Skipping lectures entirely

[Cornfed101]

It depends. If you feel that's enough practice to score where you would like, then fair play. If you're like me and you just want to go blitzkrieg on questions regardless, I would recommend them. I will say they were the most helpful for the more difficult, physics heavy subjects (cardiovascular, respiratory, and renal phys). They were also good for the mechanism heavy endo/repro stuff.

About BnB, yeah feel free to forego those if you haven't covered that stuff yet.

which of the review books is your favorite? Just started cardio this week so I’m willing to give it a shot

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[slowthai]

which of the review books is your favorite? Just started cardio this week so I’m willing to give it a shot

Overall, I'd probably say Thieme's, but you can't go wrong with Guyton too. But I would choose BRS if it had more questions.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Overall, I'd probably say Thieme's, but you can't go wrong with Guyton too. But I would choose BRS if it had more questions.

Man you use way more resources than I do.

 

[slowthai]

@slowthai What's your opinion on making your own Anki cards for class lecture slides. Is it really as time inefficient as everyone says? Right now, I have been doing spaced repetition with the lecture slides but I feel like I could get a better testing effect by making cards. What do you do to memorize the lecture material?

It just depends. There are multiple approaches for covering lecture stuff:

1. Make your own cards for stuff that's not already covered by your premade deck of choice. This could work well if your school has a relatively small percentage of low yield. Mine doesn't, so that was a non-starter. If your school is the ideal, you'll only be making a small number of cards per lecture, like anywhere from 10-30 short and sweet clozed/image occluded cards. Just ballparking here.

I will say that I made cards for a bit, but it just wasn't worth it. The time it took to make and review these cards was just too much. Keep in mind that my school overloads us with the low yield.

2. Use a premade deck that your classmates are passing around. This could work very well, depending on how good it is. The premades at my school just weren't good enough for me.

3. Some people have some extremely good and high yield notes that you can just cram a few days before the exam. I have yet to come across this personally.

4. Run through the slides like you're doing. I did this for the most part for M1, except I did it a few days before exams. It worked okay. Keep in mind that I couldn't care less about my exam scores; I'm boards focused.

Now I only do the practice qs that the school supplies. The curriculum is more board relevant this year, so I'm able to get away with completely ignoring all lecture materials.

 

[slowthai]

Man you use way more resources than I do.

Haha, right? I have all these books @slowthai mentioned sitting in my shelf and I'm wondering how he/she manages to incorporate all these questions into an already crammed block.

Haha, I used these during M1. I had poor test taking skills and I knew phys was a weak point for me, so I had to just go crazy with it. I just counted up the number of qs in all the resources and divided that by the number of days until the exam minus 2 or 3 days to give me a small buffer, just in case.

Now I just use the typical:

Anki
Qbank
BnB
Sketchy
Pathoma
Goljan (not typical but a must for me)

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Haha, I used these during M1. I had poor test taking skills and I knew phys was a weak point for me, so I had to just go crazy with it. I just counted up the number of qs in all the resources and divided that by the number of days until the exam minus 2 or 3 days to give me a small buffer, just in case.

Now I just use the typical:

Anki
Qbank
BnB
Sketchy
Pathoma
Goljan (not typical but a must for me)

That’s still more than I use. I use BnB, anki, rx lol. I don’t think I could fit more resources into my schedule.

 

[ExplodingUlcers]

The preclinical review books: BRS, Guyton, Pretest, Thieme's, Lippincott, and the BnB qs.

Guyton and BNB questions are insanely underrated qbanks. My only gripe was I sometimes felt the explanations in Guyton to be lacking but otherwise it's very good for extra practice after completing BRS/BNB questions.

 

[slowthai]

Guyton and BNB questions are insanely underrated qbanks. My only gripe was I sometimes felt the explanations in Guyton to be lacking but otherwise it's very good for extra practice after completing BRS/BNB questions.

Totally agree

 

[Cornfed101]

2. Use a premade deck that your classmates are passing around. This could work very well, depending on how good it is. The premades at my school just weren't good enough for me.

haha this is so true. It’s always like “hey we have these great premade decks for you!” And it’s super lame front and back flash cards... like what I would make in elementary school.

the premade decks for step are great not because of what’s on the standard part of the card, but because of the references and images from first aid, sketchy, etc.

 

[slowthai]

Lol. To be fair some of Zanki's Step 2 cards are actually front and back flash cards.

The fact that they're front and back cards isn't really the issue here. It's more about them being sucky, low effort, basic cards lol