Q-Bank vs Step I

[Dawg_MD]

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For those that have already taken Step I, are the questions in the Kaplan Q-Bank at all representative of the questions you saw on the real exam? If not, how are they different?

 

[med student 1]

hi,
I took STEP 1 last summer. It was very similar (i.e. identical) to Q-bank: randomly selected Q's from all subjects because my Step had emphasis on path and phys. The trick is that subject emphasis of your test might be different hence the feeling of similarity with Q-bank.

In case you want to know my everage scores in Q-bank, I started with 40% and 1 mo later my ave was 65-70% with 75% being one time highest. I scored 231 on STEP 1.

hope it helps.

 

[doepug]

Hi -

I found Qbank much harder than actual Step 1 questions.

I just took Step 1 on 12/31/02... it was considerably easier than the qbank; I actually finished the exam before 1 pm. I took all 2000 qbank questions and usually scored high 70s to low 80s, high score of 90%. I'm still waiting for my Step 1 score; feel free to PM me in the near future if you want to see how my score correlated with qbank results.

Good luck,
doepug

 

[ckent]

If you do a search, you should find a thread with a lot of people's step I score vs their q bank score. Don't be too discouraged when you read the thread though, as everyone who posted in it had a 240+ step I. My q bank avg was 65%, and I got a 230.

 

[squeek]

I found the Qbank questions to be pretty representative of the real test questions.

I was getting mid-80%s on Qbank right before the test (I started out in the 50s), and I got a 250 on step I. As far as how the difficulty compares, it's quite hard to say. You'll hear people say competing things. Many people think the "real thing" is easier than Qbank. I, on the other hand, thought the "real thing" was much, MUCH harder. But remember that not everybody takes the same test...some tests are harder than others, and then the score is calibrated against the difficulty of the test. So it will vary. I think the general consensus, though, is that if you're scoring in the 70s, you should do average to very well on the real thing.

Good luck!

 

[secretwave101]

I'll be taking Step I this summer. I'm wondering what most of you mean when you say that you started out at a certain % (like in the 50's) and by the end you are doing much better (like in the 70's or 80's). I'm wondering how you set up your Qbank tests. Are you re-doing the same questions and getting better scores on them, or are they from the same subjects but different q's?

Thinking about this test is pretty nerve-wracking, so any advice on how you did your Qbank questions is helpful.

 

[Dawg_MD]

I was wondering the same thing. My scores are improving as I redo Q-bank and much of it because I am getting a better understanding of the material as I study, but some of it is the repeat of questions. I am doing all subjects now, instead of just those that I have reviewed, so my score is going up as I cover more subjects in my studies.

 

[GrandMasterB]

Hey guys, has anyone been able to find the old thread with the archived qbank vs step 1 score correlations? i haven't been able to. however, i think it would be really useful if people would post their step 1 and q bank scores on this thread. so BUMP!

 

[johnd]

I just took Step I tuesday and thought I would give my two cents. Overall, Q-bank is very representative of the actual exam. I think that the actual exam was somewhat easier than Q-bank, mainly because the actual exam seemed to have more questions that were total giveaways. Off of the top of my head, I cant think of any topics that were on the actual exam that weren't covered in Q-bank except for some questions about experiments.

One thing that did surprise me was that there was quite a bit of math on the test. Not really a problem for me but i would suggest at least doing Q-bank without a calculator to help out.

Hope this helps!

 

[neilc]

you mentioned math, and i was wondering about this as well. could you give some examples of what types of questions involve math?

i was wondering which formulas i should know and be able to work with. i am not a fan of any math, so it would help me a lot to know what specifically to prepare for.

thanks!

 

[Dawg_MD]

Did you have any questions that required you to remember which diseases were associated with certain HLA types or questions where you had to know the chromosome that certain things were located on ie c-myc and c-abl genes. I am having a lot of trouble keeping the leukemias and lymphomas straight. Did you have any questions regarding these.
Also did you find that FA was sufficient for Pharm?

Sorry to bombard you with questions. I am just curious to get your input on these topics.

Thanks.

 

[johnd]

**************************************************
you mentioned math, and i was wondering about this as well. could you give some examples of what types of questions involve math?
**************************************************

I had at least 3 questions that required the formula for drug half-life and clearance. (clearance=k*Vd)

Definitely had to know henderson-hasselbach.

I remember one question I had was: "there is a colony of 10^9 bacteria and a disinfectant kills 10% of the bacteria every 10 minutes: how many minutes will it take for the total number of bacteria to drop below 10". This isn't really that difficult but for some reason took me about five minutes to figure out during the test. I had a couple of other questions similar to this - they seemed to be based only on figuring out the math.

Didn't need to know any other formulas that I can think of off the top of my head.


************************************************
Did you have any questions that required you to remember which diseases were associated with certain HLA types or questions where you had to know the chromosome that certain things were located on ie c-myc and c-abl genes. I am having a lot of trouble keeping the leukemias and lymphomas straight. Did you have any questions regarding these.
Also did you find that FA was sufficient for Pharm?
************************************************

I did not have a single question on HLA type which pissed me off after all of those questions on Q-bank. I did have one question that required you to know the transolcation for small cell lymphoma. Overall most of the questions that require some very specific sort of knowledge such as translocation seemed to have other clues that gave away the answer.

There seemed to be a lot of pharm on my test. For the most part First aid was good enough. There were a lot of those questions with graphs of drug response vs dose before and after administration of an unknown. There was also quite a few questions on mechanism of action of chemo drugs.


One other thing that surprised me about the exam was time. I am usually a very fast test taker and 50 q's on Q-bank took me about 30 min on average. I finished most of the sections on the actual test with about 5 min to spare.

I would also recommend keeping track of your break time on the dry erase board that they give you because there is not an easy way to do it on the program.

 

[neilc]

thanks johnd! after all these years of seeing henderson-hasselbach over and over, it is almost good to know that i will use it. i think this is the first year i am comfortable with it! learning pharm now, and i figured that would be most of the equations. so, i guess i will have to pay attention in class this semester.

thanks again for the input, i do appreciate you taking the time!

 

[GrandMasterB]

BUMP!