Too Many/ Too Few Questions?

[deleted645092]

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[JohnnyKnoxville]

I did Kaplan during blocks, and UWorld during dedicated. I didn’t do outstanding, but I did just fine (above national average). Doing questions won’t help if you don’t have the material down first.

With that being said, my roommate did Kaplan/Rx/UWorld and got a 260.

 

[deleted645092]

I did Kaplan during blocks, and UWorld during dedicated. I didn’t do outstanding, but I did just fine (above national average). Doing questions won’t help if you don’t have the material down first.

With that being said, my roommate did Kaplan/Rx/UWorld and got a 260.

Thanks, I'm definitely familiar with all of the strategies and importance of using my Q-banks correctly. I guess what I'm wondering is, is this something you've seen at your school where people just hear "More questions = Higher board scores", without understanding the importance of actually reviewing what they get wrong, and not just flying through questions for the sake of doing them? Especially for the people doing upwards of 2,000 questions a month, it seems like A: They are going to run out of questions, and B: There is no way they can be effectively doing and reviewing almost 100 a day when we still haven't actually finished material so they have to actually keep up with classes still.

 

[IntheClouds4ever]

Thanks, I'm definitely familiar with all of the strategies and importance of using my Q-banks correctly. I guess what I'm wondering is, is this something you've seen at your school where people just hear "More questions = Higher board scores", without understanding the importance of actually reviewing what they get wrong, and not just flying through questions for the sake of doing them? Especially for the people doing upwards of 2,000 questions a month, it seems like A: They are going to run out of questions, and B: There is no way they can be effectively doing and reviewing almost 100 a day when we still haven't actually finished material so they have to actually keep up with classes still.

It sounds like you haven’t done enough questions yet to see the commonalities across the qbanks. IMO, you should only be reviewing questions you guessed or had no idea. If I get it right, I’ll skim the explanation to make sure I used the same thought process but there’s no point in wasting time reviewing what you know. I also just throw wrong questions in to Anki so it’s burned into my head. After you’ve done 5-6K questions, you get to Uworld and know the diagnosis and treatment but may not remember if that 30s inhibitor was reversible or irreversible.. you shouldn’t be spending 5-10 minutes reviewing it since you know the bulk and just need to memorize the last detail.

 

[IntheClouds4ever]

I would totally abandon COMBANK and invest all your time in UWorld. As the post above me suggested, you aren't yet seeing the commonalities across the QBanks and frankly I don't expect that you will. The reason has nothing to do with you personally, but because in my humble opinion COMBANK is an inefficient qbank whereas UWorld is beautifully sculpted with meticulously curated content & explanations. It's like comparing the New England Patriots to a high school league flag football team. They are on completely different planets and the bulk of true learning (ironic!) will come from UWorld.

Eventually, you'll want to reach the point where you are churning out at least 1 full 40 question set on random timed mode, fully taking it, then reviewing it later that day making sure to really understand every facet of that explanation. With enough of this, your brain will begin to think how it needs to for the real USMLE & COMLEX. Some people do (2) full 40Q sets but that is arguably excessive.

You need to do COMBANK as well. The style of questions on the COMLEX/COMSAEs are completely different than Uworld. Uworld is great for thorough knowledge, but combank will help you prepare on how the comlex will test that knowledge. Depending on how much time you have until test day, 40qs a day is insufficient to get through 2 qbanks or even one of them twice (just my opinion though). Doing multiple banks will show commonalities and youll start recognizing disease patterns and will be able to skim answer explanations to find the obscure detail that you missed and throw it in Anki, but this is going to require more than 40qs a day if you have less than 3 months to prep. I think there’s a fine line b/w reading every explanation and focusing on what you really missed in the question stem.

 

[pbrocks15]

With that being said, my roommate did Kaplan/Rx/UWorld and got a 260.

Did they do this all during dedicated?

 

[JohnnyKnoxville]

Did they do this all during dedicated?

No. They did Kaplan during blocks, started Rx over the summer, and did the rest during dedicated. But we did have 8 weeks dedicated (9 if you studied the week of Christmas).

 

[OMFS@2018]

More questions=better