Hi all,
I wanted to provide my thoughts on each resource that I used in terms of content quality. I hope that this will help future residents with their ABIM boards!
Let me preface this all with the statement that this is all my opinion, YMMV!
As mentioned my score was a 682, somewhere in the 95-99th percentile.
All of the question banks below I had finished in their entirety prior to the ABIM exam.
Several of the banks I did a few passes on - UWx3 passes, MKSAP 19x4, NEJMx2.
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1. UWorld ABIM Qbank:
Content rating-10/10
Format rating-6.5/10
This question bank is by far the best resource for content review, and for ABIM boards overall. It provides in-depth explanations for each correct and incorrect answer and requires an extra level of critical thinking for the exam that is very helpful. I would say that the difficulty of this question bank was on par with that of the actual exam. The content for this question bank is all very high yield. The question explanations are unmatched, and this resource also includes charts, tables, and graphics that offer a very unique and easy way to memorize the most board relevant material. It also tends not to test on smaller details, and instead focuses on broader picture concepts. On occasion, it will test on smaller details, but will eventually relate those details to larger concepts. My only grievance with this question bank is that, very often the question writers will seemingly intentionally try to "trick," examinees by leading them down a certain thought process, only to make a complete 180 at the end of the clinical vignette. In my opinion, this was not reflective of the actual board exam. ABIM does not seem like it is trying to trick residents, although this question bank seems to do this more often than not. I would also add that the clinical vignettes of this question bank are excessively long, with too many extraneous details that are often confusing. The length of the stems for each question on average was much longer than necessary. However, with that said, this is going to be the best resource in my opinion purely for content review. In my opinion, every resident should do at least 1 pass of this question bank in order to have a higher odds of passing, preferably 2 passes. I cannot emphasize this enough-it is best to start this question bank early. In order to perform well, residents should start this question bank early in the PGY 3-year. It took me approximately 6 months to get through this question bank from start to finish. I do not recommend doing an excess number of questions per day, rather I recommend doing only a few questions per day (5-10) and truly extracting all of the information from each individual question. This includes reading wrong answers, and understanding why each answer is wrong. One thing that helped me was reading up-to-date on certain topics that I did not understand.
2. Board Basics MKSAP Book:
Content rating - 9/10
This is a very high yield resource. In my opinion, it is one of the best resources for content to review aside from the UWorld ABIM question bank. It offers a very wide variety of broad concepts while still offering and emphasizing smaller details that are critical to both a foundational knowledge for clinical practice and to perform well on the internal medicine boards. It covers just enough on each topic to make one proficient in a variety of topics, at least decent enough to understand that topic for the ABIM boards. It offers a wide variety of charts as well as algorithms that help memorize core concepts for internal medicine practice as well as for the board exam. As with any resource, there are some smaller extraneous details that are not very board relevant, however the vast majority of the content contained within this review book is excellent. I would definitely recommend at least 2 full passes of this book. If I had to choose 1 written resource to study for internal medicine boards, I would use this book. It may not offer a vast amount of in-depth knowledge for every subject, which is more so contained in the MKSAP19 subject books, however in my opinion the subject books present material that is too in-depth for the knowledge needed to pass the internal medicine boards. Rather, I would not recommend reading all of the subject books, instead opting for question banks along with knowing this study resource in its entirety. This is both a good resource to use passively throughout the 3 years of residency, and during the dedicated board study time.
3. MKSAP 19 Qbank:
Content rating-8/10
Format rating-7.5/10
This question bank is very good in terms of content, and offers a broad review of concepts that are very important to know for exam day. It tends to try to connect some of the larger concepts with smaller details. In my opinion, this is a good question bank to do before dedicated board preparation time as it provides a foundational level of knowledge for the ABIM exam. Many of the core concepts in this question bank are very high yield, and I would definitely recommend 1-2 passes of this question bank throughout the 3 years of residency. However, I would still maintain that UW is a much better resource for content review! This was the first question bank that I started with in internship, and it was definitely useful to provide a foundation of medical knowledge. In my opinion, although the question bank does have much high yield information, it also tests on an abundance of lower yield information that is not necessarily board relevant, but might be required for clinical practice. Amongst these lower yield clinical points is the oncology section, which in my opinion is very low yield. All in all, I would say that 70% of this question bank is useful information that is board relevant, 80% is relevant for both clinical practice and board exam knowledge, and approximately 20% is knowledge that is both low yield for clinical practice as well as for internal medicine boards. In terms of question formatting, I believe this question bank does a decent job, with a mix of both long and shorter vignettes. It also offers the option to do "quick questions," which I think are valuable in terms of short-term fact recall. I also enjoyed the virtual diagnosis section of this question bank as it offered a quick review of high yield diagnoses that require residents to recognize pathognomonic visual findings.
4. Rosh Review ABIM Qbank:
Content rating-7/10
Format rating-7.5/10
This was my third favorite question bank as it definitely offers a good amount of information for boards, but I will also add that it tests on smaller details that are not necessarily relevant to performing well on boards. I would also add that many of the questions that are present in this question bank are far beyond the scope of the standard internal medicine physician and are not relevant to clinical practice, nor knowledge for internal medicine boards. If a resident has already completed UW and MKSAP 19 and is looking for another question bank to do passively prior to dedicated study for the internal medicine boards, I would recommend this question bank or the New England Journal question bank to do for practice. The format of the questions offers both long and short clinical vignettes which I think can be useful for mastering exam style questions.
5. New England Journal ABIM QBank:
Content rating-7/10
Format rating 7/10
I would say this question bank resource is just about tied in terms of utility with the Rosh Review Qbank. It offers a wide variety of high-yield information that is helpful to know for internal medicine boards, while also emphasizing smaller details that are not necessarily irrelevant. I would say on average that this tends to be a bit of a more challenging question bank, but still offers a variety of useful information for the PGY 3 resident. I would not start with this resource right away, instead emphasizing UW (#1) and MKSAP (#2), although this could be a valuable resource to do passive questions throughout the year if a resident has already finished both of the previously mentioned resources. One of the grievances that I had with this question bank is that some of the answers that are deemed to be correct on the question bank are arguable, and there is a good amount of lower yield information contained in this question bank as well. On average I would say that 70% of this question bank is relevant to the internal medicine boards, and about the same is relevant to clinical practice. 30% of this question bank offers lower yield information, or questions that are not necessarily representative of board relevant material nor clinical practice. The format of the questions tends to be a good mix of longer and shorter vignettes, and so I do still think that this is a good resource to do for passive practice throughout the year pending completion of the 2 highest yield question banks with emphasis on completion of UWorld.
6. Board Vitals ABIM Qbank:
Content rating-6/10
Format rating-6/10
I would only recommend this resource if a resident has completed all of the aforementioned question banks with the reason being that only ~50% of the material represented in this question bank is both relevant to internal medicine boards, and clinical practice. This question bank tends to test on smaller details as opposed to emphasis on broader clinical concepts. An example would be testing on inhibition of certain interleukin cytokines in pharmacologic processes, or asking about basic science biochemistry which is most certainly not relevant to clinical practice nor internal medicine boards. I would also add that the percentile rank function on this question bank seems to be broken-either that or over half of people that are taking this question bank are scoring over 80% correct. The question style for this question bank tends to be shorter style questions without many longer vignettes. In my opinion the best question bank is one that has a good mix of both long and shorter clinical vignettes.
7. MedStudy ABIM Qbank:
Content rating-4.5/10
Format rating-6/10
Now we begin some of the resources that I would not recommend using for the internal medicine boards. I cannot speak to the abundance of material/resources that this company uses outside of the question bank as I have only heard great things regarding them-however in terms of the question bank in its entirety, I cannot recommend it. There are often frankly incorrect details within the question bank, sometimes with typos in the clinical vignettes. I have actually written to this company multiple times regarding blatantly incorrect questions, and have had many questions removed. It can be very confusing for residents to understand core concepts, and in my opinion it does not make sense to increase the difficulty of memorizing concepts if one is unsure whether or not the concepts being presented are most accurate.
8. Knowmedge ABIM Qbank:
Content rating-3/10
Format rating-3/10
I would most certainly recommend staying away from this resource. Questions answers are often incorrect, outdated, and are frankly not representative of neither clinical practice nor board relevant material. I would say that the only useful part of this question bank is the 2-minute videos that are associated with each question. These can be useful, although it is not worth the purchase.
9. MedChallenger ABIM Qbank:
Content rating-4/10
Format rating-4/10
I would also recommend staying away from this resource. Questions test on information that seems to be outdated, and more often than not question answers are incorrect. I would also add that the interface of this question bank is absolutely atrocious, and exceedingly difficult to navigate.
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I would also like to offer what I thought the most predictive resource was in terms of actual score. There are several predictors which I think are rather accurate:
-Obviously the PGY 3 ITE is going to be very representative of the actual score on ABIM. However, in my opinion there is some degree of variability for ITE accuracy, and this is because certain residents take this exam more seriously than others. This creates individual variability and it can be difficult to predict the resemblance of actual outcome with PGY 3 ITE percentile. Regardless however, I do think that overall it is an accurate representation as I would argue that residents who do not take the PGY3 ITE very seriously will on average score a lower percentile than residents who take it very seriously.
-UW ABIM first pass percentile rank-this was rather predictive for me. My first pass yielded a 78% correct which was around 94th percentile. This was approximately 2-4 percentile points off from my actual score. In my opinion, second and third passes of this question bank are not always as representative because there is a recall bias in terms of remembering individual questions.
-Rosh Review predictive tool-this question bank offers a predictive score based on the percent correct in the ABIM question bank. My overall percent correct after my first pass was 85% with a predicted score of approximately 714. This overestimated my score slightly, but I do think that it could be accurate for scores in the 30th-80th percentile range.
There is also an algorithm developed by the Cleveland Clinic that predicts the likelihood of an individual resident to pass the internal medicine boards based on the 3 years of ITE scores and the number of call months in the last 6 months of residency. In terms of predictive value, it seems to be very accurate. The risk calculator can be found below:
Predicting the probability of passing the American Board of Internal Medicine examination
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I hope this is helpful!
Congrats again to all who passed. For all who didn't it's just one test. Keep on pushing forward!
