Thread: 1st path. exam

Does any uppertermers know what additional material was tested on their 1st path exam on general pathology? Will he test directly from the notes and lab slides, or does **** wants us to recall information previously learned, like clotting cascades and general anatomy, that is not in the context of pathology?


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Edited by forum moderator for containing personal information which is against TOS. Edited portion is indicated by "*****".

I thought the first path exam was difficult, detailed, but quite fair. Focus on the lectures, like he tells you and the points that pertain to the lectures in the lab. Dont memorize all the details for the specific diseases covered in the lab for general pathology, you will get them agian in systemic, and I dont remember him hitting us too hard with that. Also, extra information like anatomy, biochem, etc. you may need to review to answer a few questions, but no direct questions will come from those subjects.

the lab portion is very straight foward. Big themes for the slides, if you know the green lab manual and can answer all the questions, you'll get them all right. The lecture portion comes from notes taken in class and handouts given as always.

remember this is a pathology exam so learn to focus on what is wrong ie the process affected. they may show you a prostate gland but the question is not going to be about PSA or things like that - it will be a question about your understanding of hypertrophy hyperplasia etc....

lot of the pathology exam is your ability to integrate your knowledge to answer a simple question and thats the key point for this exam. keep it simple and dont look for the complicated answer. often many of the questions will have more than one correct answer so be prepared to think about it.

slides are easy but alot of them are not first order questions. its easy to identify what process is going on and naming it but there may be a part of the process which will be asked.

the first exam is not a hard exam and people tend to do really well.

if you have the question book for robbins that is probably the best source for questions. dont waste your time with old SGU exams - they are dated and dont test the same scope.

good luck!

Don't underestimate any of the pathology exams. His questions have to do with the big picture most of the time, but the trick is that to get MOST answers right, you have to know some minute little detail that was mentioned somewhere by a tutor or in the notes. I studied big picture concepts, how they related to the overall clinical picture, and essentially what were the abnormalities concerning that patient and got killed on the exam. It was only when I sat down and seriously just memorized every little POSSIBLE factor that could go wrong and HOW that factor was abnormal was when I aced the exams. Pathology is full of details. You basically have to know like at least 5-10 points on every disease discussed to do well on SGU exams. Good luck.

Originally Posted by Amanda

Don't underestimate any of the pathology exams. His questions have to do with the big picture most of the time, but the trick is that to get MOST answers right, you have to know some minute little detail that was mentioned somewhere by a tutor or in the notes. I studied big picture concepts, how they related to the overall clinical picture, and essentially what were the abnormalities concerning that patient and got killed on the exam. It was only when I sat down and seriously just memorized every little POSSIBLE factor that could go wrong and HOW that factor was abnormal was when I aced the exams. Pathology is full of details. You basically have to know like at least 5-10 points on every disease discussed to do well on SGU exams. Good luck.

Ditto. I thought the 1st exam was cake compared to the next 2.