Weird Kaplan Qbank Questions!

[neurosurg777]

Is it just me or are the kaplan Qbank questions always the opposite of what you think. For example, I have done all the questions in the NMS step 2 qbook as well as the Kaplan Qbook and every time I had a question on lupus which is at least 20 times by now the answer was always anti-dsDNA even if anti-smith was an option. Now on one of the Qbank questions it's telling me that anti-smith is more specific than anti-dsDNA.

My scores ranged from 62-80 on the books with a couple of low to mid 50's and now I am scoring in the 50's with a 39 and 45 on a couple of blocks. Granted I didn't time myself on the books because I was trying to refresh my knowledge base. Maybe its the time limit.

I don't know what to do. It doesn't seem like lack of knowledge cause I am always able to reason out what type of answer they are going to give me before I read it. Maybe it is just me but Kaplan makes me feel like I don't know anything and am going to fail. Anyone have any advice. It would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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[ptrck8]

interesting thread.

im in the same boat. my exam date was delayed, and after having done all uw and all wrong questions again, I decided to register for the kaplan q bank for one month. if my exam wasnt delayed i would not have done so. but who minds a little extra training

as said before, kaplan question are very lengthy, and thats a nice thing for training. their explanations are usually good, and i find watching the videos very enjoyable. difficulty level is similar to uw, ...BUT many of their questions are just WEIRD.

too often they have two answer choices which both seem correct or the line between wrong/right seems to be too thin. uw questions are probably slightly harder, but they are very down to the point, almost never arguable. kaplan messes me up. it might be really good in terms of learning concepts, but it confuses me more and more....

i.e. there is one kaplan question with a 60yr old female, no risk factors at all, no medication, measured systolic blood pressure in the 140's twice. i remember uw saying 'a one to two months trial of lifestyle modification before starting medication is reasonable...'. so that seemed to be the perfect answer, the uworld answer... secrets states the same. but kaplan says lifestyle modification + thiazide diuretic is preferrable to liftelyle modification only. too often i seem to pick the wrong answer and that messes me up.

the whole point is: this is at least arguable, but kaplan doesn't even mention the lifestyle trial in their answer. im confused. even if I had exactly the same question on the exam, i would still struggle between these two answers. unlike uw and nbme, there are numerous questions like that on the kaplan q bank, where two answer choices are very close and arguable.

what do you guys think about that?

 

[stridor]

So is there anyone who has used Kaplan and found it to be very useful?
UWorld seems to be a common denominator, but I'm not sure if Kaplan would be more of an annoyance or not...
Would love to hear someone's thoughts who used it.

 

[neurosurg777]

Hey guys, I am going to be taking an NBME exam shortly. As I understand it form 2 is the best predictor. Anyone else suggest anything else? Also how outdated are the NBME exams? I ask because a lot of the preventative stuff has changed and I don't want to get a lower score because I answer incorrectly. For example, breast cancer screening now starts at 50 so on a UW exam I would answer based on that but should I use that for the NBME or are they still based on the old criteria? Thanks for the help guys.