SEE Exam

I've taken it both years. This year I felt like I didn't know any of the questions, and your scores are only in comparison to how those did from last year who took it. So in percentiles. I don't really know how it compares to the cert exam, I wasn't even sure whether it was a computer adaptive test. It was tough though. And it's 160 questions, that really sucked. I think it's crap they make us pay $125 to take it too. Don't take it just for the practice, we only have to take it for our program.

I think the SEE exam gives you a good idea of where your knowledge base is. Our program requires us to take it but they also pay for it. We are enouraged to take it completely cold (without studying at all) to see where we are and where we need to focus. I did okay (considering I did't study and hadn't yet covered some material in class) but not great. It was helpful to show me where I was really weak.
My SEE exam was really hard and so were the boards. I worked harder on my weak areas as determined by the SEE exam which did help me for my boards. I'm not sure if your results on the SEE are a reflection of how you will do on your boards but I think it is useful to help you study.
A lot of the SEE questions were similar to the types of questions I had on my boards. I found both tests to be difficult. That said, there is NO stress involved with the SEE since it is no big deal if you mess up. The boards are a different story.....

I think the SEE is crap, it is made up retired questions from boards, and also questions that were thrown out because they were not fair. Is that what you want to practice with?

Retired questions are still good questions and do test your knowledge so I don't think that these would necessarily be "crap". Now, the ones that were thrown out are a different thing altogether.
I think the SEE allows one to have some idea about their knowledge of anesthesia before a program is finished. What do you want from the exam? Do you want a recreation of the NA boards? You won't get it.

I thought the SEE was really hard, was sure that I had bombed it but was surprised to find that I did pretty well. I'm not too comforted by that score because it is a comparison to everyone that took it the previous year (both juniors and seniors). I thnk they should break the scores out by year and that would give you a better idea of how you compare with others in your same year. My school used it for grading so it wasn't totally stress free. It was good prep for boards only in that I had been to the testing center before boards and knew what the drill was there. I wouldn't have paid the fee to take it if the school didn't make me. I talked to my program director last week and he said he thinks the SEE is harder than boards. Having just taken the boards, I'm not sure....I thought they were both really hard!