Neurology PreTest, Ninth Edition

some questions were too bizarre and some too easy but overall.good quality of questions - love the kindle version super easy to use and see answers right away. Easy to fit in white coat pocket and study between patients during ms3

Clerkships are notorious for having few (if any) great study resources. Neurology is no exception, with pretty much every review book or practice question bank flawed in some way or another. (And let's be honest... no one has time to read a full neurology textbook while on the wards.)That all said, Pre-Test Neurology is one of the better resources I tried. It's not a review book like Blueprints, but rather just 500 questions divided into different chapters e.g. Cerebrovascular, Neurological Emergencies, Toxic Injuries, etc. The point of most questions is to teach you a specific fact or concept, in the same way UWorld questions are sometimes intentionally convoluted or obscure to illuminate something. I don't recommend using this as a way to actually test yourself, unless you read a textbook or review book first. Personally, I didn't have time to use Pre-Test that way, so I just did the questions simultaneously with using Blueprints and UWorld. Incidentally, Blueprints is pretty superficial on many concepts, and UWorld doesn't cover as wide an array of conditions as either of the other two (and the questions are of lower quality than those in the universally used Step 1 Q-bank). As I said, no resource is perfect.Downsides? Some may be frustrated with how niche some questions are — that's a valid critique given my experience on the shelf exam. I don't feel that's a big knock against the book because again, the questions are often not designed to test your knowledge anyway, per se. Also, in several cases, I knew the answer to a question only because I saw it in Pre-Test — the concepts hadn't appeared in UWorld and were buried in a review book somewhere as a one-liner, but in Pre-Test I had seen it in a question and explained.If that's so, then how useful are the explanations? Pretty good, but not amazing. For comparison, UWorld explanations are superior in writing and clarity. (But as noted, UWorld has its own weaknesses as a neurology study resource.) These don't go through every answer choice and explain why they're wrong (and sometimes don't even address why the right answer is right). But they are written in a way that teaches you a concept. Plus, it's easy to do these questions anywhere. It's a small book and explanations aren't long-winded.Overall, Pre-Test Neurology works well as an active study tool in a sea of middling study resources. I wouldn't praise it as ideal for self-testing, but it's useful to use either alone or with a review book as you go through your clerkship. Fits in your white coat and more fun to read than a text/review chapter. I felt it was worthwhile, better than your average neurology clerkship book.EDIT: Ended up scoring 96th percentile on the shelf (scaled score ~93%). I would say most of my knowledge came from Step 1 studying, but the second-most important resource was probably Pre-Test Neurology. I started using it late and couldn't get through the whole thing... start it early and make time to review tough concepts a second time, and you'll probably succeed on the shelf.

great variety of questions, very useful, highly recommend for neuro clerkship

Goooood

This is a good book of questions to use to review for shelf exams. But questions are on the shorter and easier side compared to some of the other commonly used resources (such as UWorld). The other thing is that it's somewhat annoying to flip back and forth between question and answer sections. It would be helpful if there's a separate answer booklet so we don't have to constantly flip back and forth.

I aced my neuro shelf using this as my primary source

great resource for the neuro shelf nbme

This book covers many topics related to neuro. Possibly light on review material for stroke. Kindle version was convenient, but was challenging to quickly glance between the question stems and answer descriptions.