USMLE - Unpreparable?

[Kluver_Bucy]

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Everyone that I have talked to say you can't prepare for this exam even if you have memorized First Aid verbatim.

Does that mean even if you memorized every single minutiae (and retained it) during the 1st two years of medical school you will still come across stuff that you have never covered?

Or are these tough questions the ones you are vaguely familiar with from 1st two years of medical school but don't remember the answer such as the rate limiting step of the urea cycle? This enzyme was covered but it was so long ago. Recall problem.

If you had to pick, Which is it?

 

[nutmegs]

dude, seriously, stop making threads and study. optoin #2, there's just more info than you can keep fresh in your brain. now, back to first aid for you.

 

[4424]

both. i had a couple of questions that i just never heard of. the rest were just things i didn't learn well enough

 

[viper]

Everyone that I have talked to say you can't prepare for this exam even if you have memorized First Aid verbatim.

Does that mean even if you memorized every single minutiae (and retained it) during the 1st two years of medical school you will still come across stuff that you have never covered?

Or are these tough questions the ones you are vaguely familiar with from 1st two years of medical school but don't remember the answer such as the rate limiting step of the urea cycle? This enzyme was covered but it was so long ago. Recall problem.

If you had to pick, Which is it?

To date there has never been a test designed that you can't study for. Oh except maybe a DRE. 😉

 

[Doc Ivy]

Does that mean even if you memorized every single minutiae (and retained it) during the 1st two years of medical school you will still come across stuff that you have never covered?

Yes.

95% of most errors will be due to inadequate study, poor retention, faulty application of a concept, lack of time etc. but I guarantee that 5% (maybe 1% for some geniuses) of the test is stuff you'd have to google to get the answer right

 

[Wrigleyville]

Yes.

95% of most errors will be due to inadequate study, poor retention, faulty application of a concept, lack of time etc. but I guarantee that 5% (maybe 1% for some geniuses) of the test is stuff you'd have to google to get the answer right

There was a DNA sequence/restriction enzyme questions on my exam that I was pretty sure that I could not have answered given an unlimited amount of time and google. I saved it for last, spent around 15 minutes on it, and was no closer to the right answer than the first time I glanced at the question. I'm going to assume that was an "experimental" question, along with the pharm question where I had never heard of any of the drug answer choices!

 

[UCSBMed1]

There was a DNA sequence/restriction enzyme questions on my exam that I was pretty sure that I could not have answered given an unlimited amount of time and google. I saved it for last, spent around 15 minutes on it, and was no closer to the right answer than the first time I glanced at the question. I'm going to assume that was an "experimental" question, along with the pharm question where I had never heard of any of the drug answer choices!

Dude! I think I got that same question today. Was it the one about the "4200 base pair nucleic acid fragment with codons XXX and YYY at 413,414, 415 and 859,860,861, respectively or whatever the hell they were. How many amino acids can this make, blah, blah, blah..."

That question was impossible! Of course I sat there like an idiot (like they want you to do, mind you) and tried to figure it out. Which ones would have the opposite strand as a stop codon, which none of them were, etc.

Screw that, that has to be one they drop! Overall though, I didn't think it was that bad. I'd say 80% of the stuff I knew or was at least familiar with enough to make an educated choice.

Good luck!

 

[Samoa]

there were definitely questions on my exam that were things we'd never learned. But I could always make an educated guess by applying fundamental knowledge. I'd say that you can study for about 80-85% of the exam. The other 15-20% is dependent on whether you can a) figure out what exactly they're asking (which is often something very basic in the end), b) make a connection to something that you know, c) not let the unnecessary details distract you, and d) apply good clinical reasoning when the situation doesn't conform to anything you've formally been taught.

On my test, there was one question where the stem was so vague and roundabout that I could hardly figure out what they were asking. And there were a number of others where I felt that if I didn't know pharm as solidly as I do, I would have had difficulty understanding those as well.

I was also surprised by the number of questions that appeared difficult, but that in the end required only some very fundamental piece of knowledge to answer. And to tell you the truth, I don't remember any questions that I felt completely unequipped to handle. But that last 20% was definitely not a function of how much you've learned, but rather of how well you've learned to reason clinically. Which is kind of a surprise when most preclinical tests (including qbank) are of the memorize and regurgitate variety.

I'm not saying I did well, because it's entirely possible that I bombed the thing. But I do think that the test writers know how and what we study, and that the test is written to separate the thinkers from the memorizers, even though both will pass.

 

[Doc Ivy]

there were definitely questions on my exam that were things we'd never learned. But I could always make an educated guess by applying fundamental knowledge. I'd say that you can study for about 80-85% of the exam. The other 15-20% is dependent on whether you can a) figure out what exactly they're asking (which is often something very basic in the end), b) make a connection to something that you know, c) not let the unnecessary details distract you, and d) apply good clinical reasoning when the situation doesn't conform to anything you've formally been taught.

I actually agree with this. For the most part even those WTF? questions hinge upon the application of some basic principle. I got a crazy cell bio question with a long stem about bacterial restriction enzymes that I thought was a lost cause, then I reread it and realized that the whole thing hinged upon reading the word ENDOnuclease. Only one of the answer choices would have made sense. But I still think there were 1 or 2 questions on my test that only God and a PhD in molecular bio could tackle 😛

 

[tkim]

All I can say is, if Drug X ever makes it to market - buy stock.

 

[elektra]

For all of you that think that only with memorize concepts are done for tthe test listen: The USMLE test the meaning of concepts,
Come on!!! you are going to be a doctor so they want to know if in a real situation you can deal with a patient not only concepts at random .INTEGRATION of the concepts is the key.