75th percentile for surgery

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WilburSK

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Hello,

To get honors for the shelf portion of the surgery rotation, I have to score in the 75th percentile. Does anyone know what this is in terms of raw correct %? How does one figure this out?

I scored a 74 on my first NBME, so I am just wondering where I stand

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Just do the best you can. What are you gonna do, just gonna put in the minimum amount of effort for 75th percentile?
 
Ha! Thanks for your advice. Back to the question at hand…does anyone know what the percentage correct is in order to earn a 75th percentile score? And does anyone have a sense for where a 74% on a practice stands?
 
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Ha! Thanks for your advice. Back to the question at hand…does anyone know what the percentage correct is in order to earn a 75th percentile score? And does anyone have a sense for where a 74% on a practice stands?


After a quick google search, it looks like the median on a shelf is taken to be a 70 with a SD of 8. Assuming a normal distribution, a 74 would be ~70th percentile. A four question improvement would get you to ~84th percentile. Not sure how accurate these numbers are for an actual shelf, but they should give you a ballpark idea of where you are.
 
As far as I know, the score reported on the NBME score report is neither a % correct nor a percentile. There's some black box the scoring goes through before the score report gets spit out. That being said, the NBME publishes a table which has the score report score paired with a percentile, presumably from their first/most recent analysis. I suspect that the score report scores have gotten higher since their actually did their published analysis though.
 
OP it depends on the specific test date.

You'll get a score report afterwards.

IIRC our average was 74.
 
OP it depends on the specific test date.

You'll get a score report afterwards.

IIRC our average was 74.

This is not necessarily correct. Our NBME grades show the annual national percentile. That means that it's based on the test you get, but not the date.
 
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