Teachers

DAMS as several exceptional teachers. Not only are they qualified (and usually hold degrees from famous institutes even though I personally do not think this is an important criteria for a good teacher), they are also good at the art of teaching.

Several names stand out immediately. Sumer sir for radiology (a big reason why I chose this subject), Deepti ma’m for Gynae, Srinath Chandramani sir and Arvind sir for Medicine, Anupama ma’m for Physiology, Rohan Khandelwal for Surgery (he has left dams for marrow now), Jindal sir for Derma, Sachin sir for Psychiatry etc are all adept at making you excited about their subjects.

These teachers not only forced me to reinvent their respective subjects, they also gave us wonderfully concise notes which were a pleasure to read conceptually while still covering a massive number of MCQs.

In my opinion, DAMS is still the largest collection of exceptional teachers in India. (Although, as of 2018, Marrow has a great panel too.)

Quality of students

Most of the toppers are from DAMS because DAMS is still the most popular choice. That in and of itself doesn’t make it the right choice, obviously, but there are certain advantages of sharing the classroom with the hardworking and well-prepared students. You get a feeling of what you’re up against when they answer the difficult questions that you have never even heard of before. It gives you a sense of the magnitude of the task ahead of you.

Another added benefit of going up against most of the top rankers is that if you choose to assess yourself in the online tests or even the DAMS CBT (an all india practice test), it gives you a pretty real picture of where you rank at that point of time.

Special sessions: DVT and Pre-PGI revision classes

Even after your classroom session ends, DAMS arranges a DVT:DAMS visual treat at the Talkatora Stadium in Delhi which is telecast live at all their centres in the country. In 2017, this session that I attended was brilliant. The teachers managed to distill unimaginably vast subjects into session that barely lasted 3–4 hours and somehow helped us revise important sections for all topics of the respective subjects. I found myself sitting next to a dude who was well prerpared even during his internship and went on to get a top 100 rank and the interaction I had from him gave me a lot of insight on how the good students from rest of the country are studying.

Although my PGI rank wasn’t enough to get me a seat, it was a really good rank compared to my AIIMS and JIPMER ranks which gave me confidence. A big part of my PGI preparation was the DAMS special session where they told us in details about how the exam is different from the rest and what should be the ideal approach for it. In addition, they discussed past years questions (PGI is well known for repeating) and I got direct hits from the discussion as well the DAMS PGI book.

Outside the classroom

Social Media

DAMS continues to influence the way you study even outside the classroom.The DAMS exclusive club on facebook is not perfect but it is great. It is a very active facebook group where Teachers post updates from different subjects and they along with ex-students (like me) and even current students try to answer the questions put forth by others. Although the wait time for several questions run into several hours and days (and some questions remain unasnwered), if the question is a good one and generates interest in the form of response by other students, it is usually noticed by the faculty and solved.

Apps

Dams has a dedicated ebook app in which they make available the DVT presentations to help you revise in addition to a bunch of other extra books apart from their CRS books.

DAMS also has a Test app which lets you give the tests and gives you detailed analyses of your results compared to all others who have also taken the tests. In addition, this app also has video solutions of all the tests where the teachers discuss the important topics from which the questions are derived.

They also have a newer emedicoz application which functions similar to the facebook club for now. This is where they upload their mop-up videos before the entrance exams