Is Tutor Mode Sabotaging Your Step 1 Score?
Question banks or “Qbanks” are an invaluable tool in preparing for board and block exams, but are you using them wrong? If you experience test anxiety, it's vital to understand how to use Qbanks in a way that will set you up for success.
What are Qbanks?
Offered by UWorld, Amboss, Kaplan, and others, Qbanks typically contain a large number of practice questions modeled after the types of questions that appear on the Step 1 exam and other medical licensing exams.
They allow medical students preparing for Step 1 to take practice exams, review content, and assess their performance, predict scores, and identify areas that need improvement.
What’s the difference between “tutor” mode and “exam” mode?
Tutor Mode
Tutor mode or “study” mode allows students to view correct answers and explanations immediately after each question. This is designed for targeted study sessions and is intended to be used as a learning tool.
Exam Mode
With exam mode (also called “test” mode), you must complete all of the questions in order to get any feedback about your performance. You also have the option to limit yourself to a specific amount of time. Exam mode with timing simulates the pressure and pacing of the real exam to help you practice time management and decision-making under pressure.
So, what’s wrong with tutor mode?
Well, there’s nothing wrong with tutor mode. When used as a tool for learning content, it’s great. However, if it is overused, especially as your test date draws closer, it can be setting you up to let test anxiety hijack your performance on the actual exam.
Anxiety craves certainty. In fact, our brains would rather know something negative than nothing at all.
When you’re in your Qbanks answering questions in tutor mode and immediately checking to see if you got it right or wrong, you are feeding that anxious part of your brain. But on test day, you won’t have that option. So, all of a sudden, you’re depriving your anxious brain of that certainty fix - question after question for a very long 8 hours.
If you haven’t prepared your body and brain to tolerate this prolonged uncertainty, anxiety will freak out and start overworking… causing you to make poor choices on test day like
changing right answers to wrong answers
flagging too many questions
getting stuck reading and rereading
abandoning your test-taking strategy
choosing answers based on superstition or Reddit theories
By doing practice questions in exam mode instead, you are preparing to perform your best under the pressure of test day. As we like to say here at Test Wolf, train how you fight! In other words, simulate real test-day conditions as closely as possible.
Anxiety’s purpose is to protect you. So, to retrain your brain, you need to elicit anxiety on purpose to teach your brain and body - “Hey, this test is not dangerous. We’ve been through this before. Not knowing the outcome can’t hurt me.”
Tolerating uncertainty is a super power and a key tool in overcoming anxiety. For USMLE and COMLEX exams (which are not just about memorization) the increased tolerance for uncertainty is incredibly important.