Just took path shelf

[12R34Y]

Just took the path shelf this a.m. and overall I would say that EVERYTHING that was on the test was either in BRS path and/or First Aid..........First Aid was suprisingly full of things that were tested after looking through it after the exam.

My version (i know there are different) had tons of kidney path (glomerular pictures and such).......lots of immune dysfunction stuff............very little GI, respiratory.

had a fair amount of autoimmune stuff and CV.

The biggest suprise was there were tons of skin path and skin disorder and skin pics. that kind of shocked me, but seemed like it was overrepresented a tad.


I don't think i had one musculoskeletal and very little endocrine.

it seemed like a lot of stuff focused on mediators, cell path and reaction to injury and such.

overall.............BRS path and First Aid if you know them very well you will not be suprised.

later

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[AlexRusso]

So I just took my Path Shelf...only thing I can think to say about it (and seems to be just about everyone else in my class) is "Where's the KY-Jelly?? Because I feel like I just got bent over"

The test was mostly Microbiology and Immunology. The majority of questions either asked you to identify the microbial pathogen or the immune system component involved. At one point during my exam I had to flip to the cover to make sure I was taking the Path shelf and not the Micro/Immuno one.

Very litlle endocrine, cardio, respiratory, soft tissue, repro, neuro. Out of all the systems based path I'd say skin got the most representation followed by renal and then some GI and heme/lymph. Neoplasia was not huge but there was some. But all of these were by far eclipsed by the amount of Micro/Immuno and what I guess you would call general path principles.

I did most of the QBank path questions (600 of the 700 or so) in preparation and read BRS Path 2x and did all the q's in there. I also read the path section in FA while studying BRS and once last night. None of that seemed to matter.

In retrospect I wish I'd spent the day yesterday reading Micro Made Ridiculously Simple and Lange Immuno. I think that doing so would have REALLY imrpoved my grade.

I was doing pretty well on Qbank towards the end (mid 70's) but I'd be surprised if I got more than half the questions right on this puppy.

I know that each school gets different versions of the exam so don't go running to read your Micro/Immuno books. Maybe yours will be quite different. Just felt the need to let off some steam.

Got my Behavioral Shelf tomorrw. Wondring if I should read pharm or maybe some embryo and histo hey..you never know..feels like a crapshoot at this point.

 

[csmith1]

I think you meant it as a joke, but my Behavioral Science shelf was chock full of pharm questions. Took it last week. The pharm questions were numerous. Seemed to be an equal split of questions about certain conditions & drugs of choice and questions about side effects (patient presents with x, y, and z....what could they have taken to get this effect?). It was a looooong 2.5 hours.

I concur on the path shelf. sooooooo much immunology.

 

[tega]

on the contrary my behave shelf had minimal pharm but a ridiculous amount of dr./pt. relationship....probably 70 out of the 120 qs.

And my path shelf had lots of micro also....but mainly stuff covered in robbins and brs......a majority of the gross photographs on mine were skin pathology...couldnt recognize anything...but luckily, most of of the questions could be answered w/o the pics.

 

[csmith1]

i want a do-over and tega's bs shelf.

 

[HiddenTruth]

Damn you studied BRS/FA/and QBANK and thought that thing was hard?--I mite as well prepare my death bed this friday. I mean I just started reading BRS about 2 days ago for the first time. Although, I just had the path course and read robbins throughout for it. But I mean, all we have to do is pass the thing which is like 1.4 percentile (~40%). It doesn'y mean anything for us. Why do you guysstudy that hard for it? Well I also dont take baords till another yr--maybe u all have boards comming up--cool, just my 2 cents

 

[HiddenTruth]

Yo-- well am studying for shelf path using the 1st ed. Is there a huge difference btwn the 1st and 2nd even though they are btoh 8 yrs apart? I heard neoplasia was the only ch that was significantly difft-- can i get by reading the 1st ed and taking the shelf. thanks

 

[AlexRusso]

It was 25% of our grade and my boards are in a month...hence the intense preparation. I didnt mean to scare anyone off though..just my experience..maybe your shelf will be different. I just felt like I studied the wrong stuff.

 

[Stinger86]

Damn you studied BRS/FA/and QBANK and thought that thing was hard?--I mite as well prepare my death bed this friday. I mean I just started reading BRS about 2 days ago for the first time. Although, I just had the path course and read robbins throughout for it. But I mean, all we have to do is pass the thing which is like 1.4 percentile (~40%). It doesn'y mean anything for us. Why do you guysstudy that hard for it? Well I also dont take baords till another yr--maybe u all have boards comming up--cool, just my 2 cents

I took my Path NBME last monday and it was a breeze. Micro and Path are very closely related (shouldn't really be a surprise given that microorganisms infect you and cause pathology) so gotta pay attention to that. BRS Path should be more than enough to pass the exam if anyone needs to study, but if you paid attention in class and read the book during the course, I bet anyone can do well without even studying.

 

[DarksideAllstar]

Took mine today. Had a whopping 12 hrs to prep for it. My test was pretty similar to the description that 12R34Y was giving. The micro on my test was pretty straightforward, but the path seemed to be testing more minutia(sp) about the immune system and cell surface markers than I had expected. I had like 6 endocrine questions and one question about bone tumors.

Contrary to what a previous poster has stated, I believe that it is beneficial to review material, even if you knew it perfectly once before. I think most people will agree that they need some type of review to jar their memory (especially topics covered in the fall), and it probably wouldnt serve one well to go into the test "cold".
Good luck.