what did you guys think of the boards

other than feeling I was taking the spine CAQ test (seriously, it had to be at least 20% spine!) for a while it was about what I expected. Any other thoughts?

thought first half was damn reasonable (was even feeling cocky). definitely had some separate the men from the boys questions in the afternoon. fingers crossed. i can't figure out what everyone was talking about the questions not being like the OITE or OSAE exams. i thought those questions in preparation were on the money.

I can tell you that at least onefor sure, maybe 2 or three of the questions in the second half were verbatim from OITE a few years ago. Specifically the one about doing a quad snip (I know we are not suppposed to discuss specific details of questions)

at least 3 questions were directly from OITEs in past 4 years. Perhaps wording slightly different, but essentially same questions.

Disappointed with the quality-control of this year's exam. During the test they threw out 2 questions due to wrong images. If that slipped by the 'committee' who knows what else slipped by. Given the importance of the exam (and cost) you would think that someone would take the test after they make it and make sure they have the correct images, etc.

Have no idea how I did -- some questions could narrow down but had hard time deciding between final two choices based on wording of question. Others felt the same and agreed some questions seemed poorly worded.

The quality of the images was atrocious -- clinical photos of patients were in great resolution; but then xray images and path slides were extremely poor quality images. Don't know why they made pictures of patients great quality and then skimped on the resolution of the xray images.

Good luck to the current chiefs studying for next year. It was a strange test -- not what I had been led to expect.

I thought the test was very difficult. Like above poster stated, morning session was fair and reasonable but the afternoon session was a ball buster. I felt like I could have failed the test after the afternoon session. I felt like every question in the afternoon was challenging and barely finished the test. 2 statistics that are keeping me going are that 90% or so pass this test and that I've never failed a test in my life.

Agree with Micky.
Very long second part of the exam.

Everyone has been saying your oite score should correlate with this exam. Do you think this was anything like the OITE and if not, was it harder or easier?

I thought it was very different.

Jim