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madariman said:
First Time taker: took the test and feel horrible. had a busy schedule through out but last 2 months, tried to go through most of the materials like ABR notes/BB/UW/MKS.
UW averaged: 60-65% ITEs scores : poor ( but never studied for ITEs) MKSAP : 60s-70s Rpt was in 80s-90s ( but thats just MKSAP memorized data recollected )

The first block was ok then it got bad. Bizarre questions with so many possibilities/weird information. Some questions totally out of scope of any material/ and I have checked atleast 20-25 answers I have gotten totally wrong so far. Sleepless and have become a mess!. There were few questions appearing straightforward which too one feels weird if there is a 'catch' or a 'nuance' I might have missed. Most questions i got wrong were not covered anywhere in any reviews/course. Memorizing did not really help at all.
Thoughts of what to do if there is a bad outcome in October, in terms of plan B: what happens if someone never gets certified. I am not anyone with great contacts , just an 'average joe'.
May be I could take the exam again next year, but I have no clue how to study/what to study?
Do everyone get same questions in a year or its different for every test taker? I already know about 20 wrong of mine from about 30 questions I remembered.
I go to work , see a patient, talk to a buddy and I remember a question then I look up the answer and I find the answer wrong/unsure why I picked some answer or some stupid mistake and then get all nervous. Is there anyone going through the same issues/feelings like me ?
Click to expand...

Hang in there! I'm sure you're not alone with the way you feel. But the test is done and over with. Just be patient and hope for the best! Focus on now and whatever the outcome is, you will handle it later.

Took the test a few days back, I agree with a lot of the other comments posted in the past week. There were many questions which had little information into the question stem to really deduce an answer, UNLESS you really know what they are asking for. There were a few obscure diagnosis that I did not expect to show up on ABIM. These were Q's I expected on the USMLE. All in all, I don't know what to make of the test.

Will try to keep this in the back of my mind and enjoy the rest of summer.
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I recall reading somewhere that there may be up to 65 questions in a section on the ABIM. However, all 4 of my sections were 60 questions. Are there still experimental questions in there?
 
DrDudeMD said:
I recall reading somewhere that there may be up to 65 questions in a section on the ABIM. However, all 4 of my sections were 60 questions. Are there still experimental questions in there?
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http://www.abim.org/certification/exam-information/internal-medicine/exam-content.aspx

It's maximum 60 questions/section for us, and I think it's been like that for a number of years. I'm sure that some proportion of the 240 are experimental, but impossible to say how many.
 
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Every third question had a catch to it. Some are totally out of scope questions. I am going to look at by what margin, things are going to be off in October. If it is a huge margin then I will need a total revising of my study style. so true that this exam cannot be approached by a one review / one q bank approach like the steps. I was also trying to read the way they score this and it is not built to make sure so many percentage of people pass. Its not a regular SD curve which you get to the correct side of the curve. I remember/recollect about 22 wrong answers in about 60-70 questions which by statistic is about 60-67%. I have very less hope and preparing myself for the worst outcome in October. I have seen members here who are taking the boards the third time. I am 2 years out of my residency, so board eligible for 4-5 more years . (Thats it : If you fail 3-4 times: career is over?) . I will have to use the full 10 months to study starting from October thru next August to study. Its so sad that after doing UW/Awesome/MKSAP etc I felt very confident before the test. But then this happened! It feels like what all these materials cover just fall short of getting to the depth that the questions are asking for, in actual exam. MKSAP gives you some recent data-driven info, which ACP whats you to know. Awesome is all about buzz words but does not tell you when you have many many buzzes/or no buzz in the question. Next my year my strategy is going to be 2 board reviews 2-3 question banks. The advise of not using many study materials/(spreading thin in efforts) is not correct I think as the questions in the exam have a lot of depth and lots and lots of breadth as these are questions written by sub specialists. You need to know the pathology in great depths. Overall 17 years of medical education/career at stake here !
 
madariman said:
Every third question had a catch to it. Some are totally out of scope questions. I am going to look at by what margin, things are going to be off in October. If it is a huge margin then I will need a total revising of my study style. so true that this exam cannot be approached by a one review / one q bank approach like the steps. I was also trying to read the way they score this and it is not built to make sure so many percentage of people pass. Its not a regular SD curve which you get to the correct side of the curve. I remember/recollect about 22 wrong answers in about 60-70 questions which by statistic is about 60-67%. I have very less hope and preparing myself for the worst outcome in October. I have seen members here who are taking the boards the third time. I am 2 years out of my residency, so board eligible for 4-5 more years . (Thats it : If you fail 3-4 times: career is over?) . I will have to use the full 10 months to study starting from October thru next August to study. Its so sad that after doing UW/Awesome/MKSAP etc I felt very confident before the test. But then this happened! It feels like what all these materials cover just fall short of getting to the depth that the questions are asking for, in actual exam. MKSAP gives you some recent data-driven info, which ACP whats you to know. Awesome is all about buzz words but does not tell you when you have many many buzzes/or no buzz in the question. Next my year my strategy is going to be 2 board reviews 2-3 question banks. The advise of not using many study materials/(spreading thin in efforts) is not correct I think as the questions in the exam have a lot of depth and lots and lots of breadth as these are questions written by sub specialists. You need to know the pathology in great depths. Overall 17 years of medical education/career at stake here !
Click to expand...
Have you failed yet?
 
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Good one gutonc! Haha

But seriously why is the fail rate so high for this damn thing? I thought it was on par difficulty with the usmle, which has a very high pass rate.

So are people not studying for this or review material inadequate or is the Abim actively making the exam trickier to intentionally fail 10-15% each year ? Thoughts ?
 
Echoing what everyone else seems to say and what I've heard from my coresidents here ... Walked into this test having done MKSAP 2 times, UWorld once, BB4 a few times, and good 70% ITE scores all years. Walked out of this test with a good chance I failed it. The questions were extremely hard. Failing this is not so much the issue, it's the fact that I'm not sure whether studying for this again in ANY SHAPE OR FORM will get me a better result in a potential future attempt. The questions were completely out of nowhere and I can't seem to find answers to a good 5-10 of them even after looking stuff up on UpToDate and online today after the test.

What is ABIM trying to achieve here? The questions were CLEARLY written by subspecialists in each field. I can tell because my own subspecialty (in fellowship) was well represented and the questions were extremely hard. There was one question where my answer began and remained as WTF as absolutely no answer made any sense whatsoever. I am glad I got most of my subspecialty (hopefully) right but I can only imagine how my other sections have gone after realizing how tricky the questions were designed judging by what I saw from my subspecialty.

I am not sure I will retake this exam if I failed. I have never failed any test in my medical education. Steps were all 250-260. Competitive fellowship right now. By all measures have been successful on all aspects of training so far. And I've never come out of a test this despaired.

Honestly, I get the point that all of us need to be able to master a minimum set of knowledge base. But what was tested today on my exam had absolutely NOTHING to do with the "base" but had everything to do with forgoing the base completely and sticking exclusively with the minutiae.

I'm no better a physician today than I was 6 months ago from studying for this exam. I'm more cynical. Capstone project of my medical education has been a very sour experience for me, whether I passed or failed.
 
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PCPDoc983 said:
Good one gutonc! Haha

But seriously why is the fail rate so high for this damn thing? I thought it was on par difficulty with the usmle, which has a very high pass rate.

So are people not studying for this or review material inadequate or is the Abim actively making the exam trickier to intentionally fail 10-15% each year ? Thoughts ?
Click to expand...
Meh.

Pass rate has steadily gone up the last few years from 84% in 2011 to 89% in 2015.
 
I agree and echo your feelings dlee!
You don't come out of this test the way you feel after the usmle. All we need is 4 th decile and up to pass which is more than a score of 370 ish per the earlier posts. It seems they score each question differently based on how many people could get that particular question correct.
Overall this wait sucks bad!
 
Dlee, I agree 100%. I think we will hopefully pass. But that "feeling" isn't there. I think we both prepped well but we didn't do 2 crucial things . We didn't read Medstudy cover to cover and didn't attend a high yield review course like awesome. That might have been a game changer. Who knows. I'll know to do that for next time, assuming there's a next time .

For now go have a few beers and relax until October
 
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Hey guys,

IM resident, recently took the Internal Medicine ITE, this new derm book really helped me ! Check it out in Amazon.

Amazon product
 
A little late. I'm not sure if my test was as bad as people describe here. Hopefully I am not wrong <fingers crossed> I felt that the exam was quite similar to the ITE. 1st year (57%)--> 2nd year (70%)-->3rd year (75%). I took a week off and a weekend to study for this exam. Mostly just memorized the Awesome review notes. Had done MKSAP 16 twice before during my second year and MKSAP 17 once as a third year. Never did Uworld. But I solved 2 blocks on Uworld and averaged 68-70%. MKSAP does help but I dont think last minute solving will.

In the end, I felt that going through awesome review in the final week helped a lot. You have got to know some facts in and out. Particularly things like SIADH/DI/calcium metabolism etc. Yes, some questions are tricky but you should be able to narrow down to two options. Others, you can definitely figure your way through by ruling out and about 50% were just plain straight forward
 
Read medstudy 3 x through residency, memorized BB3 (like knew it COLD), did mksap x 2, first time 70-80%, second time got 80-90%, I was pretty disappointed and surprised with this exam. Took it, cried a bit, moving on with life.

So far I can count 10-12 wrong in which at least 5 from me over thinking, but 8 hrs of test is tough, the PM sessions were really hard to concentrate.

1.MKSAP - too easy, the questions are so well written, on the exam there's very little to deduce the right answer. MKSAP, even if you didn't know x, the information eliminates the other whatever choices.
2.Uworld - also misses the boat, too tricky, one key word points to the right answer, but great Q bank for learning
3.BB3 - great book, not enough for this exam for anyone feeling maybe if they read it a few more times they'll feel better (believe me in 3 years i read it 20x, knew that COLD), it won't help, the ones I couldn't answer is not in BB, not in medstudy.
4.Medstudy - ehhhh, great for learning medicine, not high yield for the questions

Its a challenging test, yep it'll be terrible to fail and restudy. But honestly, as someone who feels like they failed for sure and wanna sleep/cry/binge eat...but won't, i think the exam teaches several things. You can't memorize or cram for this test, it's not the STEPS. ABIM and whatever politics, we can argue about it forever yada yada, or we can really look at ourselves honestly. I can tell you none of us know that much medicine through work (you don't see everything), very few doctors read guidelines for fun rather than instagram or fb, outside of work, few of us pursue hard core learning after working 14 hours, BB MKSAP is the bare minimum skeletal stuff, but the exam shows me things I should know that I didn't. Is it unfair? No. Is it hard? Yes. Are there too many subspecialty questions? Perhaps. Can we rise to the challenge? Absolutely.
Hang in there everyone, I hope we have a high pass this year, but if we fail, it's a little bump along the road. of all the exams we can fail, this is the lowest stake, you fail steps you have no residency and like one chance for retake. we get to retake this and keep our jobs for a little bit. Most of us this hurts because we haven't failed up to this point, nothing wrong with a little setback. Gluck everyone!
 
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Really 10 days? I thought it might be a couple more weeks. :nailbiting:
 
From previous years it appears the scores have been coming out either the first Monday or Thursday in October. But it could be later. Who knows.
 
Raryn said:
Oct 6, Oct 10, Oct 13 are all within reasonable range of recent norms, and those would be my guesses. I'm hoping for Oct 6, but we'll see.

Of course, the official line is it could be as late as Thanksgiving.
Click to expand...


Hoping for 10/3 or 10/5 - first Monday or Thursday of month. The wait is kind of irritating. There is no reason it should take 3 months to get the results out. Quality assurance can be done in at most a month.


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Nothing yet today. If I recall from last year it was 10/07/2016 Wednesday, and it was in the morning (however I was on PST at that time).
We shall see.
Good luck to all.
 
Was it am at PST? Or EST? I don't think it will be today though. Most likely next Monday may be .
 
Took a day off from work and clinics on both Monday's. Just don't wish to be at work when the results are out. This has affected me big time!
 
Had a no-show in clinic so I did my OCD sleuthing.

First SDN reports from the last few years:
2015: Thursday, October 8 @ 817AM
2014: Monday, October 6 @ 1059AM
2013: Monday, October 7 @ 323 AM (seriously)
2012: Thursday, October 4 @ 814 AM
2011: Wednesday, November 2 @ 1033 AM
Unable to find 2010, but it was prior to November 9
2009: Tuesday, October 20 @ 540PM

I couldn't find threads for 2010, 2008, or before. Conclusion: Neuroticism is on an uptrend :p

Assuming 2012-2015 are the new trend... My money is still on Thursday, Oct 6 this year, probably around 8AM EST. Monday Oct 10 is an outside bet.

But really, it could be anytime between right now and Thanksgiving.

Edit: added 2009.
 
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I need to unsubscribe from this thread. Suspense killing me. I dont want to know...


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Do they release the detailed score report at the same time or later date?
Did anyone call them this time to find out what's going on?
I wonder why they take so much time to release the results ?
 
madariman said:
Do they release the detailed score report at the same time or later date?
Did anyone call them this time to find out what's going on?
I wonder why they take so much time to release the results ?
Click to expand...
They used to mail all the score reports physically, eventually transitioned to online with some delay relative to pass/no pass being available. Based on reading the ABIM blog, I think this year, the score reports are more detailed than previous years and based on someone I know who recently recertified should be available pretty quickly after the pass/no pass (instantly?).

And they take their time to do all the statistical mumbojumbo, and because they can.
 
Raryn said:
Had a no-show in clinic so I did my OCD sleuthing.

First SDN reports from the last few years:
2015: Thursday, October 8 @ 817AM
2014: Monday, October 6 @ 1059AM
2013: Monday, October 7 @ 323 AM (seriously)
2012: Thursday, October 4 @ 814 AM
2011: Wednesday, November 2 @ 1033 AM

I couldn't find threads for 2010 or 2009. Assuming 2012-2015 are the new trend... My money is still on Thursday, Oct 6 this year, probably around 8AM EST. Monday Oct 10 is an outside bet.

But really, it could be anytime between right now and Thanksgiving.
Click to expand...

Wow bro....OCD sleuthing is an understatement, but thanks for this.
Hoping for Thursday now.
 
OCD is a great thing to a certain extent. Anyway, to add fuel to the fire. My page is now saying "Page Not Found" when I search my certification status. Tried searching some of my classmates, and its like 50/50 whether it says not certified or Page Not Found.

Somethings a happenin' behind the scenes.
 
Tri2Fly said:
OCD is a great thing to a certain extent. Anyway, to add fuel to the fire. My page is now saying "Page Not Found" when I search my certification status. Tried searching some of my classmates, and its like 50/50 whether it says not certified or Page Not Found.

Somethings a happenin' behind the scenes.
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Mine says not certified. As do the couple classmates I just checked.

It only shows page not found if I try to search with partial names instead of full ones.

Are you sure something has changed?

Edit:

I lied. Some of my classmates are now "page not found". No rhyme or reason to it. Weird.
 
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Raryn said:
Mine says not certified. As do the couple classmates I just checked.

It only shows page not found if I try to search with partial names instead of full ones.

Are you sure something has changed?

Edit:

I lied. Some of my classmates are now "page not found". No rhyme or reason to it. Weird.
Click to expand...

I just went though some more and its definitely not 50/50 like I thought, more like 1/5 of the ones I searched.
 
Tri2Fly said:
I just went though some more and its definitely not 50/50 like I thought, more like 1/5 of the ones I searched.
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It was 5/13 of people I just checked, all classmates I was 100% certain took the boards. Didn't check the people I wasn't sure.

I bet it's probably meaningless. While I wouldn't be surprised if 1-2 failed (just based on previous years), if 5 of my classmates failed (or god forbid 8, myself included) it would be an unprecedented catastrophe.
 
Still not up. You can log in, though, but just says results not available.
 
So saddening. No results yet!
If they plan to do more detailed score reports this year probably they might just take their own sweet time!
3 months is insanely long !
 
Yeah I was waiting to see my score today. Oh well.
 
Thursday is here ! The 6 th ! Hopefully today we see the results of the exam.
Nothing so far but it's early in eastern time zone.
 
May be the hurricane delays the results too. Who knows. How transparent !
 
As long as we are obsessively checking...if you look at the exam results page it now shows that results are available for the Sports Med Cert and MOC exams for the Summer 2016 exams - this page was previously blank (i.e. no exams with posted results). So some results from summer 2016 have been posted, but it looks like those exams were given in mid July, which is unfortunately more in line with the vague 3 month time estimate on the website for exams. I hope I'm not obsessively refreshing my email for another 6 weeks...

http://www.abim.org/exam-results/default.aspx
 
beyondbethany said:
As long as we are obsessively checking...if you look at the exam results page it now shows that results are available for the Sports Med Cert and MOC exams for the Summer 2016 exams - this page was previously blank (i.e. no exams with posted results). So some results from summer 2016 have been posted, but it looks like those exams were given in mid July, which is unfortunately more in line with the vague 3 month time estimate on the website for exams. I hope I'm not obsessively refreshing my email for another 6 weeks...

http://www.abim.org/exam-results/default.aspx
Click to expand...
I'm relatively obsessively refreshing my page on http://www.abim.org/verify-physician/ as well as a couple classmates (in case I failed). In the last few years, that's posted prior to the emails going out.

And yes, I know it's irrational. Here's hoping for Monday!
 
Raryn said:
I'm relatively obsessively refreshing my page on http://www.abim.org/verify-physician/ as well as a couple classmates (in case I failed). In the last few years, that's posted prior to the emails going out.

And yes, I know it's irrational. Here's hoping for Monday!
Click to expand...

I'm doing the same thing. Several times a day right now. No judgement.


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Probably better to refresh the "View Examination Results," page more than anything else
But after the excitement and then let-down this week. I'm done. I'll wait for notification.
 
Results were never released on a Friday( per earlier post) so low chances today. Still I keep checking.
At times the page takes a few minutes to load and one feels " that's it. It may be up" and then it shows the same " not available" status.
Whatever!
 
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Monday is a hospital holiday where I work, I wonder if ABIM considers it a holiday? :shrug: :thinking:
 
It might be as well. No surprises. Next Thursday then !
 
poopdoc99 said:
Monday is a hospital holiday where I work, I wonder if ABIM considers it a holiday? :shrug: :thinking:
Click to expand...

Notice: ABIM will be closed for the holiday on 10/10/16

Our offices will re-open on Tues., 10/11/16 at 8:30 a.m. ET.

Monday seems unlikely.
 
Well That's helpful. I wonder how great the lifestyle would be for people who work there.
Great pay, monopoly in business, deadlines set by themselves and controls great power in careers of highly skilled-trained professionals who are helplessly "refreshing" their website profiles. Must be fun to be the board.
 
Unlikely till Thursday, I think. But who knows!
 
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