neuroprep.com , neurology board oy-sters

[Chocolateagar04]

Any opinions on neuroprep.com and or Neurology board Oy-Sters (http://www.neurologyboardsoysters.com/features.html) ?


for RITE review? I don't really like studying from old RITE exam, it seems too scattered. I kind of want to study this USMLE style and pound through Qbanks, twice if I have to.

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[danielmd06]

I used neuroprep.com for three years. It was nice as an overall review. It wasn't so much a RITE-specific boost as a general review more geared for the boards. It was expensive. It was convenient with it's Q&A style and online access.

I didn't try your other site.

Best single board review in my opinion is Neurology Board Review by Mowzoon (exhaustively comprehensive though), and a nice compromise is Borsody's Comprehensive Board Review in Neurology. People here seem to often recommend Laughing Your Way to Passing the Neurology Boards. I never got that last one.

Now working on my third year in private practice, I can say that I think that those RITE exams were jokes. In residency, I did well on them every year. Our attendings formulated opinions about our abilities based on our RITE performance. I now think this is a mistake, but I suspect no one is interested in that opinion in academia. The tests are far too concerned with minutiae. Without a doubt, the best way to study for them is to use old RITE exams. However, in my opinion the board review books (and neuroprep) were actually more helpful in the long run because they are more focused on actually teaching you the basics of neurology instead of much esoterica. So it depends on you. Do you want to rock the RITE for the sake of impressing your PD, or do you want to be getting in shape for the actual board exam? Either way, studying any of this stuff will make you stronger. Good luck on the test.

 

[bustbones26]

I used neuroprep.com for three years. It was nice as an overall review. It wasn't so much a RITE-specific boost as a general review more geared for the boards. It was expensive. It was convenient with it's Q&A style and online access.

I didn't try your other site.

Best single board review in my opinion is Neurology Board Review by Mowzoon (exhaustively comprehensive though), and a nice compromise is Borsody's Comprehensive Board Review in Neurology. People here seem to often recommend Laughing Your Way to Passing the Neurology Boards. I never got that last one.

Now working on my third year in private practice, I can say that I think that those RITE exams were jokes. In residency, I did well on them every year. Our attendings formulated opinions about our abilities based on our RITE performance. I now think this is a mistake, but I suspect no one is interested in that opinion in academia. The tests are far too concerned with minutiae. Without a doubt, the best way to study for them is to use old RITE exams. However, in my opinion the board review books (and neuroprep) were actually more helpful in the long run because they are more focused on actually teaching you the basics of neurology instead of much esoterica. So it depends on you. Do you want to rock the RITE for the sake of impressing your PD, or do you want to be getting in shape for the actual board exam? Either way, studying any of this stuff will make you stronger. Good luck on the test.

I agree that neuroprep was a fairly good review and that it was more geared toward the "real" boards. The RITE was 10X harder than the real test, in my opinion. I agree above, the only way to do well on the RITE is to study the old RITE.

As noted above, your program judges you in these exams. I'll be honest, I never did well on the RITE. I was completely 100% unprepared for my first sitting and had no guidance from faculty, senior residents, etc. My second sitting, I tried to review old copies, but really did not have many? My third sitting, I did much better but by that time, I find the study prescription that worked for me and it helped me pass the "real" test as well.

Just hang in there. Always stressful!

 

[Chocolateagar04]

Hey thanks for the above advice ..

I'm still left with a question though. What exactly do you mean by "study the old rite"? It seems really scattered and it's hard to correlate the pictures with the answers. So what exact process did you guys use to study the old rite? Would you just break it down by topic and just read the answers for that topic in the past 2-3 rite years?

I find it really hard to study this way for so,e reason maybe it's because I don't feel like I have a good fundamental yet. Perhaps "studying old rite exams" is better for pgy3 or 4 and not for 2's who don't have as strong of a starting background like me.

For this reason I think I will take DanielMD's approach and study from a proper review book and go through a question bank like neuroprep, ultimate q&a or oysters. I'll look at the old images like 2 weeks prior to the exam as it seems the images in particular are recycled.

What do u guys think of that, bust bones and DanielMD?

 

[BlackFrancis33]

Hey thanks for the above advice ..

I'm still left with a question though. What exactly do you mean by "study the old rite"? It seems really scattered and it's hard to correlate the pictures with the answers. So what exact process did you guys use to study the old rite? Would you just break it down by topic and just read the answers for that topic in the past 2-3 rite years?

I find it really hard to study this way for so,e reason maybe it's because I don't feel like I have a good fundamental yet. Perhaps "studying old rite exams" is better for pgy3 or 4 and not for 2's who don't have as strong of a starting background like me.

For this reason I think I will take DanielMD's approach and study from a proper review book and go through a question bank like neuroprep, ultimate q&a or oysters. I'll look at the old images like 2 weeks prior to the exam as it seems the images in particular are recycled.

What do u guys think of that, bust bones and DanielMD?

My view: 'Study the old RITE' mainly means reading through old answers. If you read an answer or concept and have no idea what it is talking about, it is probably good to look that up online, in a textbook etc. An example would be a question describing the molecular components of the blood-brain barrier (a question from my residency days I remember as being particularly ridiculous). If you don't know anything about this read up about it, familiarize yourself with the basic concept so you could at least recognize a similar question thus giving yourself a chance at answering it correctly. Repeat this over and over again on tests from as many years as you can stand. The more years worth of tests you can do this on, the more likely you are to review one of the arcane topics that makes its way onto the RITE. The other review sources are good for actual learning and board prep as DanielMD and bust bones pointed out. The RITE has a lot of material to separate people into percentiles, the questions are a lot harder and can come from anywhere in neurology and neuroscience. Memorizing the images is also a big help as there are always recycles and many that are similar.

 

[bustbones26]

Hey thanks for the above advice ..

I'm still left with a question though. What exactly do you mean by "study the old rite"? It seems really scattered and it's hard to correlate the pictures with the answers. So what exact process did you guys use to study the old rite? Would you just break it down by topic and just read the answers for that topic in the past 2-3 rite years?

I find it really hard to study this way for so,e reason maybe it's because I don't feel like I have a good fundamental yet. Perhaps "studying old rite exams" is better for pgy3 or 4 and not for 2's who don't have as strong of a starting background like me.

For this reason I think I will take DanielMD's approach and study from a proper review book and go through a question bank like neuroprep, ultimate q&a or oysters. I'll look at the old images like 2 weeks prior to the exam as it seems the images in particular are recycled.

What do u guys think of that, bust bones and DanielMD?

After you sit for the RITE, you are immediatly given a code to print out the "answers" to the test. From what I can recall, these are not Q&A printouts, but you get the basic idea of facts that must be known. My program had a file drawer with several years of old RITE print outs. Of course, they only offered access to this information to our "prized" resident and I did not find this out until I was a PGY-3. That is why, it might be worth asking your faculty and senior residents for anything that they might have access to.

 

[danielmd06]

Hey thanks for the above advice ..

I'm still left with a question though. What exactly do you mean by "study the old rite"? It seems really scattered and it's hard to correlate the pictures with the answers. So what exact process did you guys use to study the old rite? Would you just break it down by topic and just read the answers for that topic in the past 2-3 rite years?

I find it really hard to study this way for so,e reason maybe it's because I don't feel like I have a good fundamental yet. Perhaps "studying old rite exams" is better for pgy3 or 4 and not for 2's who don't have as strong of a starting background like me.

For this reason I think I will take DanielMD's approach and study from a proper review book and go through a question bank like neuroprep, ultimate q&a or oysters. I'll look at the old images like 2 weeks prior to the exam as it seems the images in particular are recycled.

What do u guys think of that, bust bones and DanielMD?

My memory is fading on this. I certainly had a large collection of past RITE exams in bound softcover, complete with mini-books for the path slides and radiology pics. I recall that you get a password to the answers of the RITE at some point after taking it. You can print these up and have them bound into a softcover booklet. I am not sure if the RITE people do this for you, or if it was just my program that did this. You also get to keep your personal imaging/pathology booklet after the test, too. Programs may save these for years running, and thus have a gigantic compilation of previous answers and imaging/pathology booklets to disseminate amongst their residents for study and overall performance on the RITE.

Personally, I would just read those answer books cover to cover. You start to see repetitive patterns as a lot of the answers are recycled in some form or other. You do, in fact, pick up some decent information doing this, too.

Your plan sounds fine. That's basically what I did my PGY-3 and PGY-4 years. I spent much more time those years focusing on general knowledge and review than RITE-specific stuff and was later happy I did so. I just wanted to warn you that there are some attendings and PD's out there who will pass judgement upon you based on your RITE scores, and studying old RITE's is superficially the easiest way to score highly on the upcoming RITE.

 

[GalenWoman]

For the neurology boards we used neuroprep.com and my husband used neuroscalps.com, they are both really good, they have good questions similar to those we saw on the boards. I think overall the boards have easier questions that those you see on these websites. I think these are the differences between the two:
1. Neuroprep has questions ordered by RITE categories. So if you prepare based on your RITE exams preparation, you may like this better. Neuroscalps has questions ordered by the boards categories.
2. Neuroscalps has video questions that neuroprep does not have.

Good luck!