KCUMB Class of 2018

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Zaphod42 said:
I'm trying to be as objective as possible here.. The physiology questions were actually on the easier side compared to many questions I've seen in Qbanks. If you read all of kaplan and it didn't help you then you didn't focus on the concepts (I used BRS but I'm assuming Kaplan is just as good). I think it would help you in the future if you spend the first day or two completely focused on reviewing physio (use Costanzo, BRS, Kaplan or your own notes from last year) then diving into the path.


Look through my previous posts for study advice. Many of those who do well have a similar strategy (or just geniuses). For example, I did about 250 practice questions and focused on reading explanations. I bet a lot of the people who struggled didn't. Most of the items tested on the exam I saw somewhere in the questions/explanations.
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I'm assuming you were referring to Med rob+baby rob/lecture + and Qbanks?
 
Shen924 said:
I'm assuming you were referring to Med rob+baby rob/lecture + and Qbanks?
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Didn't realize thats from last year and I changed it up a bit. I now use pocket robbins mainly and big robbins to fill in extra details. Use Dr. Puthoffs powerpoints as a guide. Watch pathoma at the start of each section. Write notes in a way that allows you to quiz yourself (like using table feature). Categorize things as much as you can and start by learning what is in each category before you dive into details. Ask yourself questions like: Does this category have something in common? Does this affect a certain age group? etc. For every major condition I try and make tables that answer as best as I can: Category, Epidemiology, Clinical Presentation, Diagnostics, Morphology, Genetics, Tx/Prognosis. Compare/Contrast things that present similarly. A lot of this is already picked out in pocket robbins. Then I make a single pass through big robbins to complete my notes. Now I solely rely on notes (marking in red when I can't explain something) and only open Robbins for clarification (at this point I look at board review books like RR path and first aid for gaps). I use the days leading up to an exam to figure out what I don't know buy doing a crapload of questions from: Webpath, Robbins Review, Kaplan, USMLERx. You learn a lot from just reading explanations. For pharm, I make Anki cards. I've spoken in length about study strategies with other classmates who are also at the top of our class and many have a very similar approach. Sorry for the lengthy post, just want to be as helpful as possible.
 
Average is a 72. I'm sorry but I blame the physiology. I did all of what zaphod did. I was averaging 85% on my practice questions; reviewing the ones I missed, and reading the explanations of ALL of them. I then went back through my weak material.
So, I guess I'm just stupid.
 
Eremba said:
Average is a 72. I'm sorry but I blame the physiology. I did all of what zaphod did. I was averaging 85% on my practice questions; reviewing the ones I missed, and reading the explanations of ALL of them. I then went back through my weak material.
So, I guess I'm just stupid.
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This is how I have felt since MOD, just constantly stupid.
 
Eremba said:
Average is a 72. I'm sorry but I blame the physiology. I did all of what zaphod did. I was averaging 85% on my practice questions; reviewing the ones I missed, and reading the explanations of ALL of them. I then went back through my weak material.
So, I guess I'm just stupid.
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Obviously you're not stupid. You just have to find out what went wrong. I don't mean just what you missed but why you missed it. During the exam review, ask yourself why you missed a question. Was it conceptual? Did you misunderstand what the question was asking? Was the question worded poorly? etc. Its unfortunate we can't bring in paper/pen because it would be much easier to do this. Lets say you missed 80% physiology questions. This means you have your path/pharm techniques down and need to modify how you study physiology. Did you do well in renal phys last year? If not than you may not have enough of a foundation and may need to spend some extra time reading through costanzo (asking yourself constantly WHY something happens) and doing extra questions instead of a review book like BRS or Kaplan that may not provide a proper conceptual framework.
 
Eremba said:
Average is a 72. I'm sorry but I blame the physiology. I did all of what zaphod did. I was averaging 85% on my practice questions; reviewing the ones I missed, and reading the explanations of ALL of them. I then went back through my weak material.
So, I guess I'm just stupid.
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That's the average for the Renal Midterm?
 
chizledfrmstone said:
That's the average for the Renal Midterm?
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Yep, it got announced at the beginning of class this morning.

Zaphod42 said:
Obviously you're not stupid. You just have to find out what went wrong. I don't mean just what you missed but why you missed it. During the exam review, ask yourself why you missed a question. Was it conceptual? Did you misunderstand what the question was asking? Was the question worded poorly? etc. Its unfortunate we can't bring in paper/pen because it would be much easier to do this. Lets say you missed 80% physiology questions. This means you have your path/pharm techniques down and need to modify how you study physiology. Did you do well in renal phys last year? If not than you may not have enough of a foundation and may need to spend some extra time reading through costanzo (asking yourself constantly WHY something happens) and doing extra questions instead of a review book like BRS or Kaplan that may not provide a proper conceptual framework.
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See, I did a lot of that though and I still failed before the curve. I made 6 passes on the Robbins material (Big Robbins), 5 passes on physio, and 4 on pharm, (I'm only counting legitimate passes, not just I skimmed my notes) and still did significantly worse than I was expecting to coming into the test. I honestly don't know what else I could do. At this point I legitimately feel dumb.
 
Zaphod42 said:
Obviously you're not stupid. You just have to find out what went wrong. I don't mean just what you missed but why you missed it. During the exam review, ask yourself why you missed a question. Was it conceptual? Did you misunderstand what the question was asking? Was the question worded poorly? etc. Its unfortunate we can't bring in paper/pen because it would be much easier to do this. Lets say you missed 80% physiology questions. This means you have your path/pharm techniques down and need to modify how you study physiology. Did you do well in renal phys last year? If not than you may not have enough of a foundation and may need to spend some extra time reading through costanzo (asking yourself constantly WHY something happens) and doing extra questions instead of a review book like BRS or Kaplan that may not provide a proper conceptual framework.
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Renal was one of my highest grades last year.
I don't do BRS questions because they are mostly not 2nd order. Especially for phsyio.
The only thing I haven't tried is studying with someone...bouncing my understanding off someone else who can tell me "no. That's wrong."
 
Eremba said:
I honestly don't remember her having any questions on exams?? If that is what you are speaking to in this situation.
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She had some for PCM with the empty word doc and asked us questions
 
Was anything said about not recording lecture today? I might have chosen the wrong day to miss class?
 
WillieTrill said:
I feel like all of these IT "mishaps" are just a passive aggressive way of getting people to go to class
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That's what I was thinking too. There was like...no one in class this morning haha. It'd be a cruel way to go about getting people to come to class. I'd rathe they just email us.
 
AlteredScale said:
That's what I was thinking too. There was like...no one in class this morning haha. It'd be a cruel way to go about getting people to come to class. I'd rathe they just email us.
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It's ridiculous. I pay $43k/year to have less autonomy then I did when I was in undergrad.
 
chizledfrmstone said:
It's ridiculous. I pay $43k/year to have less autonomy then I did when I was in undergrad.
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Serious. I hate when it's used as a reason why we SHOULD come to class when it should mean I can choose if I want to come to class.
 
chizledfrmstone said:
It's ridiculous. I pay $43k/year to have less autonomy then I did when I was in undergrad.
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Don't get me wrong, I am one of those that do not attend classes all the time, but some time I don't know what to think of this issue. I understand the frustration of the professors to come to an empty class, but as a busy, student, always struggling to avoid "falling behind" I am all for the releasing the recording whenever. Honestly if nobody came to class, then the prof would speak to an empty class and then release the recordings? Should we just switch to only video streamees and/or recorded classes? At the same time for some classes even after being in class I like to relitsen to lectures after I have studied the material.
 
Bbutterfly said:
Don't get me wrong, I am one of those that do not attend classes all the time, but some time I don't know what to think of this issue. I understand the frustration of the professors to come to an empty class, but as a busy, student, always struggling to avoid "falling behind" I am all for the releasing the recording whenever. Honestly if nobody came to class, then the prof would speak to an empty class and then release the recordings? Should we just switch to only video streamees and/or recorded classes? At the same time for some classes even after being in class I like to relitsen to lectures after I have studied the material.
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Yea, I totally understand this too.
 
I think the reason attendance has dropped so much is because of how DSAs are scheduled. Monday had 3 readings and Tuesday had 4 (3 being pharm which takes awhile to memorize). Now, I feel I can read and take notes pretty fast but even I'm behind at the moment. Needs to be re-evaluated IMHO.
 
Spot on! In addition people were burn out after the exam and we had OS! DSA when there are other things scheduled makes it a little hard to actually be reading during that time! Or when you have an evening with 2 long DSA and lectures to review/prepare for. Oh well! Also people have different learning styles. I know some people that will be lost if they don't go to class and others that will fail if they had to go to every single class.
 
Yea, this week doesn't look like much material, but when you go through all the DSAs and the fact that we know nothing about what Kirila's questions will be like, it gets a little nerve-wracking. I honestly don't remember any of the questions she's written in the past. Hopefully this goes like Endo though, where we have no idea what to expect then it turns out to be pretty easy...
 
Stagg737 said:
Yea, this week doesn't look like much material, but when you go through all the DSAs and the fact that we know nothing about what Kirila's questions will be like, it gets a little nerve-wracking. I honestly don't remember any of the questions she's written in the past. Hopefully this goes like Endo though, where we have no idea what to expect then it turns out to be pretty easy...
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I remember at least one question of hers from PCM. It was very specific.
 
Stagg737 said:
Specific like Putthoff-style detail oriented or specific as in there's obviously one correct answer (even if the question is tough)?
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Only my opinion so take with grain of salt but specific like I don't know enough about medicine to answer this. But that was last year so maybe now that were being taught clinical stuff it'll be easier.
 
Zaphod42 said:
Only my opinion so take with grain of salt but specific like I don't know enough about medicine to answer this. But that was last year so maybe now that were being taught clinical stuff it'll be easier.
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We're being taught things? Haha..... 🙂
 
It sucked. There was a series of 2 with the woman falling that I had no idea, also the AA one that was wierd.
 
I hate life. That give you any ideas? Haha. Just commit me now.
 
Stagg737 said:
I honestly don't think it was that bad. I did not do well, but I was pretty shocked that most people thought it was that difficult...
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I thought about 65-70% of it was up front answerable and then the rest was "figure out what the clinician actually wants" and some things we never even went over....like antibiotics....or if we did I just missed it in the notes. Which is entirely possible.

From my above comment you can surmise I didn't do well on it, and my comment reflects just my overall state of mind right now on where second year is heading. This exam just tips the scales even further toward insanity.
 
Eremba said:
I thought about 65-70% of it was up front answerable and then the rest was "figure out what the clinician actually wants" and some things we never even went over....like antibiotics....or if we did I just missed it in the notes. Which is entirely possible.

From my above comment you can surmise I didn't do well on it, and my comment reflects just my overall state of mind right now on where second year is heading. This exam just tips the scales even further toward insanity.
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Yea, I feel the same way about this year so far. I think there were about 4-5 questions that really shouldn't have been on this test. Other than that though I thought you could at least figure out what they were asking if you really knew the material. The Antibiotics question was bad, and the ekg question shouldn't have been in this section. The only other one I thought was overly ambiguous was the 2 part one with the older lady that fell down. There was no way that was enough info to even make a decent diagnosis.
 
Stagg737 said:
Yea, I feel the same way about this year so far. I think there were about 4-5 questions that really shouldn't have been on this test. Other than that though I thought you could at least figure out what they were asking if you really knew the material. The Antibiotics question was bad, and the ekg question shouldn't have been in this section. The only other one I thought was overly ambiguous was the 2 part one with the older lady that fell down. There was no way that was enough info to even make a decent diagnosis.
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That question was ridiculous. I reread it 3 times to make sure I wasn't missing an important detail.
 
chizledfrmstone said:
That question was ridiculous. I reread it 3 times to make sure I wasn't missing an important detail.
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To me this was part of the problem, a huge part. Some questions I felt were so poorly written that I had to read them 2 to 3 times to even figure out what was going on. I then started to think that I might not have enough time to finish and that thought at the back of my head was not really helpful
 
Did well on the midterm and bombed the final. Hoping they throw out some of those questions.
 
Bbutterfly said:
To me this was part of the problem, a huge part. Some questions I felt were so poorly written that I had to read them 2 to 3 times to even figure out what was going on. I then started to think that I might not have enough time to finish and that thought at the back of my head was not really helpful
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Many people have told me that questions on COMLEX are similar so I guess in a way its good prep....
 
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