Postpone ABA written?

[ziconitide]

Freaking out..... Exam in less than a month and debating if should postpone exam this year.....have never passed the ite and I'm in full on cram mode.... Taking time off to study but feeling overwhelmed..... Don't want to fail..... Advice?

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[Arch Guillotti]

Freaking out..... Exam in less than a month and debating if should postpone exam this year.....have never passed the ite and I'm in full on cram mode.... Taking time off to study but feeling overwhelmed..... Don't want to fail..... Advice?

get cracking, you are at the peak of your fund of knowledge. Good luck.

 

[Apollyon]

get cracking, you are at the peak of your fund of knowledge. Good luck.

Exactly. I'm in a different specialty, but I totally agree with Arch - the longer you wait to take it, the less you know. Review books and classes (Ho, anyone? <-- that's a joke, son*) will hit high points, but the subtleties that you learned in residency, that will smooth over this point or that, will fall away the longer you wait.


*Notes:
1. The Michael Ho review is, apparently, good, but is excessively promoted by apparent plants here on SDN each year
2. Foghorn Leghorn

 

[pgg]

Take it now.

 

[Gern Blansten]

Even if you don't take the exam, it counts as one of your three tries. There is nothing to gain by not taking it. As mentioned, for test taking purposes, you are getting dumber by the day after you leave residency. Your first attempt is your best chance. The pass rate for second time takers dips into the 30 percent range.

 

[countingdays]

Freaking out..... Exam in less than a month and debating if should postpone exam this year.....have never passed the ite and I'm in full on cram mode.... Taking time off to study but feeling overwhelmed..... Don't want to fail..... Advice?

Do the retired exams.

 

[panetrain]

I postponed the orals for a year due to pure burnout (not a good idea). Your knowledge level is truly at its peak right now like the others have stated. There is a plethora of fine nitty gritty detail that you have picked up during your training. You may be unaware that you obtain this knowledge, but test questions will summons the brain to recall these details. This little detail bank will be gone about 8-12 months after residence. Utilize it before it's gone, it cannot be re-obtained by simple reading review books. When it's gone, it's gone for good. You can only gain by attempting this test. If you are unsuccessful, you will have a year to re-double your efforts.

 

[cchoukal]

I think we all agree you should take the test now. The next question is whether there's anything you should do more of, less of, or differently with the month you have left. This is plenty of time to do some serious work, and you should have a plan. Simply thumbing through review texts is not going to help.

Make lists/tables/charts
Synthesize information
Do as many review questions (with explanations of right/wrong answers) as you can
Understand at a high level the physiology of each of the organ systems in health, disease, and pregnancy.

 

[invitro]

don't postpone. Put your nose to the grindstone and hammer out Chantigan and Hall and know that cold. If you can, do some ACE question (like the last couple years or so). You probably won't kill the exam, but you will have a pretty good chance of passing.

Had a colleague who didn't pass any of the ITEs, but passed the writtens (by the skin of his teeth) just by knowing Hall well.

gl

 

[ziconitide]

Thanks everyone...... Trying as hard as I can.... Doing the hall questions.... Had the aces and did them all before last ite and did not do as well as hoped.... Reading the Morgan and mikhail.... Faust.....and big blue. Hoping that I will be able to make it..... Just feeling discouraged but thank you all so much for encouragement....

 

[CambieMD]

Thanks everyone...... Trying as hard as I can.... Doing the hall questions.... Had the aces and did them all before last ite and did not do as well as hoped.... Reading the Morgan and mikhail.... Faust.....and big blue. Hoping that I will be able to make it..... Just feeling discouraged but thank you all so much for encouragement....

Do not make the mistake of trying to read everything out there. I see that you are reading Morgan and Mikhail,Faust and Big Blue. Your money is in doing questions. Questions will help you to pull together the isolated facts that you have read into packets of information. Go through at least 2k questions before you sit for the exam.

Try not to stress yourself out too much. Stress will weaken your performance. Stress is like opening up too many windows on your computer. It slows things down.

Cambie

 

[periopdoc]

The only guaranteed failure is in not even trying. Many (most) of us feel/ felt wildly unprepared going into the written. Most of us do/ did pass it in spite of our premonitions. Yes, the failure rate for folks taking the test for the 2nd or 3rd time are extremely high, but that doesn't mean you will automatically fall into the statistical category of 1st time takers if you put the test off for a year. (in fact, I would argue that you would statistically be only slightly better off than the 2nd and 3rd timers.) Prepare as best you can. Take a shot. Try to learn as much as you can in case you need to take it again.

And I agree... at this point in time, questions are your friends.

- pod

 

[Gern Blansten]

I would argue that you would statistically be only slightly better off than the 2nd and 3rd timers.)

I agree. I think the reason the pass rate goes down so much is that all of the good test takers numbers are not there PLUS, you will find that you have much less time and motivation to study your first year in practice. By the time the test rolls around, you have forgotten a lot of the information that you knew during residency (sadly, it happens fast), thus, you are now missing questions that should have been your chip shot questions that helped you make up for the really tough ones that you just don't know. Since you are starting out with a history of low ITE socres, your margin of error cannot afford the lost information that will occur over that span of a year.
As POD said, I suspect that postponing it a year would statistically lump you with the 2nd time takers, even though you were taking it for the first time. As I mentioned above, in the eyes of the ABA, you would be a second time taker. Take it now!

 

[Frank Rizzo]

Questions, questions, questions. You have almost a month. Do nothing but questions and thoroughly understand why the right answer is correct and why the wrong answers are incorrect. The time for reading Morgan and Mikhail and other texts has passed. As others have said you know the most RIGHT NOW.

Take the test and kick its a$s!

 

[Arch Guillotti]

Do not make the mistake of trying to read everything out there. I see that you are reading Morgan and Mikhail,Faust and Big Blue. Your money is in doing questions. Questions will help you to pull together the isolated facts that you have read into packets of information. Go through at least 2k questions before you sit for the exam.

Try not to stress yourself out too much. Stress will weaken your performance. Stress is like opening up too many windows on your computer. It slows things down.

Cambie

I agree, all the basic info is the same, just presented in many formats. Don't get caught up in trying to study from too many sources at the same time. I think questions are key also.

 

[Arch Guillotti]

 

[BuddhaCanooda]

So everyone has been posting in previous years the mean has been 250, passing 209, SD somewhere around 50. Of course these are z-scores and do not reflect minimum percentages required to pass (though another post listed 70 percent after calling to ABA).

But there was another thread pointing out the pass rate in the mid 80's. I saw last year's pass rate for first time test-takers was 92%! That is the same crowd taking your ITE, definitely translates to well above the 20th percentile, no?

By backwards calculating the ITE distributions based on the number correct columns you can see that scoring 50% was roughly 70%. Of course if some counted questions were classified across categories that would nullify this. Just trying to make sense of this 70% threshold and correlating it with the higher pass rate for first-takers the last few years. Thoughts?

 

[imfrankie]

So everyone has been posting in previous years the mean has been 250, passing 209, SD somewhere around 50. Of course these are z-scores and do not reflect minimum percentages required to pass (though another post listed 70 percent after calling to ABA).

But there was another thread pointing out the pass rate in the mid 80's. I saw last year's pass rate for first time test-takers was 92%! That is the same crowd taking your ITE, definitely translates to well above the 20th percentile, no?

By backwards calculating the ITE distributions based on the number correct columns you can see that scoring 50% was roughly 70%. Of course if some counted questions were classified across categories that would nullify this. Just trying to make sense of this 70% threshold and correlating it with the higher pass rate for first-takers the last few years. Thoughts?

Don't waste precious time thinking about such things. Study for the test, take it and be done with it.

 

[pgg]

So everyone has been posting in previous years the mean has been 250, passing 209, SD somewhere around 50. Of course these are z-scores and do not reflect minimum percentages required to pass (though another post listed 70 percent after calling to ABA).

But there was another thread pointing out the pass rate in the mid 80's. I saw last year's pass rate for first time test-takers was 92%! That is the same crowd taking your ITE, definitely translates to well above the 20th percentile, no?

By backwards calculating the ITE distributions based on the number correct columns you can see that scoring 50% was roughly 70%. Of course if some counted questions were classified across categories that would nullify this. Just trying to make sense of this 70% threshold and correlating it with the higher pass rate for first-takers the last few years. Thoughts?

Be careful about interpreting ITE %iles in the context of the actual board exam. Lots of people blow off every single ITE and then study like fiends for the real thing in the last few months. More people study for the ITEs and then study harder for the real thing in the last few months.

If you're 25th %ile for your last ITE and then cruise along business-as-usual until the real thing, odds are you're not still going to be 25th %ile relative to your peers (who have been busy cramming).

Don't waste precious time thinking about such things. Study for the test, take it and be done with it.

There's that, too.

 

[BuddhaCanooda]

Be careful about interpreting ITE %iles in the context of the actual board exam. Lots of people blow off every single ITE and then study like fiends for the real thing in the last few months. More people study for the ITEs and then study harder for the real thing in the last few months.

If you're 25th %ile for your last ITE and then cruise along business-as-usual until the real thing, odds are you're not still going to be 25th %ile relative to your peers (who have been busy cramming).



There's that, too.

I'm not sure if I was clear with where I was going with this. I'm just saying that if the ITE golden % is much higher than 8% (by 2010 figures), why the discrepancy? I doubt that 70% figure is true. That's all.

I took it yesterday. Felt much like the March ITE, and I did hit the books harder this summer than last spring. We'll see how it goes.

Sure there are people who blow off ITEs, but then in July you have lots of people working and/or in fellowships that cannot cram like everyone else. I am sure the two come close to balancing out...

 

[epidural man]

I think questions are key also.

NO doubt!

I promise if you do the next 3 things, I guaren-damn-tee you will pass.

1. Do the ACE exams!
2. Do the ACE exams!
3. Do the ACE exams!

Did you know that the same people that write the ACE exams, write the board exams?

The year I took it, I swear there were 3 or 4 questions that were identical to ones I saw on the ACE.

The ACE exams have kick-ass discussions/answers.

If you did all of them, starting from the first one which I think came out in 96'? - you wouldn't need to study anything else.

I'll bet you 5 dollars what I say is true. We can meet the next time ASA is in SD, or I'll be at ASRA in New Orleans this year, and you can pay up.

(Don't do the SEE exams - those suck.)

 

[epidural man]

I see you posted that several weeks ago. It's probably too late for the ACE now.

Good luck if you take it this time around!

 

[cchoukal]

Lots of people blow off every single ITE and then study like fiends for the real thing in the last few months. More people study for the ITEs and then study harder for the real thing in the last few months.

I was just the opposite. I smoked all the ITE/AKTs, so I didn't feel compelled to study all that much for the real thing. Result: I barely passed.

 

[pgg]

I was just the opposite. I smoked all the ITE/AKTs, so I didn't feel compelled to study all that much for the real thing. Result: I barely passed.

A couple guys from the residency class ahead of me did the same, and put something akin to the Fear of God in me.

 

[Surfer]

when you get your score for the written boards, does it give you a numerical value, a % rank, or just a pass/fail?

 

[pgg]

when you get your score for the written boards, does it give you a numerical value, a % rank, or just a pass/fail?

As of 2 yrs ago -

Pass/fail result online. Letter mailed out with your score (and the mean and SD). No %ile provided.

From your score, the mean, and SD, you can calculate your %ile if you assume a normal distribution. Of course the distribution isn't normal so it'll be a rough %ile, especially if you're at the edge of the curve for good or ill ...