Kaplan Qbank vs USMLE Rx -- 2010

[jejun]

I believe there have been some recent changes in both USMLE Rx and Kaplan Qbank. It seems like the general consensus is that USMLE World is most representative bank for the test, so only wanted to compare Rx to Kaplan. They both may be great resources, but if I pick one I want to get my money's worth!

I have searched this topic but many of the posts are out of date. I posted some questions that I thought would help organize this thread.

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*How long did you use the bank?

*How did you incorporate the bank into your studying?

*Quality of questions?

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[mrmandrake]

I'm using USMLERx along with classes. I had to make the same decision as you and I just closed my eyes and picked one. I'm pretty happy with USMLERx but since I've never used Kaplan Qbank, I can't really compare. I find that the questions are pretty good but the explanations aren't great at all. They will often refer you to the page in FA and give you maybe a sentence of explanation for each wrong answer, although they give a bit more than this for the right answer.

I've gone through some of USMLEWorld and their explanations are a lot more thorough. Again, I can't comment on Kaplan. I find that maybe 1-2 questions out of 100 are written very poorly. Remember, these are written by students.

 

[jejun]

I really like that Rx is directly from FA, but I would assume Kaplan has the professors who teach for them write their questions/explanations?

 

[mrmandrake]

I'd just like to add a little more about the explanations given in USMLERx. I am going through the micro section right now and a wrong answer that I picked was Legionella. In the explanation, they say "Legionella is a gram negative bacilli ... blah blah blah" but they don't explain WHY the answer was wrong. They probably think it's obvious why the answer was wrong once they explain some characteristics about the wrong answer but they never directly tell you how you can come to eliminate this wrong answer. This is the biggest problem I have with USMLERx. Seems like a cop out and very different than UW which goes into detail about why something is wrong.

 

[C5toC9]

I think the problem with this is that most people go with either Rx or Kaplan so few people really know how one compares to the other. Would be most useful if people who used both banks could comment.

 

[dangit]

I'm using USMLERx along with classes. I had to make the same decision as you and I just closed my eyes and picked one. I'm pretty happy with USMLERx but since I've never used Kaplan Qbank, I can't really compare. I find that the questions are pretty good but the explanations aren't great at all. They will often refer you to the page in FA and give you maybe a sentence of explanation for each wrong answer, although they give a bit more than this for the right answer.

I've gone through some of USMLEWorld and their explanations are a lot more thorough. Again, I can't comment on Kaplan. I find that maybe 1-2 questions out of 100 are written very poorly. Remember, these are written by students.

how do you know kaplan questions are written by students?

 

[mrmandrake]

how do you know kaplan questions are written by students?

Sorry I was being ambiguous. I meant to say that the USMLERx questions are written by students. I would guess that there is some peer review process with their questions or something of that nature though.

 

[Rollo]

I'd just like to add a little more about the explanations given in USMLERx. I am going through the micro section right now and a wrong answer that I picked was Legionella. In the explanation, they say "Legionella is a gram negative bacilli ... blah blah blah" but they don't explain WHY the answer was wrong. They probably think it's obvious why the answer was wrong once they explain some characteristics about the wrong answer but they never directly tell you how you can come to eliminate this wrong answer. This is the biggest problem I have with USMLERx. Seems like a cop out and very different than UW which goes into detail about why something is wrong.

I run into these sort of questions too and I have found that if you concentrate on their explanation for the correct answer, you should be able to deduce why the other answers are wrong.

I feel you though, sometimes I just want the lazy man's explanation for why the wrong answer is wrong.

 

[hyrule]

how are you guys doing on kaplan qbank
been getting 40% to 60% (if im lucky)

 

[jejun]

Hey haven't started the bank yet... but wanted to know if you liked Kaplan's questions? Are the explanations good and do the have references to the new First Aid?

 

[Encephalectomy]

so far no page updates for the 2011 version of first aid which has been a little annoying

 

[DrDrToBe]

I agree that it would be nice if Kaplan would hasten the process of referencing FA 2011. Overall though, I really like Qbank. I can't comment on the similarity to the NBME's, but it's definitely helping me go through FA and learn the material. I don't have any experience with Rx, but here are some of the features I like about Qbank.
1) The questions are scenarios so I wouldn't say they're directly from FA, but each question has the reference to the page in FA 2008, 2009 and 2010. They also reference Medessentials and give you the option of looking at an image of the page in Medessentials (which is nice if you don't have the book or don't feel like looking it up). I personally don't use the Medessentials reference much, but sometimes it's good if you need a bit more detail than FA, and it often has great tables and images.
2) The explanations are great. Sometimes i think the explanations are more detailed than you need (some of the stuff they explain is not in FA), but it really helps me understand the concepts and why things are wrong.
3) They have this feature called a Qutorial, which are 2-5 min video clips by their professors explaining certain concepts. So for questions that are particularly difficult (ones where there's a low percentage of people who got it correct), they have a teacher walk you through it. Gold!

I think you would probably be fine with either bank, just go for it!

 

[MossPoh]

I have the Kaplan question book (free version and older one) along with Uworld and a bunch of other stuff.

Anyway, in the qbook which I doubt is much different in actual questions than the bank, it seems to have a little little more misdirection or random detail emphasis. The explanations are fairly strong. I encountered a few questions that I did have that, "Are you friggin serious?" moment..but I get those with Uworld too.

Don't know anything about USMLE Rx, except that it was cheap. I heard it was a little more direct in the questions they asked.

 

[kryptik]

flood their support email with your requests and they will hasten it