hi i like your blog ! What are your medical school exams like ? what's the format, multiple choice or short answer, or a combination of both? what subjects did you take for first year ? thanks !
I'm surprised I've never gotten this question before. Let's break it down, shall we:
For the pre-clinical years, my school taught in phases by organ system. So instead of having anatomy or pathology all at once in one semester or something, we had every subject spread out and learned the parts of it that pertained to a body system each phase. It's a more integrated approach.
So all of our tests in the first 2 years were multidisciplinary. They had Anatomy, Biochem, Micro, Histology, Pathology, Pharm, Physiology, etc. all in one test. Ours were paper/scantron tests, but I know some schools do theirs on computers in a format similar to the USMLE. Each test was broken up by subject and the number of questions for each subject varied, but each test was around 250-300 multiple choice questions. On average, they took 3-5 hours.
The questions are tough. They're not first order questions like you get in high school and college. They're second and third order questions. For example, a pathology question may show a slide like this
which you are to know is skin stained with an immunohistochemical stain. You are to also know that this stain is characteristic of the disease bullous pemphigoid because the basement membrane lights up on the stain. But that's not the question. No, the question will ask you if the patient presents with flaccid or tense blisters (the answer is tense, btw). Or some other crap like that. They're crazy questions.
In the third year, we took the standardized Shelf tests that pretty much everyone takes. They are also multiple choice but they're a little shorter.
And then there's fourth year. Aaaahhh, fourth year. The year of no tests. That's right. No tests. Well, except Step 2 CK & CS. But otherwise, no tests!
Thank you, gokulan, for reminding me of how absolutely WONDERFUL it is to be done with all this junk. For reals.
EDIT: My school also has oral exams the first two years, but that's a whole 'nother ball of wax.
