Yup. I did it longer and agree. But the #1 annoying thing is how their users treat the program like a religion and get defensive against any criticisms. Hence the group think, positive reinforcement bs that goes on in their thread.
Personally, I think that's a pretty d*ck-ish thing to say about a big group of people.
Anyway, here's my take on it: I agree, gunnertraining IS pure memorization. That's its point. It's not supposed (at least in my mind) to replace a QBank. It's analogous (albeit more in depth) to First Aid, which, in the exact same way, is NOT meant to teach you -- it's used to memorize everything you need to know for Step 1, but it's not a great understanding tool. I could never memorize everything in FA via reading...I need the constant banging it into my head that GT provides.
I plan on taking Step 1 in April, and before then I want to finish GT (actually, I'm hoping to finish it this month) and really get my mastery up. That way, I know that I'll have seen almost everything (if not everything and more) from FA even before my dedicated study period, in a way I *never* would have without GT.
The key part of GT (I think the part that goes misunderstood and is never focused on enough) is to get your mastery up along with your banking. Never ever ever bank way outside of the speed of your mastery, because that is when GT gets to be too much. I learned this the hard way at the beginning (I've been doing GT since April of last year, banking on and off but unfortunately not consistently enough). Currently, I'm at 63% banked, 43.8% mastery. I try to keep my mastery and banking within about 10% of each other, but since I'm doing a big banking push right now, they're almost at 20%. That's the most I would ever want between them, though, because that is when the questions start to add up.
I'm attaching a file with my review schedule included. You'll notice that today and tomorrow royally suck...I have about 400-500 questions each day. That's simply because I let myself get very behind last week between last minute Christmas shopping and going home to hang out with friends and family. Outside of these days, I almost always (if I haven't let myself get backed up) have fewer than 150 cards on a given day. You can see that most days are actually down under 100 (the next week still has more because I spread some cards out over those days after not wanting to do them on Christmas). Since I can do ~200 questions/hour if I'm really focusing, that puts me at about *half an hour* of doing review questions when I haven't been banking cards. If I'm steadily banking cards (and therefore have some extra review questions), I maybe have an hour of questions and an hour or so of banking per day. Maybe that's too much for some people, but it's almost everything I do to study for med school (outside of lectures and the last few days before a test), and it's helped me a bunch on my med school exams.
I haven't done many QBank questions yet, but I know that I needed a solid knowledge background before starting them, and I think GT is providing me that. My two key pieces of advice are these: 1) Always keep your percent mastery relatively close to your percent banking. Never rapidly outbank your mastery, because that is when cards start to add up. and 2) At the same time, do your best to consistently bank. I did them in spurts (right before test time, etc), but I do not think that this was the best way...it's left me at 63% banking when I wanted to be at 100% by the time this break was over. Consistent banking is key, and it too keeps your review questions from getting way out of control like mine will be once I bank 50 cards today.
Anyway, I know this was long, but I hope it was helpful. I love GT. I am aware of its shortcomings (despite what MCATguy might say), but I think that IF you use it correctly and if you accept it for what it is (a memorization tool), it can be one of your best resources for Step 1 and for coursework. I know it has been for me.
