Raryn
Infernal Internist / Enigmatic Endocrinologist
- #5
Can anyone weigh in on Uworld for ABIM prep? Fairly new and I'm not sure if it's the same standard as it was for USMLE
I've been using it off and on the last few months. Harder than MKSAP (score ~10-15% worse than my first pass through MKSAP) but seems like a pretty decent educational tool.
- #6
Mksap17 questions don't seem to be as good at Mksap16. It feels like it was hastily put together. The explanations are copy/pasted from the text and sometimes don't directly address why other answer choices are incorrect. The GUI is not fluid and not similar to the ABIM testing software. There are no diagrams or tables. I'm quite disappointed by the lack of quality.
UWorld on the other hand has been pretty stellar.
I'm scoring around 65-72% in Uworld (tutor, unused) and 60-66% in MKSAP17..
- #7
Just got done with MKSAP 16 and starting Uworld. My main thoughts thus far are that these question banks have very, very different styles of questions and reasoning. MKSAP is very much 'you know it or you don't' - it's challenging in that it tends to get out into the weeds and deals with obscure (and sometimes barely relevant knowledge, IMHO) but the questions are fundamentally good. MKSAP explanations are a bit dense and can take some time to read through. Uworld is much more focused, but the questions also feel much more like the USMLE - mind games revolving around relatively common issues.
Uworld questions feel a lot more like the ITE questions, for what it's worth.
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- #8
which is the best board review course: ACP Board Review (live or offline) vs Awesome Review vs MedStudy vs other that you think is even better?
- #13
Any comment on how medstudy videos compare to Awesome Review?
How many pages is the Awesome review notes?
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Raryn
Infernal Internist / Enigmatic Endocrinologist
- #17
Thanks for your reply. I guess I am more concerned as to will UWORLD ALONE be enough to pass this beast of an exam? Uworld has only 1185 questions. Is that enough to cover EVERYTHING you will be tested on, or do I need to supplement with MKSAP 17 Questions also to cover enough material? The question isnt books vs reading, its how many questions do you really need to do in order to PASS.
It depends on the person.
If you studied along with your hardcore residency at a quaternary care center and got above the 90th percentile on the ITE three years running, you'd almost certainly pass without any dedicated study time at all. But if you're that type of person, you'll probably study anyway.
On the other hand, if you never studied at all, barely scraped by in BFE where getting a septic patient was an event you're still talking about, and averaged 10th percentile on the ITE... uworld alone won't be enough. Hell, MKSAP+Uworld would probably not be enough. Take a board review course, or two.
I'm much closer to the first than the second (but not as crazy as that first guy), but the general advice I've received is most people use at least two sources, for the stylistic changes if nothing else. Thus I'm using MKSAP+uworld. I'm not taking any board review courses or otherwise doing anything crazy, but I figured that was reasonable for likely the second to last big test of my life (last being my fellowship boards, and I'm fairly happy that they're nixing the recert exam).
Raryn
Infernal Internist / Enigmatic Endocrinologist
- #22
Just wondering--- In MKSAP 17, they have a section for "Practice Exams." Are these entirely different questions from the Q-bank or are they the same as the questions that I generate with Custom Quizzes?
They're the same as the questions in the rest of the qbank, but the practice exams are explicitly made in ABIM proportions. So 14% cardiology, etc. I'm not sure if it will also pull from questions you've already answered in the main qbank as I've only used it like once.
On the other hand, the MKSAP 17 pretest is a completely separate set of 120 questions that unfortunately don't have the associated full explanations, but works as a decent assessment of where you stand to start.
- #30
At this point, I've done MKSAP once (overall ~70%), UWorld once (70%), and about to start MKSAP 16 again while finishing up Boards Basics 3. I'm feeling decent.
- #31
Study material being used:
1. MKSAP 17 Q's
2. Board Basic 4
I've completed the MKSAP Q's x 1 thus far, overall score of 71.6%; will reset the Qbank and have a second go round. The game plan is to do questions every morning, at the very most, 2 sets of 60 Q's, review the explanations again and write notes in BB4. The evenings will entail reviewing the big sections on BB4.
Wishing everyone the best of luck on the exam!
- #32
Blah - it's hard to stay motivated for this when there's mountains beyond mountains of stuff that needs to be read for fellowship (and I'd rather be reading that stuff too).
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- #34
Took this bad boy today. Thoughts:
- I went in pretty confident (did Mksap 16 x1.5 or so, uworld x1 with averages initially in the 70s on both and mid to high 80s on the mksap repeat). I did mid 70s on every ITE as a resident. I was definitely one of the harder workers in my residency class...for what its worth.
- As far as the exam itself....Two of the blocks were easy peasy. Two of the blocks sucked hard. I felt like I got a lot of questions right and felt decent during the exam...now I'm looking up answers and it seems like a got a lot of stuff wrong. Bleh.
- Don't bother memorizing equations as they literally give them to you...there's this 'IM Calculator' that will literally calculate delta ratios, Wells scores etc etc etc for you. They seemingly give you everything - all reference ranges for labs are included in the question stems. They give you RCRIs and even a generic/trade name drug list. What this means, however, is that the questions won't be asking you these things because they know they've given you the information already. I only noted one true acid-base question and maybe 1-2 stats qs that required any sort of calculations. I rarely looked at the (substantial) amount of info they give you in these different menus etc because the questions simply didn't deal with that stuff.
- Some friends had told me that they felt like their study efforts before hadn't helped much because they got a ton of crazy/obscure questions - I agree. There were a LOT of questions that covered stuff that I'd seemingly never seen anywhere before...and that was despite doing Mksap and uworld and reading through BB3 + being a dedicated resident. I'm a rheum fellow and I'm amazed at the depth of stuff they dug out on the rheum qs...just way, way too in depth honestly. And they test the BB3 material much like the USMLE did with FA previously...they usually didn't ask questions in the direction you'd learned the material before. I'm paging through BB3 now and can't even find answers to a lot of the weirder qs. There were definitely qs that reached way back to stuff I hadn't focused on since step 1.
- Boards Basics is actually clutch...read it and read it. Memorize it like you did FA for step 1, as there's going to be little sentence fragments from it showing up in the questions and if you don't know ALL of them then you're apparently going to be getting qs wrong.
I'm hoping I passed. I walked out of the test with that 'OK that was tough but I still feel like I passed' feeling...now I wonder after looking up some answers.
I'm not reassured by some of the posts from previous years, either...apparently somebody failed after getting 205 questions correct. I could easily, easily see getting 35 questions wrong - oy vey.
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Raryn
Infernal Internist / Enigmatic Endocrinologist
- #35
I'm not reassured by some of the posts from previous years, either...apparently somebody failed after getting 205 questions correct. I could easily, easily see getting 35 questions wrong - oy vey.
Say what? People have failed with 85% on this thing?
- #37
Say what? People have failed with 85% on this thing?
Somebody was saying this in the forum for the ABIM exam last year.
After some googling, however, I've learned that the ABIM has openly stated that the percentage correct required to pass (at least for the MOC exams) is only about 65% - and the initial cert exam may be lower because there's experimental questions on there. So whoever was saying that last year was FOS.
- #39
dozitgetchahi thank you for your sharing your experience. I finished MKSAP 17 this past week and averaged 71% (first pass). I wish I had more time to read all the explanations in details but I haven't with fellowship being so busy. I'm spending the next few days re-reading board basics and it sounds like this will be most high yield (Read it slowly x1 over the past 2 years). Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.
Yeah I'd say BB is the most high-yield thing you could do at this point. Lots of good info in there. Another pass of BB3 probably would have given me another 10 correct answers.
Raryn
Infernal Internist / Enigmatic Endocrinologist
- #41
I took it today as well.
Probably a good 75% of it was questions that were reasonably straightforward, either similar to MKSAP or uworld. 15% was them being tricky by either asking some strange extrapolation from a question or not giving you adequate information to be sure. And 10% of it was them pulling something obscure out of their butts. Your milage may vary.
Anyone know the if the actual ABIM test will make you look up normal lab values or will the numbers be in the question.
What I can say is that every question had the normal range for labs listed in the stem. In fact, there is no longer a reference sheet with normal labs b/c they're all in the questions.
In addition, there are two other things that may be handy: There's a tab full of calculators of common IM formulas like osmolar gap and a variety of random other stuff (that I didn't use at all) and there is a reference sheet giving you the brand names of any drugs you may not be familiar with the generic of.
Can't wait till October.
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Raryn
Infernal Internist / Enigmatic Endocrinologist
- #45
Will the results be out the first week in October similar to last year?
*shrug*
ABIM gives themselves 3 months, which would put it late November at the latest. That said, looking at the last few years:
2015: Thursday, October 8
2014: Monday, October 6
2013: Monday, October 7
2012: Thursday, October 4
My bet based on those is Thursday, October 6 or Monday, October 10 for us. But that's just a guess, and it could be all the wait out at Thanksgivingtime.
Raryn
Infernal Internist / Enigmatic Endocrinologist
- #48
Hey guys. For everyone that took the test so far or heard from other people that have, how was the topic distribution?
Medical Content Category % of Exam
Allergy/Immunology 2%
Cardiovascular Disease 14%
Dermatology 3%
Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism 9%
Gastroenterology 9%
Geriatric Syndromes 3%
Hematology 6%
Infectious Disease 9%
Nephrology/Urology 6%
Neurology 4%
Obstetrics/Gynecology 3%
Medical Oncology 6%
Ophthalmology 1%
Otolaryngology/Dental Medicine 1%
Psychiatry 4%
Pulmonary Disease 9%
Rheumatology/Orthopedics 9%
Other 2%
Total 100%
Straight from https://www.abim.org/~/media/ABIM P...lueprints/certification/internal-medicine.pdf
That's all the detail you'll get from anywhere here. ABIM is notorious on protecting their copyright and trade secrets and I'd really rather not get a lifetime ban or something silly like that. Also, SDN's TOS forbids us from discussing the details of the exam.
Last year all the results were disclosed on 10/08/16 no matter when you took the initial certification date if i recall.
I don't see where I said otherwise? Every year people from all the different dates get the results disclosed together.
Source: https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/official-abim-exam-study-tools-thread.1196951/
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