MS1 here...school "Does not teach towards Step 1"

[UAAWolf]

Basically, our school warned us they leave up to 20-30% of step1 material out of our classes, and that they do NOT teach towards it AT ALL!

On top of that, we only have 3 weeks after MS2 to take step 1.

So far, our exams have focussed on minutiae...not clinical vignettes. For example, our micro tests are specific little details and almost no patient cases

I just don't know what to do..I don't wanna find myself getting screwed for step 1.

*I think because our school is big on family practice, they don't care about scores..school avg is nat'l avg*


What do SDN?

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[justdoit31]

Basically, our school warned us they leave up to 20-30% of step1 material out of our classes, and that they do NOT teach towards it AT ALL!

On top of that, we only have 3 weeks after MS2 to take step 1.

So far, our exams have focussed on minutiae...not clinical vignettes. For example, our micro tests are specific little details and almost no patient cases

I just don't know what to do..I don't wanna find myself getting screwed for step 1.

*I think because our school is big on family practice, they don't care about scores..school avg is nat'l avg*


What do SDN?

I think the first thing to do is to really focus on learning the material during MSI- use First Aid or other Step books (BRS, RR, etc.) while studying for the test to recognize the key topics if you feel the school isn't as focused on them.

Then during MSII keep studying hard, and do the same thing. Around 5 months or so out from STEP start reviewing First Aid and try to get 1-2 full read throughs before your dedicated study time. Use a Qbank and work a few questions a day throughout the spring semester. Then use those 3 weeks to really hammer topics that you are weak in, work a lot of problems/practice exams, etc.

Good luck!

 

[zebalong]

I think the first thing to do is to really focus on learning the material during MSI- use First Aid or other Step books (BRS, RR, etc.) while studying for the test to recognize the key topics if you feel the school isn't as focused on them.

Then during MSII keep studying hard, and do the same thing. Around 5 months or so out from STEP start reviewing First Aid and try to get 1-2 full read throughs before your dedicated study time. Use a Qbank and work a few questions a day throughout the spring semester. Then use those 3 weeks to really hammer topics that you are weak in, work a lot of problems/practice exams, etc.

Good luck!

Been using gunner training as i go through material. When i finished immuno i made sure to finish all the stuff on GT even if we never covered it in my classes. Since GT so closely follows first aid, im sure to have covered most of what is important for the USMLE as i go through the classes, also GT helps quiz me on that material so I learn it better. Only neg is that it does take time and concentration especially to memorize and learn stuff not even talked about in class. Overall i've liked it a lot though esp. when i quickly flipped through FA and found that GT taught me almost all of it, and during our case studies I have found all the points we were suppose to learn from them I had already learned using th program. Look into it it might be worthwhile. I'm sure someone on this board can hook u up with a month trial otherwise PM me and i can shoot you an email.

 

[xanthomondo]

Basically, our school warned us they leave up to 20-30% of step1 material out of our classes, and that they do NOT teach towards it AT ALL!

On top of that, we only have 3 weeks after MS2 to take step 1.

So far, our exams have focussed on minutiae...not clinical vignettes. For example, our micro tests are specific little details and almost no patient cases

I just don't know what to do..I don't wanna find myself getting screwed for step 1.

*I think because our school is big on family practice, they don't care about scores..school avg is nat'l avg*


What do SDN?

Everyone thinks their school doesn't teach to step1 while every other school strictly lectures to step1 and nothing else. Obviously your school prepares their students adequately - or else they'd have such a high failure rate that they would have to change their ways.

Focus on doing well, and don't worry about step1.

 

[fahimaz7]

Every one thinks their school doesn't teach to step1 while every other school strictly lectures to step1 and nothing else. Obviously your school prepares their students adequately - or else they'd have such a high failure rate thy would have to change their ways.

Focus on doing well, and don't worry about step1.

👍

Just relax. Read review books when you're studying and you'll be just fine. All that micro (Catalase+, coagulase-, red pigment, gram - lactose fermenting, etc) crap that you think is minutiae is on the test. Especially if it's a virulence factor.

 

[RySerr21]

Everyone thinks their school doesn't teach to step1 while every other school strictly lectures to step1 and nothing else. Obviously your school prepares their students adequately - or else they'd have such a high failure rate that they would have to change their ways.

Focus on doing well, and don't worry about step1.

ehhh in reality I dont think that is true. Its very easy to tell if a school is preparing you or not (you should read our ppts and exams - they are ridiculous). At my school, we have shelf exams. The first year when I didnt fully realize how terrible our classes were, I just studied that material and only reviewed an outside source for the shelf exams....i did so so, but more importantly the exams were NOTHING like anything we had seen. 2nd year, i completely ignored everything our classes taught, studied with sources that upperclassmen said were good sources, and ive done really well on the 3 shelves we had this year.

Students aren't dumb - as a whole we do fine on the step, but its not b/c the school prepared us or focused on it, its b/c the students did what they had to do to learn the material they were expected to know, regardless of what the school decided to teach.


OP, talk to your upperclassmen. If they tell you that they were underprepared, and you feel that you are not being taught well, then you probably arent. Take your education in your hands and learn what is expected of you for the exams that matter, not what some random researcher feels is important regarding his/her personal project. I would just get all those questions wrong on our exams and get the clinically relevant stuff correct and it averaged out to a passing grade. And in the end, I feel I learned the information well, which is most important.

 

[xanthomondo]

ehhh in reality I dont think that is true. Its very easy to tell if a school is preparing you or not (you should read our ppts and exams - they are ridiculous). At my school, we have shelf exams. The first year when I didnt fully realize how terrible our classes were, I just studied that material and only reviewed an outside source for the shelf exams....i did so so, but more importantly the exams were NOTHING like anything we had seen. 2nd year, i completely ignored everything our classes taught, studied with sources that upperclassmen said were good sources, and ive done really well on the 3 shelves we had this year.

Students aren't dumb - as a whole we do fine on the step, but its not b/c the school prepared us or focused on it, its b/c the students did what they had to do to learn the material they were expected to know, regardless of what the school decided to teach.


OP, talk to your upperclassmen. If they tell you that they were underprepared, and you feel that you are not being taught well, then you probably arent. Take your education in your hands and learn what is expected of you for the exams that matter, not what some random researcher feels is important regarding his/her personal project. I would just get all those questions wrong on our exams and get the clinically relevant stuff correct and it averaged out to a passing grade. And in the end, I feel I learned the information well, which is most important.

This is how it is everywhere, though. Awful lectures, awful notes. Professors lecture on their research/academic interests, not necessarily what is EXACTLY on Step1. Seeing as most of the professors are PhD's, they haven't even experienced Step1 to know how to prepare students for it.

My school didn't even use shelf exams for the first two years - so you can imagine Step1 would be even more of a surprise then!

 

[RySerr21]

This is how it is everywhere, though. Awful lectures, awful notes. Professors lecture on their research/academic interests, not necessarily what is EXACTLY on Step1. Seeing as most of the professors are PhD's, they haven't even experienced Step1 to know how to prepare students for it.

My school didn't even use shelf exams for the first two years - so you can imagine Step1 would be even more of a surprise then!

i agree, i didnt mean to imply i thought my school was the only one that had this problem!

 

[fahimaz7]

i agree, i didnt mean to imply i thought my school was the only one that had this problem!

Our school follows the prep material almost spot on. I can't imagine having it any other way. Must suck for sure.

 

[Sinister]

Our school gives us 2 weeks to study so dont feel so bad.

Basically, our school warned us they leave up to 20-30% of step1 material out of our classes, and that they do NOT teach towards it AT ALL!

On top of that, we only have 3 weeks after MS2 to take step 1.

So far, our exams have focussed on minutiae...not clinical vignettes. For example, our micro tests are specific little details and almost no patient cases

I just don't know what to do..I don't wanna find myself getting screwed for step 1.

*I think because our school is big on family practice, they don't care about scores..school avg is nat'l avg*


What do SDN?

 

[RySerr21]

Our school follows the prep material almost spot on. I can't imagine having it any other way. Must suck for sure.

it wasnt too bad, our P/F is convenient cuz i can study what i want and still get the same grade as those who chose to spend their time memorizing details of ppt slides. Definitetely would rather have it the way your school does tho

 

[UAAWolf]

Everyone thinks their school doesn't teach to step1 while every other school strictly lectures to step1 and nothing else. Obviously your school prepares their students adequately - or else they'd have such a high failure rate that they would have to change their ways.

Focus on doing well, and don't worry about step1.

k

 

[UAAWolf]

This is how it is everywhere, though. Awful lectures, awful notes. Professors lecture on their research/academic interests, not necessarily what is EXACTLY on Step1. Seeing as most of the professors are PhD's, they haven't even experienced Step1 to know how to prepare students for it.

My school didn't even use shelf exams for the first two years - so you can imagine Step1 would be even more of a surprise then!

I don't even know what a shelf exam is.

 

[Mr hawkings]

I' ve said this before in another thread but schools do not teach towards boards. They to teach towards what they believe a good physician should know. So thats going to differ based on the school and who is teaching. If you're lucky enough to have younger faculty who finished med school less that 20 years ago, they may be more apt to teaching specifically for boards. the older ones just cannot relate. They come from an era when step 1 and 2 still functioned to prove that you had enough basic knowledge to be a competent physician and not as a screening tool to determine which specialty you could/could not go into.

 

[fahimaz7]

it wasnt too bad, our P/F is convenient cuz i can study what i want and still get the same grade as those who chose to spend their time memorizing details of ppt slides. Definitetely would rather have it the way your school does tho

We're graded 90,80,70, etc using the A/B system. We keep voting for a different grading scale, but our students choose to keep the A/B/c system. We feel it "motivates us" to try and learn all that we can, in hopes that it'll help us when it comes to boards.

luckily you could study first aid, lippincot pharm, and first aid and make A's in my curriculum.

 

[RySerr21]

We're graded 90,80,70, etc using the A/B system. We keep voting for a different grading scale, but our students choose to keep the A/B/c system. We feel it "motivates us" to try and learn all that we can, in hopes that it'll help us when it comes to boards.

luckily you could study first aid, lippincot pharm, and first aid and make A's in my curriculum.

yea i dont really understand the 'it will motivate you' argument, or the 'you won't be motivated if you don't have grades' argument. I would hope that at this point in our education there would be much stronger motivations to learn material than letter grades. This isn't high school, we voluntarily chose to be here to learn relevant material that will help us do our jobs well. THAT is what motivates me, and that is what i hope motivates my colleagues. This was a common argument from our faculty/admin when we were going through the transition phase from H/P/F to P/F (my class was the first). They stopped complaining when our shelf exam scores actually increased compared to previous years.

 

[fahimaz7]

yea i dont really understand the 'it will motivate you' argument, or the 'you won't be motivated if you don't have grades' argument. I would hope that at this point in our education there would be much stronger motivations to learn material than letter grades. This isn't high school, we voluntarily chose to be here to learn relevant material that will help us do our jobs well. THAT is what motivates me, and that is what i hope motivates my colleagues. This was a common argument from our faculty/admin when we were going through the transition phase from H/P/F to P/F (my class was the first). They stopped complaining when our shelf exam scores actually increased compared to previous years.

Got me bro. I think it depends on the student.

Either way, medical school's mission is to get you to pass your boards, not to turn 190 students into plastic surgeons and dermatologists.

 

[Decicco]

Got me bro. I think it depends on the student.

We have H/H-/P/F and it definitely motivates me. You can't really compare two different years' students because they are different people.

 

[RySerr21]

We have H/H-/P/F and it definitely motivates me. You can't really compare two different years' students because they are different people.

i'm not saying that a graded system doesn't motivate students (altho i think its definitely possible for it to movivate students in the wrong way), i'm saying the idea that students will be unmotivated b/c there isn't a graded system is not a good one.

 

[UAAWolf]

So I just signed up for gunner training (18 months)

I already tried the free trial before and loved it...

Its def too light for studying for current classes, but its gold for retaining stuff from old classes.

 

[Decicco]

i'm not saying that a graded system doesn't motivate students (altho i think its definitely possible for it to movivate students in the wrong way), i'm saying the idea that students will be unmotivated b/c there isn't a graded system is not a good one.

And, I'll admit that the H/H-/P/F grading system does motivate me to memorize meaningless minutiae (check out that alliteration) when I could otherwise be sleeping. Not a good use of time/energy, but those things do show up on our tests. No system is perfect, IMHO.

 

[zebalong]

So I just signed up for gunner training (18 months)

I already tried the free trial before and loved it...

Its def too light for studying for current classes, but its gold for retaining stuff from old classes.

I'm doing 18 months too. Its good to get started early, its hard to keep filing away the flash cards and doing your daily questions in a short amount of time. I'm figuring knocking out 5% a month is a pretty good pace... any faster then that and i start getting >100 daily review questions

But I've definitely seen my work pay off.

 

[RySerr21]

And, I'll admit that the H/H-/P/F grading system does motivate me to memorize meaningless minutiae (check out that alliteration) when I could otherwise be sleeping. Not a good use of time/energy, but those things do show up on our tests. No system is perfect, IMHO.

Yea I agree you can find a strength and weakness for every system, altho i konw for me P/F has no weaknesses....i love my sleep and having the ability to ignore pointless minutiae w/o worrying about it affecting my grade. P=MD, its tattooed on my arm.

 

[UAAWolf]

I'm doing 18 months too. Its good to get started early, its hard to keep filing away the flash cards and doing your daily questions in a short amount of time. I'm figuring knocking out 5% a month is a pretty good pace... any faster then that and i start getting >100 daily review questions

But I've definitely seen my work pay off.

How are you doing this while also studying for your classes?

Were so bogged down in class its hard for me to use Gunner Training daily...

Maybe just an hour or so everyday before class??😕😕

 

[dozitgetchahi]

How are you doing this while also studying for your classes?

Were so bogged down in class its hard for me to use Gunner Training daily...

Maybe just an hour or so everyday before class??😕😕

Trust me - just try it.

I too wondered if doing GT/qbank qs would be an effective use of time until I tried it this year and my grades went up.

Questions simply help you retain info way better than endless repetition...and it's more efficient also. I can't believe the hours I spent M1 year agonizing over charts and tables of info that either 1) I didn't really need to know or 2) would have been retained much better if approached with a Q&A learning methodology.

 

[Shadowmoses]

I'm doing 18 months too. Its good to get started early, its hard to keep filing away the flash cards and doing your daily questions in a short amount of time. I'm figuring knocking out 5% a month is a pretty good pace... any faster then that and i start getting >100 daily review questions

But I've definitely seen my work pay off.

Odd question but do you use the 'Add your own notes' ANNOTATE feature to add extra notes? I find myself using that feature so much that I am going to get several old-fashioned spiral notebooks specifically to annotate the bullet points on the flashcards.

Maybe you or others have other ways to remember the concepts behind the bullet points? 😕

 

[DoctorDermis]

Basically, our school warned us they leave up to 20-30% of step1 material out of our classes, and that they do NOT teach towards it AT ALL!

On top of that, we only have 3 weeks after MS2 to take step 1.

So far, our exams have focussed on minutiae...not clinical vignettes. For example, our micro tests are specific little details and almost no patient cases

I just don't know what to do..I don't wanna find myself getting screwed for step 1.

*I think because our school is big on family practice, they don't care about scores..school avg is nat'l avg*


What do SDN?

DUDE Relax.

A lot of schools teach outside of what's on the NBME Step 1 list.

Just do UW questions from the beginning, while annotating First Aid and you will do well.
Rapid Review path is icing on the cake.

Start now, and you wont regret it later.

 

[zebalong]

How are you doing this while also studying for your classes?

Were so bogged down in class its hard for me to use Gunner Training daily...

Maybe just an hour or so everyday before class??😕😕

Great thread here http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showpost.php?p=9811776&postcount=797 about how someone used GT.

I took his advice and am doing it right in the morning. After you get used to GT you can burn through it a lot quicker... 50 questions used to take me like an hour but after you start seeing the same concepts over and over again it takes you less time to review. now i can burn through 100 questions or do 50 questions and a few flash cards in that hour.

But I like doing it first thing in the morning, getting it out of the way (and i feel like i've already accomplished something) then focusing the rest of my day on my classes. Helps me keeps things more organized in my head.

I'm doing this guy's study plan too except im adding in Kaplan Qbank, Nov. start RX doing first year stuff, then feb-march kaplan and then april may Uworld with DIT. It may seem overkill but like everyone else on the board im shooting for a 240 so this seems like a good mixture of intense FA review (GT,RX and DIT) along with doing the 10000 question method (RX, Kaplan, Uworld, and also doing the review qestions for systems in the robins review book while i take my courses).

Right now im starting on Gojlan audio and RR going through things as we cover them - they are great passive learning and I actually find it kind of relaxing. The stuff he covers has been very high yield for my case conferences in my class (TB, types of shock, ect.) A course leader even pimped my group once thinking he was all smug... but i knew the answer from a goljan lecture - shocked him and I really felt I had learned something.

If anyone has any advice to change my plan I'd love to hear it. So far though it is working out great - I feel like im keeping up on stuff ill need for the step and im doing well in my classes >75 class percentile on my exams a couple i've hit in the 90's.

 

[zebalong]

Odd question but do you use the 'Add your own notes' ANNOTATE feature to add extra notes? I find myself using that feature so much that I am going to get several old-fashioned spiral notebooks specifically to annotate the bullet points on the flashcards.

Maybe you or others have other ways to remember the concepts behind the bullet points? 😕

I annotate into a spiral bound notebook - and then i can review that stuff like once a week. I'm more of a write it down guy then a type it out guy - i feel i retain it better that way.

 

[Encephalectomy]

Great thread here http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showpost.php?p=9811776&postcount=797 about how someone used GT.

I took his advice and am doing it right in the morning. After you get used to GT you can burn through it a lot quicker... 50 questions used to take me like an hour but after you start seeing the same concepts over and over again it takes you less time to review. now i can burn through 100 questions or do 50 questions and a few flash cards in that hour.

But I like doing it first thing in the morning, getting it out of the way (and i feel like i've already accomplished something) then focusing the rest of my day on my classes. Helps me keeps things more organized in my head.

I'm doing this guy's study plan too except im adding in Kaplan Qbank, Nov. start RX doing first year stuff, then feb-march kaplan and then april may Uworld with DIT. It may seem overkill but like everyone else on the board im shooting for a 240 so this seems like a good mixture of intense FA review (GT,RX and DIT) along with doing the 10000 question method (RX, Kaplan, Uworld, and also doing the review qestions for systems in the robins review book while i take my courses).

Right now im starting on Gojlan audio and RR going through things as we cover them - they are great passive learning and I actually find it kind of relaxing. The stuff he covers has been very high yield for my case conferences in my class (TB, types of shock, ect.) A course leader even pimped my group once thinking he was all smug... but i knew the answer from a goljan lecture - shocked him and I really felt I had learned something.

If anyone has any advice to change my plan I'd love to hear it. So far though it is working out great - I feel like im keeping up on stuff ill need for the step and im doing well in my classes >75 class percentile on my exams a couple i've hit in the 90's.

I'm on a pretty similar plan minus DIT and it is money. only main difference is that I did kaplan qbank along with classes, am doing a first pass through uworld now (will do a second pass in may) and am doing rx when i have time and should get through all to most of it. I wouldn't change anything with your plan.

 

[ArcGurren]

Does any school 'test towards the test'? I know that I've learned a lot over the week of step 1 studying, and I know there is a lot I still don't know. And I am beginning to accept there will be a lot on the real exam that I will have never known and will never likely know.

I think most schools by default test what their lecturers know... and not what's on the shelf exams or step 1. That's the nature of having basic science courses, you are basically a slave to whatever people at your school know how to teach. We have an amazing faculty for teaching GI pathology for example, but our hematology unit was ridiculously awful and disorganized. There isn't much you can do except fill in the gaps in your learning.