Kline echo boards

[DrMO]

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I'm doing terrible in Kline. No way I'm gonna be able to pass echo boards in 3 weeks! How well were you guys doing on Kline that passed this exam? Any advice? I did ASE and Mayo videos as well.

 

[FreakofMeds]

Klein is a tough book. Just use it as a resource to learn about the answers. I was getting in the 50s and 60s on klein, but on the real thing I got >80% of the questions right and above 90th percentile. So don't sweat, just read the answers in klein because they are very helpful.

 

[Instatewaiter]

Klein is a tough book. Just use it as a resource to learn about the answers. I was getting in the 50s and 60s on klein, but on the real thing I got >80% of the questions right and above 90th percentile. So don't sweat, just read the answers in klein because they are very helpful.

Questions seem kinda random and nit-picky at times. And there is a lot of stuff that is not used (basically all of the dyssynchrony stuff). Does anyone but Mayo use the Tei index or sphericity index? Is this how the real board questions are?

I hear the images on the real thing are terrible quality and worse than Klein's book. When it is a crappy image, do they at least tell you the view. Even in Klein there are sometimes when I can't even tell the view they are using.

And who looks at frozen 2D images?

/rant

 

[Phospholipid]

How are you guys doing on the ASE practice exam. I finished the 1st test at 62% (2.5 months ago), and 67% (2 months ago). I've been going over the test again on tutor mode. What is a good percentage for comfortably passing? Thanks

 

[Instatewaiter]

How are you guys doing on the ASE practice exam. I finished the 1st test at 62% (2.5 months ago), and 67% (2 months ago). I've been going over the test again on tutor mode. What is a good percentage for comfortably passing? Thanks

Are you talking about the 2 tests that have 150 questions?

If so, I have no idea what you need to comfortably pass because who knows if those are even representative of the real test.

Someone on here posted an article from a few years back where the average score was broken down by months of training and averages ranged from 64% (if you only had a few months of training) to 72% right (if you had a bunch of training). 1 STD was 3 percent or so. If you assume the average really was about 70% right and at that time about 78% passed- one standard deviation below the mean would about 16th percentile which would be about a 67% correct. You'd have to be just above this (since 22nd percentile would have been the passing score) so I'd guess about a 68-69%.

Assuming these questions are representative of the real thing, then to comfortably pass you'd probably need to be around 70% right. Now there are a lot of assumptions above so I think the real answer is who knows.

 

[ECHO -PTSD]

I'm doing terrible in Kline. No way I'm gonna be able to pass echo boards in 3 weeks! How well were you guys doing on Kline that passed this exam? Any advice? I did ASE and Mayo videos as well.

Hi guys

ECHO boards are over, however I have mixed feelings about the test. The more I think about it and the worse I feel like

Please share your impressions after taking the test . Thank you in advance!!

 

[Doppler]

Took the Echo boards this month . I can tell you that this was by far the MOST DIFFICULT BOARD EXAMINATION of my academic career [ even when compared to the General cardiovascular boards and the Nuclear cardiology boards ] . First time in my life I felt , while taking the test , that only a DIVINE intervention can make me score even 50 % in this exam . I did Mayo board review DVD'S along with the board review Book , previous year ASE board review course on line , ASE board test practice questions [ total 300 plus quiz -50 ] , Klein , Sorrell [ ALL at least 4 times ] ; Fiegenbaum ECHO DVD'S [ once ] . These are the usual study resources recommended by the previous successful members of this blog .
I felt that Klein book was challenging but very useful for the rigorous preparation . This exam should be taken extremely seriously and perhaps requires couple of hrs of focused study every day for at least 6-8 months [ if not a year ] . I have decided to buy the newer edition of the klein book ASAP [ will be available soon ] and start studying to prepare for the next echo board exam in July 2017 . I think it's doable to pass [ as so many candidates do every year ] but requires tons of sincere prep . By the way I could not do the Feigenbaum's text book [ due to lack of available time ] and definitely feel that this was my downfall and cause for the potential failure . Hope this helps .

 

[Instatewaiter]

Hi guys

ECHO boards are over, however I have mixed feelings about the test. The more I think about it and the worse I feel like

Please share your impressions after taking the test . Thank you in advance!!

As I posted on another thread, I thought this test was hard. As Doppler said, it is definitely one of the harder board exams. While I haven't taken the general cardiology boards, I have taken nuclear which I thought were easy and IM which were intermediate. This was orders of magnitude harder than IM boards. The questions are somewhat random, very commonly not clinically relevant. The images were often off axis or not enough information. They obviously leave many questions intentionally vague. Sometimes the questions were vague like, "This percentage of TEEs show insufficiency of the tricuspid valve is X" (example, not actual question). You are left asking the question - did they mean any regurg or did they specifically say insufficiency as in significant regurg? What is significant regurg? Why am I taking this exam?

In terms of prep I studied during fellowship on and off during third year and buckled down during superfellowship for a few hours a day for over a month. For a book I read Jae K Oh's book during fellowship which was a good primer and easy to go through for basics. For studying I watched the Mayo DVDs and did the Klein questions. I too bought the ASE board test questions which I didn't think were all that different than Klein and perhaps not worth the money. I strongly recommend sucking it up and buying Klein. I recommend Edelman's physics (~50 pages).

I agree this exam should be taken seriously. I feel like I put in a very solid effort. I think personally, even if I studied for another week straight, I am not sure my score, whatever it was, would appreciably change.