Which boards resource is overrated?

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Which boards resource is overrated?

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slowthai

slowthai

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In the title.
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I found Sketchy to be extraordinarily overrated. It didn't help me at all. Having said that I don't really consider myself to be a visual learner so for people who do I can see how it would be very helpful. And I might get some heat for this but although I do think Zanki it a good resource, I don't think it's the end-all-be-all that people make it out to be. If I had to do it all again I would probably spend much more time on practice questions and maybe do one or two more question banks rather than trying to do as much of Zanki as possible.
 
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BnB for me, in my opinion, it's good, but not great. Some sections are amazing and some are meh imo. I'm viewing this more from a first pass perspective though. BnB seems like it would be incredible for reviewing/refreshing. I think as a whole it's the most complete by far, but Costanzo, Pathoma, and Sketchy combo >>> BnB (again for primary learning, obviously if you're reviewing you might not have that much time).

Sketchy would be grossly overrated if someone isn't a visual learner, but I love it. Also rarely to never use FA (again, not talking about during dedicated).
 
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Pathoma is too bare-bones for me. Not enough clinical, pharm or micro tie-ins to the covered pathology topics. That said, if you're just looking to reinforce some tricky concepts it can be pretty useful
 
I thought sketchy micro was wonderful, but sketchy pharm... good on them for trying but there's really no good way to learn pharm.

I still cringe trying to think of the cephalosporin video where they all sound the same and look the same to me.
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
What does everyone mean by costanzo? The book?
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Yep this is what I have Physiology - 6th Edition. It's a physiology book that is written in an extremely easy way to understand (in the preface she says she wrote it specifically for med students). It's not a super concise thing like most board resources are, it flows really well and she hits some things multiple times.

Definitely not for everyone, but taught me physio so well (and the cards in Zanki are made from costanzo, so it was a super easy workflow). There is also BRS Physio, also written by her in bullet point format.
 
Gilakend said:
Yep this is what I have Physiology - 6th Edition. It's a physiology book that is written in an extremely easy way to understand (in the preface she says she wrote it specifically for med students). It's not a super concise thing like most board resources are, it flows really well and she hits some things multiple times.

Definitely not for everyone, but taught me physio so well (and the cards in Zanki are made from costanzo, so it was a super easy workflow). There is also BRS Physio, also written by her in bullet point format.
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I loved the BRS biochem questions. Just ordered physio. I don’t super learn well from just reading textbooks but I liked BRS.
 
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Sketchy is best accomplished by doing the Anki cards and either watching the vids once or not at all. Excellent resource but final pics plus a symbol key would have been better than most of the videos.

I maintain that using sketchy as they intended is a huge waste of time compared to watching once at 2x plus Anki to actually memorize the sketches.
 
My wife showed me sketchy pharm, wasn’t impressed. Surprised pic monic isn’t talked about more on the forum. It was such a great resource to learn micro and pharm. 6 years later I still remember the photos! (No, I do not work for the company lol). However it worked wonders!
 
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Fatalis said:
My wife showed me sketchy pharm, wasn’t impressed. Surprised pic Monica isn’t talked about more on the forum. It was such a great resource to learn micro and pharm. 6 years later I still remember the photos! (No, I do not work for the company lol). However it worked wonders!
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I’m guessing you mean picmonic lol. I’ve tried it. It was okay.
 
easily bnb. If you have first aid you can just read word for word what the transcript of the video will be. The only section of BnB that goes beyond in my opinion is cardio.

Phys -> use costanzo
path -> use pathoma
pharm -> use anki/sketchy pharm
 
Goro said:
FA. Has a near cult following, yet is really just the bare bones basics and lacks stuff you do need to know,
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Haha as a member of the FA cult following I’ll say it is good for what it is meant to do.
I’m usually happy enough with how my school does things but the bugs would’ve been impossible to learn from just the lecture slides without
FA (+/- Sketchy).
 
Neopolymath said:
Sketchy is best accomplished by doing the Anki cards and either watching the vids once or not at all. Excellent resource but final pics plus a symbol key would have been better than most of the videos.

I maintain that using sketchy as they intended is a huge waste of time compared to watching once at 2x plus Anki to actually memorize the sketches.
Click to expand...

This is exactly how I do it. lolnotacop + Zanki pharm and 2x the vids, that's it.
 
To be honest with you guys, I don't think any of these resources are overrated. They all serve their purposes well. I will say that I do struggle with BnB. People always say that he just reads off of FA, lol. I can't verify that because I don't own a copy, nor do I care to check. The thing is that he hardly makes things "click" for me relative to the amount of time I spend watching him (almost every single day). The depth (that I'm looking for) just doesn't seem to be there. They say that Physeo does better at this. I may end up using it later on, so we'll see.

This is my rating of all the resources.

Pathoma: 9.5/10

Sketchy micro: 8.5/10

Sketchy Pharm: 7.5/10 (Points off for the girl's voice and not only terrible, but distracting jokes lol)

BnB: 7/10
 
Goro said:
FA. Has a near cult following, yet is really just the bare bones basics and lacks stuff you do need to know,
Click to expand...

It’s not overrated, it’s just misused. It’s not supposed to be the be all end all. It’s supposed to be a condensed resource of the bare minimum you need to know and then you annotate and fill in the gaps. If all you do is memorize first aid, you will be missing a lot.
 
slowthai said:
To be honest with you guys, I don't think any of these resources are overrated. They all serve their purposes well. I will say that I do struggle with BnB. People always say that he just reads off of FA, lol. I can't verify that because I don't own a copy, nor do I care to check. The thing is that he hardly makes things "click" for me relative to the amount of time I spend watching him (almost every single day). The depth (that I'm looking for) just doesn't seem to be there. They say that Physeo does better at this. I may end up using it later on, so we'll see.

This is my rating of all the resources.

Pathoma: 9.5/10

Sketchy micro: 8.5/10

Sketchy Pharm: 7.5/10 (Points off for the girl's voice and not only terrible, but distracting jokes lol)

BnB: 7/10
Click to expand...

I can’t say I think pathoma is much better than BnB. I have watched both and find that I mostly get what’s in pathoma in BnB. And a few of his videos have had incorrect info (well, either he was incorrect or BnB, uptodate, FA, and Robbins were all wrong lol). I know every resource is going to have errata but I guess I just don’t see what’s so much better about pathoma than BnB.
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
I can’t say I think pathoma is much better than BnB. I have watched both and find that I mostly get what’s in pathoma in BnB. And a few of his videos have had incorrect info (well, either he was incorrect or BnB, uptodate, FA, and Robbins were all wrong lol). I know every resource is going to have errata but I guess I just don’t see what’s so much better about pathoma than BnB.
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Pathoma just makes everything make so much more sense. He truly connects the dots and removes the veil, so the speak. I'm just in awe of his teaching ability. He truly inspires me, lol. BnB just feels like he does more surface level explanations. That's the best way I can describe it, lol
 
slowthai said:
Pathoma just makes everything make so much more sense. He truly connects the dots and removes the veil, so the speak. I'm just in awe of his teaching ability. He truly inspires me, lol. BnB just feels like he does more surface level explanations. That's the best way I can describe it, lol
Click to expand...

lol I do enjoy his videos. Maybe I'll try out doing pathoma and Costanzo for a bit and see how I like it.
 
Suggest putting in an answer for: none of the above

Each resource is excellent in its own way
 
Lucca said:
Zanki.


*jumps in foxhole*
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Screenshot_20200914-195835~3.png
 
Idk about you guys but I like the straight forwardness of Dr. Ryan on BnB.

I don't need the fancy sketchy drawings. That doesn't work for me. Just be clear and concise. Details can be gathered afterwards if need be.
 
Yhwach said:
Idk about you guys but I like the straight forwardness of Dr. Ryan on BnB.

I don't need the fancy sketchy drawings. That doesn't work for me. Just be clear and concise. Details can be gathered afterwards if need be.
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Or not if you're just doing NBMEs and boards...
 
Some of sketchy pharm is good, but some is really stretched. Not really sketchy’s fault since a lot of drug names are just too funky.
 
Lucca said:
Zanki.


*jumps in foxhole*
Click to expand...

Agreed. I switched to cheesy lightyear because I thought zanki was lacking. LY is way better, but it still not some holy grail. I have to add my own cards for stuff it doesn’t even cover.
 
drducky. said:
Some of sketchy pharm is good, but some is really stretched. Not really sketchy’s fault since a lot of drug names are just too funky.
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A couple are inexcusably bad tho. The macrolides vid was garbage... dad-jokey Thee Olden Thymes narration coupled with a dark drawing where objects were hard to discriminate between

That said you still have lots of quality videos like Class I antiarrhythmics and adrenergic agonists so I like the resource overall
 
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Lucca said:
Zanki.


*jumps in foxhole*
Click to expand...
Truly blasphemous.




I didn't use BnB much until dedicated, where I watched a handful of videos on stuff I felt weaker on. I wasn't a huge fan...it was a nice refresher, but I don't think I would've enjoyed using it while actually in school. Also agree with others here. I watched the Sketchy pharm videos on like 2x and then just did the Anki cards, I probably could have forgone watching the videos themselves all together as all you really need is the final image + flashcards.
 
Quick question for everyone, those preparing for Step 1 and those done with Step 1 - do you guys find that the third-party USMLE materials are a great supplement for med school content? Such that if you didn't have to take the boards, you'd still supplement your study with one or more of the prep materials?

@AnatomyGrey12
@Lucca
@ciestar
 
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Hazle said:
Quick question for everyone, those preparing for Step 1 and those done with Step 1 - do you guys find that the third-party USMLE materials are a great supplement for med school content? Such that if you didn't have to take the boards, you'd still supplement your study with one or more of the prep materials?
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Absolutely without a doubt. Even if step 1 wasn't a thing I have zero regret with how I essentially did one half-assed pass of school material right before each test after actually learning everything from good resources.
 
Hazle said:
Quick question for everyone, those preparing for Step 1 and those done with Step 1 - do you guys find that the third-party USMLE materials are a great supplement for med school content? Such that if you didn't have to take the boards, you'd still supplement your study with one or more of the prep materials?
Click to expand...

Honestly, school lectures are the supplement, lol. Boards resources are the foundation. 10/10 I'd do it again if step was p/f for me.
 
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