SCORE portal -

[thunder hawk]

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any body using SCORE Portal MCQs for ABSITE 2014 preparation...used it couple of times...questions are weird and not sure if they make sense. plus the answers are incomplete. but its on SCORE website so they must hold must weight age....any thoughts..??

 

[dpmd]

I don't know if it is the same as the questions they had on there before (where they are broken up into different subject areas and you can see your performance versus averages) but I did them just to do more questions. The ABSITE has a lot of questions that recur over the years (although with the change in format who knows if that will still be true) so if you do the kinds of practice questions that end up showing up then you will benefit. The issue is that there are sets of questions floating around out there that are actually from prior year exams (despite this being forbidden) so the people at programs that get access to this (which you know happens) and the people they share it with end up doing much better than those who don't. I do recall some questions that seemed similar to the ones on SCORE (and also to the ones in SESAP, although there were also a bunch that pulled from the critiques in SESAP which was bad because I only read the ones I wasn't sure about-would have been better to have read all the critiques, this goes for ABS qualifying exam too). If you have time to do the questions it probably won't hurt (and if you are unsure about what they put as an answer you can always look it up and that would help to solidify the info for you)

 

[dpmd]

Some of the ABSITE questions have kinda out of date answers, so maybe it is good to use it as a source?

 

[SLUser11]

any body using SCORE Portal MCQs for ABSITE 2014 preparation...used it couple of times...questions are weird and not sure if they make sense. plus the answers are incomplete. but its on SCORE website so they must hold must weight age....any thoughts..??

The ABS has made it clear that the SCORE curriculum will be the main source for ABSITE questions moving forward. While I agree that the SCORE questions sort of suck (e.g. a lot of “all of the following EXCEPT” and certainly some outdated opinions), it would be foolish to ignore these questions given how clear the ABS was about the content of the exam.

SESAP remains the best source for “senior exam level” questions. Truthfully, nobody knows what this year’s ABSITE will look like since it’s a year of change, but my opinion is that it won’t change too much from the old format, and many of the old, trusty questions will still be on there.

 

[mikeGR]

The quality of the questions/answers is disappointing... Missing phrases and key-words, outdated answers, answers explaining why the correct option is B and then marking A as correct... Not to mention some questions' phrasing and the occasional absence of explanation.

The contrast with the USMLE Q-banks makes me sad. I expected that as surgeons, we would have higher standards. I hope the real exam will be better.

PS: On the other hand, the comparative statistics SCORE provides seem useful, and the amount of Qs should cover everyone.

 

[Jorski]

I have been using SESAP even though I am an intern. Going through reading all of the critiques even when I get the answer right. Using this in combination with the Fiser book (not the question book). I tried the SCORE questions but found the wording to be weird. I dont know. I hope Im not shooting myself in the foot by doing this but the SESAP questions seem legit. I guess we'll see.

 

[SLUser11]

I have been using SESAP even though I am an intern. Going through reading all of the critiques even when I get the answer right. Using this in combination with the Fiser book (not the question book). I tried the SCORE questions but found the wording to be weird. I dont know. I hope Im not shooting myself in the foot by doing this but the SESAP questions seem legit. I guess we'll see.

SESAP is excellent, and with the new format it is increasingly relevant to interns. However, it may cause fear and frustration since junior residents don't possess the level of knowledge or experience yet to do well on such an exam.

Truthfully, ABSITE scores can vary somewhat based on resources and study techniques, but other baseline factors are likely more important (e.g. Step 1 and 2 scores) and more predictive of percentile. Some people are just better test takers than others.

I know SCORE questions are frustrating, but it is imperative that you look at them anyway. Try to ignore errors and format issues, and use the questions to determine important topics and areas of emphasis. I've taken the ABSITE 5 times and prepared others for the exam 3 more times, so I know I'm right about this.

 

[thedrjojo]

I think this is the best advice, especially given that we are in the first year of the new format, and the ABS has been very clear that SCORE is the official source for the test going forward.

By the way, did you see this amazing data on the effectiveness of SCORE:

http://www.journalacs.org/article/S1072-7515(13)01301-X/abstract

Not sure if you are being sarcastic with your amazing comment...

 

[SLUser11]

After a solid weekend of doing questions...I have more and more come to agree with this.

The authors of the portal should really be ashamed. The quality is incredibly poor. Probably on average 1/10 questions where either the answer choice is incorrect or mislabeled (i.e a "all of the following are true except..." question stem, then the answer is actually the correct one, not the incorrect). Most references are from the mid-90's.

Some of the questions themselves are ludicrously minute (even compared to the ABSITE).

They really should add a "report a problem with this question" feature so that they can get these corrected.

I strongly considered contacting the main SCORE surgeons and letting them know how bad everything is, but as an academician, this could be detrimental to my career....so I sort of let it go. Still, I agree that some of the questions are really, really bad.

I think it's unfair and misleading to announce that the SCORE curriculum is the future of the ABSITE, then provide bad questions that are poorly formatted, frequently outdated, and seemingly written by surgeons without expertise in the field of question.

Outside of the questions themselves being bad, I find the emphasis misleading as well. For example, there's one available urology question, then over 50 questions on pediatric cardiac abnormalities.

 

[balaguru]

At one point there was a feedback button on all the pages that was actively used by the backend support folks to make fixes. I'm not sure it's still there. When the questions were first added to the website they were purchased from a third party. Funds were limited and they couldn't get the question bank that they really wanted. I'm not sure who authors the questions currently. Give them feedback. They do take it seriously. If there are enough complaints about the quality of questions they will try to fix it.