Qbanks

[dogboston]

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I know this has been discussed to the ends of the Earth, but I thought I'd just throw in my two cents worth since I have experience with a few of the qbanks:

Uworld: The gold standard, these questions are well written and challenging, however it is the explanations that make this Qbank stand out over the others. The explanations are long and detailed, but they really help with gaining a deeper understanding of the material. Additionally this Qbank has really good diagrams that help clarify tricky topics. Questions can take a long time to complete, especially if you are new to this bank or if you have large gaps in your basic science knowledge, however, if you have to do any Qbank this is it. 10/10.

usmle-rx: I have seen some people dislike this qbank, personally I love it and plan on going through the rest before my step. The questions are not as hard as Uworld and the explanations are generally a bit shorter, however, it reinforces first aid by sending you to the corresponding sections that the question came from which is awesome, especially if you are the type of person who hates sitting down to just read First Aid. I for one did microbiology blocks, and after every question I read the corresponding First Aid page and by the time I got through micro I could literally visualize what the pages looked like as I had seen them all so many times. Now micro is one of my strongest areas. 9/10.

Exammaster: My school gives us a free subscription to this thing, I am convinced it's some kind of running joke. I couldn't imagine a Qbank could get any worse? The questions are often one sentence long and not vignette style, the answer choices are frequently not even anywhere in first aid, and the descriptions are poorly written. I literally have nothing positive to say about this Qbank besides to avoid it. I actually think your step score will go down using this because there are over 2,000 questions which is time consuming and by the time you got through it you would have forgot important high yield facts from other resources. 0/10.

 

[EMCKevin]

We recently came across the above post, and we felt it was important that we respond. I am one of the content managers at Exam Master. Some of the students who use our system through their institutions have access to questions that are not specifically for USMLE test prep, including questions that are developed by faculty at their schools, which are then delivered using our online testing system. So, some of the feedback we see relates to the fact that students are commenting on questions designed for general study, not on our USMLE questions. This appears to be the case with the respondent above. Practically all of our USMLE questions are vignette, clinical style questions. We generally do not permit factual recall, negatively phrased, or other inappropriate question types to be included in our USMLE resources. Our USMLE product editor, Dr. Jim Pasley, has many years leading a USMLE Step 1 review course. A couple of years ago we conducted a massive survey of students using our USMLE resources, and the feedback was generally favorable. People liked the breadth and depth of our content, they found the explanations very helpful, and while our USMLE test prep may not have been their first choice, they did find that our resource helped them to be better prepared for the boards.

I forwarded the review to another member of my team, and this was his response:

"The questions are often one sentence long and not vignette style." This sentence tells me that they are not using the USMLE Step 1 outline, as that question bank consists primarily of case-based or vignette-style questions. As (someone else in the company) mentioned, the user could be doing a word search. It's also possible that they could be accessing the individual medical subject outlines.

Having said that, we also recognize that we have some work to do. We are in the process of reviewing our USMLE Step 1 practice exams (I've looked at several questions today!) to make sure all questions are relevant and medically accurate. We also get lots of feedback from end-users and this really helps us keep our question writers on their toes. Is our product perfect? No. However, 0/10 is not a fair score, and the score does not accurately represent the value of this resource.

If anyone would like to contact me directly regarding any of our products, I can be emailed at [email protected].

Thank you for your time!