Hello everyone,
This post is related to my recent experience with the Medical Council of Canada Evaluating Exam (MCCEE) which I sat today. I will try to elaborate more on the entire process as things are slightly more ambiguous with the Canadian exams. Hope you find it useful :)
Registration:
To register for the Canadian exams, you need to create an account on physiciansapply.ca . This is the official website to register for the MCC examinations. After you register and pay the fees, you need to get some documents and send them by regular mail (yourself, not the university) to the MCC. These include a form you print from the MCC website that you get signed and stamped by the Dean (which basically certifies your status from the university). The other form is an identification form which you fill and put a photo of yourself, as well as attach a photocopy of your ID (passport). This form needs to be certified by either the Canadian embassy or any embassy of Commonwealth countries (UK, New Zealand, Australia and they also accept US and France). I personally got mine done from the embassy of New Zealand just because it is easier than to go through the Canadian embassy. After you send those by mail to the MCC, they review them and if they are accepted, they give you a test # which you can use with Prometric to book your exam date.
Preparation:
I personally took this exam after I finished USMLE steps 1 & 2CK. I believe 3 months are sufficient if you never took CK, and less than that if you already have a strong clinical background. The exam is mainly clinical, with some science questions here and there. The really bad questions related to medical laws in Canada which were not super clear, but there weren't many of those so it shouldn't be a big deal. I used Master the Boards (MTB) for Step 2CK and did about 500 questions from Canada Qbank, as well as my previous USMLEWorld for step 2CK Qbank.
Resources:
MTB and USMLEWorld for Step 2CK should be great resources to study from. Some people advocate for using Toronto Notes, but I think they are just too lengthy to go through for the MCCEE (perhaps for MCCQE?). As far as Qbanks, USMLEWorld is great and teaches you a lot. I personally did not like Canada Qbank, even though a lot of people advocate for it. It has about 3700 questions. I found the questions to be poorly written (with frequent grammar and spelling mistakes!) and not very educational. I am not aware of any practice tests that you can take for MCCEE prior to the exam.
Exam:
The exam is 180 questions (150 scored and 30 experimental, you wouldn't know which is which) over 4 hours. I found time to be much more than enough as questions are relatively short and straightforward. There is no scheduled break time. So, if you need to take a break, you keep in mind that the exam clock is still going (so don't take long breaks ;)).
Even though the questions are shorter, easier to go through, and generally easier than Step 2 CK, you will encounter some WTF questions every once and a while. I had some questions that asked about pure percentages and others that asked about law practices in Canada. I honestly don't know what a good resource for those would be. They are not many though, so not much stress there.
I hope that was a nice overview on the exam. Let me know if I can help with anything, and best of luck for all :)
Ahmad