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- Jul 25, 2001
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It's not that it's incredibly difficult... it just kind of sucks. Here's my general impression: a string of no-brainers followed by a question about something I've never heard of in my life and which makes no sense whatsoever. Repeat as necessary.
Q-Bank might be picky but I always "got" the question. Maybe I didn't know exactly what HLA or chromosome or pharm side effect they were looking for, but I generally knew what they were talking about. There were several questions on Step One, on the other hand, that were just plain bizarre and I didn't even know where to start. Luckily there weren't too many of these, but even a handful can shake a guy's confidence. There was one question in particular that just plain didn't make any sense to me... I must have read it five times, trying to picture what the hell they were talking about.
Anyway, I suppose it probably went fine. The first few blocks went really well; I cruised on into block four without having taken a break yet. In the fourth block, however, I probably marked 20 questions to come back to. Had to make wild guesses on several. Things had gone south in a big way. Decided to take a break after block four, but after pacing around the lobby for five minutes and eating a couple granola bars, figured I'd just get the damn thing over with. The reminder of the exam was only so-so... There were some tricky ones that I felt good about knowing the answer to, but then also some easy ones that I just couldn't f-ing remember. Oh well. I think I probably did okay, but not as good as I could have done, so I'm not really "relieved to be done" so much as I am a little pissed off.
Anatomy: not too much. 15 questions, maybe? Something like that. Lots of upper limb stuff. A few CT scans, and these were universally easy. In general, much easier than Q-bank anatomy, although there were a couple crazy ones that I wouldn't have known the answer to if I'd studied for five years for this test. Still, could usually narrow it down to two choices. Not worth worrying about.
I prepared for this with FA and HY. HY isn't worth the extra time and money. Annotate your FA with some additional upper limb stuff from some other (free) source and call it good.
Neuro: I'll give this a seperate category, because it was heavily emphasized on my test. I probably had 5 or 6 neuroanatomy/neuropath questions on each block. Cross-sectional anatomy is a must. The brain stem is uber-high yield. Luckily I'd studied the hell out of this subject over the past couple days, but I think I still missed a few.
HY for Neuro is pretty much a requirement. I read this book three times cover-to-cover, and I'm incredibly glad that I did. I also flipped through my Haines atlas, which was very helpful.
Embyro: a handful. Mostly no-brainers. One really weird one. No big deal.
I just used FA and that was enough.
Behavorial: I thought these were all extremely easy. Of course, I still might have gotten them wrong--that's the beauty of these questions. A few simple epi calcuations.
I read the BRS book but it was overkill. FA and a healthy dose of common sense will put you in good stead.
Micro/Immuno: The bacteria questions were cake. I had two easy fungal questions. No parasites. A large number of virus questions, which would have been way, way easier if I'd spent more time memorizing those charts in FA. Missed a couple there. All in all, micro wasn't a huge problem. Immuno was a mixed bag. You have to know this stuff cold. If you do, the questions aren't very thought-provoking. If you don't, then you're s--- out of luck.
I used FA, Micro Made Ridiculously Simple, and the Levinson and Jawetz book for immuno. For my test, FA was probably enough for micro if you had a good grasp to begin with. Personally, I didn't remember a single damn thing about micro, so MMRS was extremely helpful. FA's immuno section is pretty bare-bones, and wasn't enough for my test. I'm glad I supplemented it.
Biochem: an awful lot. 20% of my test, maybe. A mixture of all kinds of stuff... some easy translation/transcription questions, some of the standard enzyme deficiencies, and then some goddamn "pathway" questions. More of these than I'd have liked. This was the section that had me saying to myself "WTF!" most often. I got two questions that required me to recognize chemical structures. F--- that. Of the questions I missed on this test, I'm sure the majority of them were in biochem.
I used FA, HY Biochem and HY Cell and Molecular Bio. Read both of the HY books twice through and annotated FA heavily. Apparently this was not enough. I'm not even sure what I could have done to prepare better for this.
Pharm: two questions concerned drugs that I didn't know existed. The rest were pretty easy... actually, far easier than I'd expected. If Q-Bank has you worried about pharm, then Step One might be a nice surprise.
I used FA and PharmCards. A few of the drugs on my test were not in FA but were on the PharmCards, but still, if you memorize the pharm section of FA then the majority of these questions will be very easy for you.
Physio: almost no "pure phys." I can only recall a few, and they were rudimentary.
I used the BRS book. FA's physio section is laughable. Don't depend on it whatsoever.
Pathophys: the bulk of the test. If you've done a lot of Q-Bank, then this will be pretty familiar to you. Very very few "What disease is this?" questions. I had, like, four. Most of them will describe a condition and then ask something like "what would the biopsy show?" or "what will the eventual outcome be?" No surprises here. Not too many bizarre disease.
I used the BRS book, Robbin's Review, and sometimes Robbins itself. I read the BRS book three times; probably a good use of time. I really like the Robbin's Review book, too. FA is fairly comprehensive, but by itself probably isn't quite enough.
Questions So F-ed Up I Don't Even Know What Category They Would Go In: about three of these.
As far Q-Bank goes, I ended up doing 92% of it. My scores during the last week of studying ranged from mid-70s to low-90s. I think it's pretty good preparation... there were quite a few questions on the test which were virtually identical to Q-Bank questions I'd had, and there probably is no way I'd have gotten them right otherwise. I think it's certainly worthwhile to do as much of Q-Bank as possible.
Blah. I'm sure I passed, but I'm not too excited about getting my score. I definitely could have done better.
Q-Bank might be picky but I always "got" the question. Maybe I didn't know exactly what HLA or chromosome or pharm side effect they were looking for, but I generally knew what they were talking about. There were several questions on Step One, on the other hand, that were just plain bizarre and I didn't even know where to start. Luckily there weren't too many of these, but even a handful can shake a guy's confidence. There was one question in particular that just plain didn't make any sense to me... I must have read it five times, trying to picture what the hell they were talking about.
Anyway, I suppose it probably went fine. The first few blocks went really well; I cruised on into block four without having taken a break yet. In the fourth block, however, I probably marked 20 questions to come back to. Had to make wild guesses on several. Things had gone south in a big way. Decided to take a break after block four, but after pacing around the lobby for five minutes and eating a couple granola bars, figured I'd just get the damn thing over with. The reminder of the exam was only so-so... There were some tricky ones that I felt good about knowing the answer to, but then also some easy ones that I just couldn't f-ing remember. Oh well. I think I probably did okay, but not as good as I could have done, so I'm not really "relieved to be done" so much as I am a little pissed off.
Anatomy: not too much. 15 questions, maybe? Something like that. Lots of upper limb stuff. A few CT scans, and these were universally easy. In general, much easier than Q-bank anatomy, although there were a couple crazy ones that I wouldn't have known the answer to if I'd studied for five years for this test. Still, could usually narrow it down to two choices. Not worth worrying about.
I prepared for this with FA and HY. HY isn't worth the extra time and money. Annotate your FA with some additional upper limb stuff from some other (free) source and call it good.
Neuro: I'll give this a seperate category, because it was heavily emphasized on my test. I probably had 5 or 6 neuroanatomy/neuropath questions on each block. Cross-sectional anatomy is a must. The brain stem is uber-high yield. Luckily I'd studied the hell out of this subject over the past couple days, but I think I still missed a few.
HY for Neuro is pretty much a requirement. I read this book three times cover-to-cover, and I'm incredibly glad that I did. I also flipped through my Haines atlas, which was very helpful.
Embyro: a handful. Mostly no-brainers. One really weird one. No big deal.
I just used FA and that was enough.
Behavorial: I thought these were all extremely easy. Of course, I still might have gotten them wrong--that's the beauty of these questions. A few simple epi calcuations.
I read the BRS book but it was overkill. FA and a healthy dose of common sense will put you in good stead.
Micro/Immuno: The bacteria questions were cake. I had two easy fungal questions. No parasites. A large number of virus questions, which would have been way, way easier if I'd spent more time memorizing those charts in FA. Missed a couple there. All in all, micro wasn't a huge problem. Immuno was a mixed bag. You have to know this stuff cold. If you do, the questions aren't very thought-provoking. If you don't, then you're s--- out of luck.
I used FA, Micro Made Ridiculously Simple, and the Levinson and Jawetz book for immuno. For my test, FA was probably enough for micro if you had a good grasp to begin with. Personally, I didn't remember a single damn thing about micro, so MMRS was extremely helpful. FA's immuno section is pretty bare-bones, and wasn't enough for my test. I'm glad I supplemented it.
Biochem: an awful lot. 20% of my test, maybe. A mixture of all kinds of stuff... some easy translation/transcription questions, some of the standard enzyme deficiencies, and then some goddamn "pathway" questions. More of these than I'd have liked. This was the section that had me saying to myself "WTF!" most often. I got two questions that required me to recognize chemical structures. F--- that. Of the questions I missed on this test, I'm sure the majority of them were in biochem.
I used FA, HY Biochem and HY Cell and Molecular Bio. Read both of the HY books twice through and annotated FA heavily. Apparently this was not enough. I'm not even sure what I could have done to prepare better for this.
Pharm: two questions concerned drugs that I didn't know existed. The rest were pretty easy... actually, far easier than I'd expected. If Q-Bank has you worried about pharm, then Step One might be a nice surprise.
I used FA and PharmCards. A few of the drugs on my test were not in FA but were on the PharmCards, but still, if you memorize the pharm section of FA then the majority of these questions will be very easy for you.
Physio: almost no "pure phys." I can only recall a few, and they were rudimentary.
I used the BRS book. FA's physio section is laughable. Don't depend on it whatsoever.
Pathophys: the bulk of the test. If you've done a lot of Q-Bank, then this will be pretty familiar to you. Very very few "What disease is this?" questions. I had, like, four. Most of them will describe a condition and then ask something like "what would the biopsy show?" or "what will the eventual outcome be?" No surprises here. Not too many bizarre disease.
I used the BRS book, Robbin's Review, and sometimes Robbins itself. I read the BRS book three times; probably a good use of time. I really like the Robbin's Review book, too. FA is fairly comprehensive, but by itself probably isn't quite enough.
Questions So F-ed Up I Don't Even Know What Category They Would Go In: about three of these.
As far Q-Bank goes, I ended up doing 92% of it. My scores during the last week of studying ranged from mid-70s to low-90s. I think it's pretty good preparation... there were quite a few questions on the test which were virtually identical to Q-Bank questions I'd had, and there probably is no way I'd have gotten them right otherwise. I think it's certainly worthwhile to do as much of Q-Bank as possible.
Blah. I'm sure I passed, but I'm not too excited about getting my score. I definitely could have done better.
