Question banks for American Board of Radiology Core Exam

After I posted my first blog on my perspective of the core exam, the Rock The Boards team contacted me to review their q-bank. They offered me financial incentives but I declined because that would cause conflict of interest (for better or worse). I figured I give my opinions of the various q-banks I used and select resources I found helpful.

Radprimer:

Description: This is an all in one package. My program bought it for the residents so I had an institutional subscription.
# questions: ~7000
Cost: check website
Advantages: Great place to start and has broad over view of radiology and imaging physics. Most of us in my program complete all the MCQs, at bare minimum before we go onto other q-banks. The site offers outstanding images and if you want, you can get additional detailed explanation because it's linked to the teaching modules.
Disadvantages: There is a lot of questions and it's painful to get through but it's a must.
Overall: Highly recommend.

Qevlar q-bank:

Description: This q-bank emulates the core style and format the best with respect the how questions are asked, how images are presented and types of questions posed.
# questions: ~2000
Cost: varies depend on length of suscription; I bought the 1 month for <$50....outstanding  value overall.
Advantages: Representative though not entirely inclusive of all questions that'll be asked.
Disadvantages: none
Overall: Highly Recommend

Notes: Qevlar also offered Nuc Med q-bank (300 MCQs) for $30 / 1 mo. Great value and outstanding resource for learning Nuc Med. The questions are a lot more geared towards learning the content of Nuc Med so the questions/explanations are very detailed. Overall, I would recommend it to learn nucs.

Face The Core:

Description: Live 2-hr webinar spent answering 75 mcq for each webinars. There is ~10 sessions covering every sub-specialty and it's repeated twice with different MCQs. There are additional self-modules with additional MCQ.
# questions: ~2000
Cost: $20 per webinar and $10 per self module.
Advantages: Great value...the webinars are $20/session and most of the webinars are very high yield. The self modules are $10. I love this resource because I like the scheduled webinars and it forced me to start studying earlier on. It also provided an alternative learning method (group learning) to complement my individual learning that I was doing on my own time.
Disadvantages: some of the modules are so-so, but most are outstanding.
Overall: Highly recommend; great value

Board Vitals

Description: This provides an additional q-bank.
# questions: ~1200
Cost: depends on length of subscription...I paid close to $100
Advantages: great source for additional MCQ once you've completed Radprimer and Qevlar. Explanations are very good and detailed.
Disadvantages: It's not a great stand alone resource in itself.
Overall: Recommend (after you've completed Radprimer).

Rock The Boards:

Description: This provides an additional q-bank.
# questions: ~1200
Cost: check website.
Advantages: great source for additional MCQ once you've completed Radprimer and Qevlar. Explanations are very good and detailed. It's a newer software so it still needs to fix a few bugs on optimizing images.
Disadvantages: It's not a great stand alone resource in itself.
Overall: Recommend (after you've completed Radprimer and Qevlar).

Dedicated Physics q-banks:

• Huda MCQ (tons of questions in his book and online bank  if you pay to attend his physics review course) >400 MCQ available. His book is great; even though it has not been updated for the current core exam, it's still a great resource to get a dumb down version of physics you need to know for the Core. I didn't go to the physics review course because it's hard for me to sit through 8 hrs of lecture per day, but I heard from my colleagues (about 80% attended) that it was very good.
• RadPhex: 150 MCQ /year (I know copies of 2012-14 are available)...these are outstanding. Questions are hard. If you understand the questions and answers (not just memorize the answers), then you're in a good position.
• iPhone Physics 300 MCQ...very good. Cheap $5/app
• Face The Core has 2 self-modules on physics artifacts
• RSNA physics modules: very detailed but good place to start.
• AAPM has 150 MCQs in pdf format that you can get from the website. 

Quality and Safety:

Q&S Stanford Review YouTube Videos.

Here is a powerpoint that my co-resident Mona Vakil (who is probably one of the smartest residents in my class) put together for the 3rd year residents who will be taking the exam next year on her perspective and select resources that she used. LINK