorld (timed, random, first-pass; September-mid-October): ~85% = 96th percentile; first half = 84%; final 1000 questions = 86%
Best 3 UWorld subjects: biochemistry, microbiology, pathology
Worst 3 UWorld subjects: behavioral science, biostats, histology
UWSA1 (one week ago; 9-weeks-out from real USMLE) = 264 = ~84% correct
UWSA2 (today; 8-weeks-out) = 262 = ~82% correct
Needless to say, considering the UWSAs are supposed to over-predict by like 20 points, this is the first time I'm "freaking out," especially since everyone seems to get 265+ on them. I managed to get a 12%- and 89%-answering-correctly-question right and wrong, respectively, within the same block today on UWSA2 (and no I'm not just making that up to be entertaining). In general, I felt the UWSAs were very turbulent, and I made quite a few unforgivable errors. I don't need to complain for hours on end here, but if there's anything I've learned, it's that on the real exam day, if I have any extra time at the end of my blocks after already having reviewed the marked questions (usually ~5 minutes / UWorld block), instead of adding it onto my break time, I'll instead use it to go back and do a blitz-review of unmarked questions. The Step1 is once and there's no room for nonsense. I find the error-rate for serious misreadings of unmarked questions is about 1 in 80 or so, which on the real USMLE, is 4 questions that I'd rather have not cause me acute stress disorder during the 3 weeks subsequently. Oh, and a few RedBulls won't hurt either.
I sit the exam December 14th.
I hope that review helps some people.
~Phloston
------------
Firstly, UWorld took a lot longer than I had anticipated. That being said, everyone approaches it differently. Some do it in tutor-mode alongside MS2 coursework; some do it timed during the final month of prep; some don't even finish it (you'd have to be insane). I went through it at ~50 Qs/day x ~ 6-7 wks in timed-random. I wanted to go faster, but I couldn't. I knew this QBank is the most important resource alongside FA, so I decided to sacrifice a little time for a bit of extra careful reading (and re-reading and annotating).
Cons:
As people have already mentioned before, you can't copy and paste anything, nor can you PrntScr an image. Despite Uworld's scare that people would illegally distribute their product, for the sake of personal-use, it's rather vexing when you actually do want to save an image or tidbit for later. I'm too lazy to use an external camera, so I just made sure to annotate extra well from anything of high value.
In addition (as people have also already mentioned), the UWorld interface subjugates your entire computer screen, and you cannot Wiki nor PubMed anything without closing out the UWorld block. This would mean that for every block I would review, I would need to close and then re-open it probably at least 20 times.
This might not be an issue with everyone, but for me, it seemed as though ~10% of the questions would improperly load such that the answer choices would be widely spaced apart. I would then need to arrow either to the prior or subsequent question, then back to the question I was working on, in order to get the spacing of the answer choices back to normal. It seems like a minor data-loading glitch that they have. I also have a new computer and good internet, and I haven't experienced that problem on the other QBanks, so it's definitely UWorld.
For blocks that have media-questions, there would be a message box that would pop up prior to commencing them that would remind you to make sure you have headphones, etc. Anyway, given what I've written above, considering the UWorld platform requires you to close a block in order to Wiki/PubMed something, that also meant that every time I'd re-enter the block, the same message would pop up, and I'd have to repeatedly click through it in order to resume my work. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal, but none of us need to see the same message box 20 separate times, particularly when the block's already been finished.
Uworld severely lacks in the biostats and behavioral departments. I did the entire QBank on timed, random assessment, and I exhausted all of the behavioral and biostats questions at ~1500 Qs through (there are 2153 total). Not only that, but are you ready for this one? They offer a separate biostats and epidemiology package, that you can pay for in addition to the QBank, that includes additional biostats questions. It's as though they removed a solid one-third of the user-expected biostats questions from the QBank, and then just placed them into an external platform in order to be lucrative. Not only is this inconvenient, but the quality of the package is far below that of the QBank. It consists of ~30-40 questions sub-divided into sets of 3-6. Following each set of questions, there are a couple of paragraphs that summarize the concepts within those questions, but there isn't actually a critical analysis of each individual answer choice within each independent question. I just didn't understand this at all. It's as though some of the UWorld question-writers didn't want to take the time to analyze each question, so they curtailed their effort, and in the end, just charged people more money. Congratulations.
Anatomy is also weak within the QBank. It is not heavy on CT-scans whatsoever. Kaplan was way better for this. To that effect, Kaplan dominates UWorld with regard to anatomy, behavioral science, biostats and physiology. And are you ready for the hard blow? USMLE Rx beats UWorld for biostats. In general, I thought UWorld biostats was just very disappointing.
Some might view this aspect as a pro, but another con is that I believe the explanations were just way too long. Moreover, the definition of circumlocution is UWorld's explanations. On average, they were about 1-1.5 pages in length per question. I know UWorld is a learning platform, but I don't need to read 1.5 pages on PTH and vitamin D at least 30 separate times within the QBank. Cut to the chase already. One thing that I now realize I liked about Kaplan QBank is that their explanations were much more succinct than UWorld's.
The UWSAs are identical to UWorld QBank. Now let me make a point very clear: the UWorld QBank is only 2153 questions (or 2154 given that they just added a question yesterday). This is already fairly truncated relative to the 3000 in USMLE Rx and the 2994 in Kaplan (Kaplan QBank technically is 2200, but they don't charge you extra for their diagnostic test or two full-length exams), so the fact that UWorld charges extra for the biostats package and the UWSAs is a malfeasance quite frankly. They take advantage of us as consumers because they know everyone needs their product. FA, for instance, could charge $100 per new copy of their book, and guaranteed everyone would still buy it, because we all know we need it. The difference is that the FA authors just aren't as avaricious; they're error-prone instead (ahem, 30-page errata, ahem).
The QBank is not invincible. I encountered ~20-30 errors. The worst part about this is that since UWorld is supposed to be the supreme resource, whenever I'd encounter an error, suddenly I'd freak out and think I was wrong and that I didn't know what I was doing. Then I'd have to go on an unnecessary research tangent for 20 minutes. A couple of simple examples that I can think of off the top of my head: I made a post a few days ago (the QID# is in that post), where UWorld had said ventilation is greater at the lung apices, but it actually increases apex --> base (now imagine if your pulmonology physio is weak; that doesn't help anyone out); just yesterday, I read in one of the UWSA explanations that iron poisoning creates a non-anion gap acidosis, but it's anion-gap --> MUDPILES).
Out of the score sub-divisions, histology accounted for only 17 questions in the entire QBank!! Now how does that make any sense? While going through the QBank, I noticed that I had exhausted all of the histology-category questions very early on, and yet I would still encounter ones that would have a vague single-line vignette, followed by an image of cells and a subsequent question that relied on an ability to analyze the picture. How in the world that isn't classified as histology blows me away. There were probably at least 50 (arbitrary number) pure histo questions in the QBank, so I wasn't able to track my progress in that category accurately at all. I think those questions were generally classified as pathology or anatomy, but not appropriately as histo.
There were no four-stethoscope-location heart sound questions, as there had been in Kaplan. Also, the heart sound questions that UWorld did have, it would almost be impossible sometimes to really hear what was going on, let alone the fact that the sound would play for, no joke, about 1.8 seconds, then stop (whereas Kaplan or Rx might play it for 10 seconds).
I might just have severe retrograde amnesia at the moment (it's the middle of the night here in Australia), but I don't recall there having been any video questions in UWorld, apart from maybe 10, at the most. In general, I found there to be a dearth of media questions.
Pros:
The power of UWorld is in its explanations. When everyone says that UWorld is the best QBank and that nothing else compares, there's isn't, nor has there ever been, a prevarication. UWorld elaborates on concepts and fills in gaps that you probably should have had patched a long time ago in MS1. I had done lots and lots of practice questions before having milked UWorld, and I definitely had quite a few shockers sometimes when I'd get questions wrong that >70% must have thought were cake-easy.
As I said above, I felt the explanations in UWorld were a bit long. They could have conveyed the exact same points in about 80% of the text, but nevertheless, the explanations were generally strong. I'd say ~15% were fantastic, 15% very good, 35% good, 25% fair, 10% poor.
If there's anything I can thank the UWSAs for, it's that their explanations are about 2/3 the length of the QBank ones.
It would never be the brevity of a particular explanation that would reduce its quality; sometimes the question-writer just didn't address my thought process, or he or she would be too loquacious over some banality at the expense of even a cursory discussion of an important topic. However, as I've said, ~30% of the explanations were solid.
There are many multi-step questions that require significant integration of knowledge. I wasn't too surprised by many of these because I had already done lots of questions prior to UWorld, but they definitely make sure you know how to apply the material rather than just regurgitate it.
I felt many of the questions were very similar to USMLE Rx's. USMLE Rx definitely got me many points in UWorld- lots of simple tricks that I would have gotten wrong months ago but was now vigilant for.
The integration of cardiovascular pharmacology and physiology is pretty good. If you're a little uncertain as to the absolute specifics regarding where and how the different anti-arrhythmics act/work, rest assured that you'll come out of UWorld knowing that stuff. This is very good because CVS pharmacology is exceedingly high-yield.
Now there's a million reasons why we get questions wrong: ******ed errors, misreading, simply not knowing the info, tricks, etc. I'd say that ~ 1/20 questions or so that I'd get wrong, I'd find myself saying "hm wow. That was a very very good question." The translation of that statement = a question where it would have been nothing that I had encountered through any of the prior practice questions I had ever done, and yet was a very creative way of assessing the knowledge. In other words, UWorld has a few rare questions that are of extremely high value.
There's a comment box. Hurray! If you've done Kaplan QBank and noticed that there's no comment box, at least there's one in UWorld. The only down-side is that they don't pay you like USMLE Rx does to correct their errors (so where's the real incentive? Because you're a good person?).
UWorld has solid biochemistry, microbiology, pathology and neurology.
They give you percent-breakdowns next to every answer choice with regard to how many students chose which (this is in contrast to Kaplan, which just tells you the % answering the question correctly overall). I feel this is important because it teaches you how other people think and/or approach questions. Sometimes you can be proud of yourself for your giftedness. Other times you can realize you're ******ed and need third-grade remediation. It goes both ways.
----------
Anyway, some people have PMed me about wanting me to post about my progress with this QBank and the UWSAs, etc. I list the following scores, not for the sake of self-aggrandizement (by all means, here on SDN, there are probably many genius-lurkers who laugh at how much better they're doing), but just to give people an idea as to the relative difficulties of the question resources:
USMLE Rx (tutor-mode, random; March-April): ~85%
FA Q&A (May): ~94%
Kaplan QBook (May): ~84%
GT QBank (timed, random; June-July-ish): ~85%
NBME3 (end of July): 250
Kaplan QBank (timed, random; August): ~81%
Kaplan full-length tests #1 & 2: ~81%, ~80%
UWorld (timed, random, first-pass; September-mid-October): ~85% = 96th percentile; first half = 84%; final 1000 questions = 86%
Best 3 UWorld subjects: biochemistry, microbiology, pathology
Worst 3 UWorld subjects: behavioral science, biostats, histology
UWSA1 (one week ago; 9-weeks-out from real USMLE) = 264 = ~84% correct
UWSA2 (today; 8-weeks-out) = 262 = ~82% correct
Needless to say, considering the UWSAs are supposed to over-predict by like 20 points, this is the first time I'm "freaking out," especially since everyone seems to get 265+ on them. I managed to get a 12%- and 89%-answering-correctly-question right and wrong, respectively, within the same block today on UWSA2 (and no I'm not just making that up to be entertaining). In general, I felt the UWSAs were very turbulent, and I made quite a few unforgivable errors. I don't need to complain for hours on end here, but if there's anything I've learned, it's that on the real exam day, if I have any extra time at the end of my blocks after already having reviewed the marked questions (usually ~5 minutes / UWorld block), instead of adding it onto my break time, I'll instead use it to go back and do a blitz-review of unmarked questions. The Step1 is once and there's no room for nonsense. I find the error-rate for serious misreadings of unmarked questions is about 1 in 80 or so, which on the real USMLE, is 4 questions that I'd rather have not cause me acute stress disorder during the 3 weeks subsequently. Oh, and a few RedBulls won't hurt either.
I sit the exam December 14th.
I hope that review helps some people.
~Phloston
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