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Best Casper Prep?


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Personally I think its worth spending a weekend figuring out a strategy to use and taking at least part of the free practice CASPER test to get a feel for what to expect. There are lots of guides on this forum which are solid, and that personally I found helpful. The main thing is if you type at less than ~50 wpm now would be a good time to start practicing increasing your typing speed.

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What I would NOT do is pay hundreds/thousands of dollars to "prep" for it. The fact that there are companies who are willing to prey on your fears and insecurities to sell you information that is, for the most part, publicly available and to "mark" your responses when no one actually knows the marking guideline (and if they did, I'm sure it would be protected by NDAs). This process is already stressful and expensive enough without having people making both aspects worse. I get they want to make a living but their marketing is horrible. 

My advice would be to spend time making a prep document focusing on two aspects: 

1. Questions about YOU

2. Questions about scenarios

For questions about you what you will want to do is consider your motivations, "Why Medicine", all those kind of standard interview questions. You should also have a list of your activities/life experiences and try pulling examples from each that may be relevant to questions. You'll get better at this once you actually do questions. I would also have stories for CANMEDs roles since it's a decent framework for them to ask about. The idea is that you won't spend any of your time thinking about which example to apply, but how to apply your answer. It also helps to be good at storytelling here, only share essential details and stories where you did the right thing. 

For questions about scenarios find lists of questions for CASPer or interviews (which CASPer is trying to emulate) and practice typing to them in a Google Doc with a timer to get a sense of your timing. I would caution against becoming too formulaic. Think of it this way, if everyone's answers are a "If/then" structure the one prep company loves, how does that make it easier for you to stand out? At the same time, here a cheap prep book made by a company I refuse to name for their predatory practices and spaming would be helpful (it even showed up in Ottawa's interview video, leading to murmured whispering in my tour group), but you'll find it easily enough. Doing Right is overkill, so long as you understand the basics of ethics you're fine. Most people have some instinctive understanding anyway of what they should do and not do. 

Once you start practicing have someone knowledgeable and experienced (usually not fellow premeds) to look over your responses and give feedback. Ask them to write a few practice questions first (if you can) so they don't nitpick on how long your answers are and understand the difficulty of putting down words in a 5 minute limit. People who have marked CASPer before have made it clear that you should attempt every question, so make sure you get good at cutting yourself off and moving on. 

The big thing you can do is be able to type >100 WPM while thinking, which is probably the most valuable skill since how are you going to adequately explore an issue in-depth if you can only get down 50 words per box? At the same time, the solution isn't to simply throw down as many words as possible, since you are marked on your communication skills. You'll get better with practice (See a theme). Finally, there's a leaked PPT presentation on here somewhere that has more details on the scoring system (nothing revolutionary though). I would also advise reading through the CASPer guides here. 

Your amount of prep time/resources isn't really the limiting factor here. I only practiced 40-50 minutes a day over my lunch break and more on weekends and did just fine (Mac/Ottawa interviews) without paying more than $5. 

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58 minutes ago, MedicineLCS said:

What I would NOT do is pay hundreds/thousands of dollars to "prep" for it. The fact that there are companies who are willing to prey on your fears and insecurities to sell you information that is, for the most part, publicly available and to "mark" your responses when no one actually knows the marking guideline (and if they did, I'm sure it would be protected by NDAs). This process is already stressful and expensive enough without having people making both aspects worse. I get they want to make a living but their marketing is horrible. 

My advice would be to spend time making a prep document focusing on two aspects: 

1. Questions about YOU

2. Questions about scenarios

For questions about you what you will want to do is consider your motivations, "Why Medicine", all those kind of standard interview questions. You should also have a list of your activities/life experiences and try pulling examples from each that may be relevant to questions. You'll get better at this once you actually do questions. I would also have stories for CANMEDs roles since it's a decent framework for them to ask about. The idea is that you won't spend any of your time thinking about which example to apply, but how to apply your answer. It also helps to be good at storytelling here, only share essential details and stories where you did the right thing. 

For questions about scenarios find lists of questions for CASPer or interviews (which CASPer is trying to emulate) and practice typing to them in a Google Doc with a timer to get a sense of your timing. I would caution against becoming too formulaic. Think of it this way, if everyone's answers are a "If/then" structure the one prep company loves, how does that make it easier for you to stand out? At the same time, here a cheap prep book made by a company I refuse to name for their predatory practices and spaming would be helpful (it even showed up in Ottawa's interview video, leading to murmured whispering in my tour group), but you'll find it easily enough. Doing Right is overkill, so long as you understand the basics of ethics you're fine. Most people have some instinctive understanding anyway of what they should do and not do. 

Once you start practicing have someone knowledgeable and experienced (usually not fellow premeds) to look over your responses and give feedback. Ask them to write a few practice questions first (if you can) so they don't nitpick on how long your answers are and understand the difficulty of putting down words in a 5 minute limit. People who have marked CASPer before have made it clear that you should attempt every question, so make sure you get good at cutting yourself off and moving on. 

The big thing you can do is be able to type >100 WPM while thinking, which is probably the most valuable skill since how are you going to adequately explore an issue in-depth if you can only get down 50 words per box? At the same time, the solution isn't to simply throw down as many words as possible, since you are marked on your communication skills. You'll get better with practice (See a theme). Finally, there's a leaked PPT presentation on here somewhere that has more details on the scoring system (nothing revolutionary though). I would also advise reading through the CASPer guides here. 

Your amount of prep time/resources isn't really the limiting factor here. I only practiced 40-50 minutes a day over my lunch break and more on weekends and did just fine (Mac/Ottawa interviews) without paying more than $5. 

Agree with above. I would not spend hundreds of dollars on prep. It’s a waste of money.

I read Doing It Right (Old edition because it was cheaper ) and it was sufficient for me. 
 

Also, if you’ve practice typing a ton and still can’t type fast enough, don’t sweat it.  I had incomplete sentences in all my answers and still did well enough on the Casper for Mac and Alberta.

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I also agree with the above posters that paid prep is a waste of time and money. I made a list of personal experiences that I could talk about, and made a list of common scenarios they ask about (a time you've dealt with conflict, a time you've used initiative, etc.) and chose one experience that could go with each of these. I did the practice test that CASPer gives you as well as one other free practice test I found online. Doing this along with just some research about the test was enough for me!

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