Guest choti Posted December 9, 2005 Report Share Posted December 9, 2005 We are almost finished writing our year one medicine exams at UWO and the general consenses for the one today seems to be is that we were SMOKED...quite a few of us seem to be quite certain we failed at least one section. Is it because we're year one med students and we're not used to the volume of material? I honestly don't think its for lack of studying...I think we were pounding the books pretty hard for the last couple weeks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Jag Posted December 9, 2005 Report Share Posted December 9, 2005 That was the same feeling after our block 1 exams at U of M amongst all the med1's, but in the end everyone passed. People from the higher years told us that the mark breakdown was made in a way so that nobody could fail. They say that the faculty realizes how hard the transition to med school can be so they let everyone pass the first one. Who knows if it's true though. At least you know that your collegues from Manitoba felt the same as you all too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest therealcrackers Posted December 10, 2005 Report Share Posted December 10, 2005 First year sucks. Second year sucks worse. Third year sucks in an entirely new and different way. But fourth year. Rocks. You get used to it; by the time you're writing your exams at the end of this year, you'll be used to assimilating the incredible amount of material you cover. Looking back, it's good experience, because when you're seeing patients, that's exactly what you're doing; assimilating the data, decided what the relevant parts are, and getting an answer (or at least a plan). Good luck the rest of the way! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest TimmyMax Posted December 10, 2005 Report Share Posted December 10, 2005 Hey, Me fail medicine? That's unpossible! Keep in mind that even though the concensus may be that a given section of an exam was impossible, it's not in the school's best interest to have half of its medical class fail, so often times there is a bit of manipulation that takes place with respect to marks. Often times, if most students get a given question incorrect, it often due to how the question was worded more than anything and that question ends up getting thrown out and not included in the final evaluation. The school and faculty know this and take it into consideration when assigning grades. After all, there's nothing like trying to answer a whack of 2nd year neuro onc path questions when you're just a poor little first year trying to master the cardinal signs of inflammation. 4th year OSCEs in 2nd year seem to be fair game, though. At Western that is, anyway. Not sure about other schools. Best of luck! Timmy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest coastalslacker Posted December 10, 2005 Report Share Posted December 10, 2005 Queens seems to work the exams pretty generously to get everyone, or at least almost everyone, through. Last year's christmas exam for the second years (neuro/psych/ent/optho) was apparently brutal......and the distribution ended up as a perfect bell-curve...... Hopefully they do the same for us this year! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dopetown Posted December 12, 2005 Report Share Posted December 12, 2005 How are exams structured in your medical school? edit: I'm asking in general Do you have a lot of kickass multiple choice, or mostly long-answer questions? I take it that the questions involve the application of what you've learned all term, as opposed to regurgitation? What are your exam schedules like? Is it one day after another, or is it spaced out? Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest 0T6 Posted December 12, 2005 Report Share Posted December 12, 2005 dope are you asking that in general or about a particular school? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest little endian Posted December 12, 2005 Report Share Posted December 12, 2005 At queen's in our first semester we have an anatomy bellringer, I beleive 50 questions with two parts each at 50 stations and 10 of the questions are histology. Then we have a huge multiple choice exam (I don't know how many questions) and then a short answer exam with 16 questions. The other semesters we have an OSCE instead of the bellringer I believe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Kirsteen Posted December 12, 2005 Report Share Posted December 12, 2005 Hi there, At UofC our exams are based on the section that we're studying, e.g., Blood, Nephro, Resp, CV, Psych, Neuro, Repro, GI, etc. These sections are normally anywhere from 4-8 weeks in length. At the end of each section we normally have 1 MCQ exam (75-110 questions each and sometimes with the odd short-answer question) as well as a focused peripatetic exam (~70 questions total, spread among 25-35 stations). (Psych and Blood did not have peripatetic exams.) Our peripatetics include questions on histology, pathology and gross anatomy. We also have separate exams for longitudinal courses such as Research Methods and a yearly OSCE exam that covers all physical exam manoeuvers and history taking skills. Cheers, Kirsteen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest 0T6 Posted December 12, 2005 Report Share Posted December 12, 2005 Oh, general I guess. Ottawa's similar to Calgary then in that we go by blocks (haem/onc, immuno, etc) that last 5-6 weeks and we have a 3 hour exam on the Friday of the last week of the block made up of multiple choice, individual and population health (epidemiology/public health) long answer and/or: short and long answer, histology, anatomy bell ringers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ploughboy Posted December 12, 2005 Report Share Posted December 12, 2005 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hey there, At UWO we learn things in blocks, with a week of exams at the end of each trimester. So last week we had an ITM (Intro to Medicine) exam on Monday, had Tuesday off, wrote Infection and Immunity on Wednesday, a very random (as Choti indicated..glad you're feeling better btw!) Musculo-Skeletal exam on Thursday and had an anatomy bellringer on Friday (hurray for the sustentaculum tali!). However, although we're taught and examined by block, we're evaluated by course. So, for instance, there were anatomy, biochemistry, physiology etc sections on the MSSK exam. I think this will be changing next year as part of the new curriculum, but I sort of just skimmed that email. Within each block and each course we have multiple instructors, and each instructor contributes a number of questions to the exam. The difficulty of the questions seems to vary with the instructor. Some of the questions on our recent exams could have been answered by grade-school children, others were totally "WTF?" If you're interested in what our schedule looks like, it can be found here(1). The written exams were composed mostly of multiple-choice questions, with some short answer. Exams were three hours long. The second-years gave us cookies and candy before each exam (you're the best!) and in one of our exams the proctor brought around candy mid-way through the exam (thank you Dr. Garcia!). Yet another reason to attend Western! pb -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQFDnfI0/HNgbK3bC2wRAj1qAJsEL8gWKU1U0byu371Skt0uTC/nUgCeNs+n PKORIRIzcuNfToVoRKxfTtc= =mtqL -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- (1) UWO Preclinical Schedule Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest coastalslacker Posted December 13, 2005 Report Share Posted December 13, 2005 The queens reply wasn't quite right. You have an OSCE (clinical exam) every semester after the first one, but clinical skills is a separate mark and it is full year, not individual semesters. There is always an MC exam and a short answer exam, and usually a practical (pictures on overhead, answer questions about). Typical split, ~50/35/15, respectively. The exception to this is first semester, first year, which has the bellringer instead of a practical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest 007 Posted December 13, 2005 Report Share Posted December 13, 2005 At Dal, we do things in blocks too. Our first 8 weeks were Human Body (anatomy) and that exam involved a bell ringer, a few multiple choice questions, and then short/long answer questions. Our current unit is Metabolism and Function (physiology and biochem) is 10 weeks long so our exam is in January. That exam is strictly 80 multiple choice questions. The remaining blocks for the year are Pathology, Immunology, Microbiology for 8 weeks, Pharmacology for 5 weeks, and then Genetics, Embryology, and Reproduction for 5 weeks. In order to pass a unit we also have to pass the tutorial component (since most of what we do is in small groups). We also have small projects and essays for our other units like epidemiology and our elective. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest dopetown Posted December 13, 2005 Report Share Posted December 13, 2005 Sounds like fun, everybody. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest michca Posted December 14, 2005 Report Share Posted December 14, 2005 "(hurray for the sustentaculum tali!)" -Ploughboy :b That was the best part of the whole exam week. The worst part- getting smoked on genetics. :x Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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