Well finally 3 weeks passed since my exam and the oasis trick worked. so yay i passed now just have to wait for my score. Ive used this forum extensively for prep so i think i should put down a few words about my exam experience:
First my stats--
Im at SGU (from SGU premed hence no MCAT score) med GPA about a 3.5. I thought the school prepared me pretty well for my boards and few questions came that i didnt know something about.
Prep-----
I took about 8 wks to prep. i think it could be done in 6 actually but procrastination and other probs cost me the extra two wks
I used primarily the kaplan vids. i thought they were pretty good in most areas. i highly recommend the path, biochem and the behavioural science (i thought they were the best). the anatomy areas were poor though but there wasnt alot of anatomy on my exam. Pharm was ok but not great so i supplemented with lippincott and my notes from class. I used the first aid as a guide. its great for cramming random facts which can supplement with a reference text or 2. Other things i also tried:
Goljan audio: these were pretty good quite comprehensive. i began using these initially thought they would be better after i had studied everything else but never got the time to finish them still. I still would recommend them
BRS Path: i think this book was really poor on alot of areas. i completed this book but still couldnt answer alot of UW questions so i wouldnt recommend (alot of ppl swear by this book though). its a great book for reference for random facts when you are doing questions though
BRS physio: this i think was really great. did it about 3/4 of the way through. i think it covered most aspects of physio well. i may be biased cuz physio is always a strong point for me
Kaplan Home Study series (the 4 volume set): i really thought these were total crap with not enough info. my "procrastination" was the time i spent reading these books only to be unable to answer any tough questions. hence i had to go relearn those topics. I really really would not recommend. I hate these books so much that i decided to give them to the person i was selling them to cuz i would feel bad for selling them useless garbarge. i recommend to stick with the kaplan vids and save your $400. this may be just my experience though.
Questions:USMLE World. i bought this Qbank because i had the kaplan Qbook already (bought along with the previous $400 worth of garbage). i thought the UW questions were great. they were a bit more difficult than those on the actually exam and alot tougher than the ones in the kaplan book. I recommend these highly. the only problem i thought was that the GI questions were somewhat limited to crohns, UC and a bit of pharm. other areas were pretty good. b4 my exam i was about 70% done with the qbank and my average was up to 68% ( i started at about 54% but these questions were tough)
The exam: the exam was tough but i wasnt too phased cuz i was getting pounded by uworld questions all week (seemed to me that the questions got harder as i went on). the questions were in clinical vignettes. the exam was alot of path, physio and pharm. suprisingly alot of female repro and pulmonology. i had no renal and bone questions( which i thought was odd) alot of behavioral science, ethics and biostats. i had 1 biochem question (which sadly i had spent 2 wks studying for). pretty much the question breakdown was:
pharm, path, physio >>ethics, micro, **, biostats>>>>neuro, bchem, anat, embryo
In retrospect: i should have spent more time planning and sorting out what sources i should use for each course. i was actually still doing this during my study plans. this resulted in having needlessly used multiple sources for a topic. also i planned a schedule with 15 hr days which was a bit too vigorous hence i fell behind often (parlty due to my time wasting also). one great idea was to do a little pharm everyday (also can be done with micro) to cram in those minute details. thats about it.
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Actually it's super FFMG to you, when i jump in, ** goes out the window