iw ouldnt recommend the old tape recorders..i agree..digital is just fine

Thanks for the great information!!

Im trying to deceide between review courses, do u know anyone who took the pass or Kaplan courses an would be willing to give me a little info on how it went?

__________________
Maverik

---99--- 99---- 99---- 99 whisper pectoriloquy OR magic board score predictor?? hmm

~Last of the bus Drivers~
SABA Meds - MAY 2006

Hi,
Regarding Falcon, I was wondering if you could tell me how you managed to get your 8 hours of notes recorded and then listened to in the few evening hours you have to study. Is is do-able? Do they actually tell you HOW to go about doing that? My problem is that I still have not quite figured out how to study efficiently. I am deciding between Pass and Falcon and I like the built in structure that falcon appears to have. But if it's really them just saying, "record your notes and listen to them," without them saying how to go about condensing 8 hours of lecture into 2 hours of recording, then it's not really the type of structure I would benefit from. If that made sense.
Please advise. Thanks for your detailed description, by the way. It was very helpful.

The review books that you are given at falcon consist of powerpoint slides, so it really only takes a 3-4 hours to read them into your tape recorder or other device quickly. Its meant to jog your memory about stuff you already learned in class, not a whole new experience, its for rote memorizition basically. You don't repeat the hours of explaination and examples and anecdotes given by professors. You can then listen to the notes the next day in the early morning or before bedtime or whenever you excercise, etc. You pick up 3-4 hours whenever in spots. I'll be honest, at first I diligently recorded and listened to all my notes but I eventually found that I am not an audio learner, but a visual/reading learner. The key is that I tried out a couple of different methods of studying and didn't quit until I found what worked for me. Other students found re-writing the notes was helpful. My room mate at the time found listening to his own recordings the best method for him. In the end, we both did well on the USMLE, because we were diligent and utilized the ready made structure as a guide to studying. Falcon just gave us ideas and a starting point and a good, easy scaffold to improve our study habits. Hope that helps.
Good luck to you!
~W

__________________
Saba University School of Medicine

• Step I (234/98) [x]
• Internal Med [x]
• Infectious Disease [x]
• Ob/Gyn [x]
• Family Med [x]
• Pediatrics [ x]
• Cardiology[x]
• Surgery [ ]

does falcon have a sample ppt they distribute? I'd like to see how they lay everything out. We all know how kaplan lays things out, but I have never seen anything similar in terms of falcon (or pass).

Regarding Layout: Powerpoint presentation is powerpoint pretty much everywhere: bulleted lists with occassional pictures and charts and graphs. Nothing super fancy. Your books are just printouts so you don't need to lug around a laptop. Just something to jog your memory.

Regarding content: Content quality is good. At first it seems to shallow just by looking at the powerpoint slides prior to lecture, but the lectures in class fill in the gaps, as it is intended that students attend every lecture and take short notes - only one or two lines per slide if that much. Kaplan by contrast is much more detailed. I had Kaplan books at my side when studying along with Falcon books, and if there was an occassional point I felt Falcon didn't cover in the depth I wanted (a rare occassion) looked it up in the much more dense Kaplan books. Used Kaplan like a reference only, like Netters Atlas or other text books. The only other book I used for quick reference (the night before the exam) was First Aid, mainly for their superior explaination of biostats and nice microbiology charts.

Bottom Line:
Falcon in my opinion was much more focused only on the test content, nothing else. If you want to jump up like 15 to 30 points to maximize your USMLE or go from failing to a pass, do Falcon. If you must score a perfect score for the derm match memorize Kaplan, or better yet pay attention during med school and do USMLE World questions every day. I frankly just couldn't do that back then.

I don't work for falcon. I did get asked to speak for them last year, but I was too busy to consider it at the time.

A final thought: regarding these board exams, for most people less is more. You can spend all your time jumping from one book to another looking to piece together topics and go crazy, or you can be disciplined and stick with one good review source and only supplement it on rare occassion. Kaplan and Falcon are both excellent. I have no experience with PASS but have heard many positive things, hopefully someone else can let you know.

Email Falcon and PASS and ask for a sample page to be emailed to you. The results will at least tell you how much they value individual customers.

__________________
Saba University School of Medicine

• Step I (234/98) [x]
• Internal Med [x]
• Infectious Disease [x]
• Ob/Gyn [x]
• Family Med [x]
• Pediatrics [ x]
• Cardiology[x]
• Surgery [ ]

thank you that was very informative

New question:
I've looked at all the posts about Pass and Falcon and other prep programs. It seems that there are a lot of people who are upset about investing in Falcon. But i think a lot of those postings are not within the last year or two. Has the program significantly changed in the past few years? How many of the professors are really experts in their fields? I see Goljan being advertised, but what about the rest?
I know 7 weeks of structure would be better for me than 4 (at Pass Program), but I don't want to risk showing up and being utterly disappointed like so many seem to have been (ie 80% of a class asking for a refund).

I don't know anybody that asked for a refund. I only know of one person that actually left the program a few days into the review, he decided it wasn't for him (but neither was attending class when we were doing basic sciences, as he skipped a lot, so I think its typical for him. I hope he did well, I've lost track of him.) I was at Falcon in Jan and Feb of 2007.

I was pleased with the instruction with the exception of one poor GI instructor, as she was new to teaching. Falcon remedied the problem by having another supplemental lecture on the topic by a more experienced teacher. That was the only bump in the road at that time. One or two lecturers were senior residents/chief residents at Parkland hospital in Dallas, another lecturer was a long tenured microbiology professor from University of Oklahoma, the neurology prof was from UC Davis, some others were from the east coast but I forgot where they were from.
Bottom line, they knew their stuff way better than we did and were for the most part able teachers.
Hope somebody else chimes in here...this is starting to look like the wolfvgang falcon show...

__________________
Saba University School of Medicine

• Step I (234/98) [x]
• Internal Med [x]
• Infectious Disease [x]
• Ob/Gyn [x]
• Family Med [x]
• Pediatrics [ x]
• Cardiology[x]
• Surgery [ ]