Absite Scores PGY1

[sweetgup]

Where should you be scoring as a Categorical Gen Surg Resident? Raw and Percentile? How much does this weigh for fellowship prospects? Just got our scores today...

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[surgonc2017]

Depends on what fellowship you want and the rest of your application. No matter what you should be aiming for >50th percentile and for comepetitive fellowships >75th percentile. Raw scores don't really matter.


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[ram006]

I'm always a little taken back by questions like "do in-service exam scores matter?"

Even after this entire process of going from high school to college to medical school to residency some people are still under the impression scores "don't matter"?

They always matter. All things being equal, the guy or gal with the higher test scores usually wins out. We live in a competitive world and you chose arguably one of the most competitive professions so you should expect to compete.

 

[dpmd]

I'm always a little taken back by questions like "do in-service exam scores matter?"

Even after this entire process of going from high school to college to medical school to residency some people are still under the impression scores "don't matter"?

They always matter. All things being equal, the guy or gal with the higher test scores usually wins out. We live in a competitive world and you chose arguably one of the most competitive professions so you should expect to compete.

Well, they don't matter if you aren't planning on fellowship after residency. It isn't like scores come up when applying for jobs.

 

[ram006]

Well, they don't matter if you aren't planning on fellowship after residency. It isn't like scores come up when applying for jobs.

The OP asked if they matter with regards to fellowship prospects.

I suppose if a person knew, from day one, they had no interest in pursuing any further training ABSITE scores would be irrelevant. But don't forget they have to pass their boards. Scores < 30 have been associated with failures.

I would also that argue people should take pride in their work-- even if a future employer doesn't ask. Perhaps just a different mentality.

 

[dpmd]

The OP asked if they matter with regards to fellowship prospects.

I suppose if a person knew, from day one, they had no interest in pursuing any further training ABSITE scores would be irrelevant. But don't forget they have to pass their boards. Scores < 30 have been associated with failures.

I would also that argue people should take pride in their work-- even if a future employer doesn't ask. Perhaps just a different mentality.

That was only one of their questions and they are talking about one year of their scores. Taking pride in your work and seeking to have a good knowledge base so you can take good care of your patients is a totally different thing than striving to score the best so your can beat all your competition. You seemed to be advocating for the latter. Just pointing out that you don't have to compete for competition's sake.

 

[LucidSplash]

Also different residency programs have different thresholds for what they want their residents to achieve on the ABSITE to stay out of the doghouse. Some don't care about scores really at all, some want you to be above the 30th percentile threshold, and I have heard of at least one that terminates residents that score below 50th in two consecutive years. So even if you aren't planning on a fellowship that may play into things.

 

[ram006]

That was only one of their questions and they are talking about one year of their scores. Taking pride in your work and seeking to have a good knowledge base so you can take good care of your patients is a totally different thing than striving to score the best so your can beat all your competition. You seemed to be advocating for the latter. Just pointing out that you don't have to compete for competition's sake.

It was pretty central to their question, overall.


I agree, ABSITE scores don't make you a great doctor bc you score well or a bad doctor because you score on the lower end.

There is, like I said though, a score that has been associated with failing boards. The score is a percentile rank so roughly 1/3 of residents find themselves in that high risk group. Even if employers don't ask specifically about your PGY3 score they probably care about you failing your boards.

So, there is a competition regardless of whether people want to think of it that way-- whether it's for fellowship positions or to pass boards.

 

[kemper6036]

Where should you be scoring as a Categorical Gen Surg Resident? Raw and Percentile? How much does this weigh for fellowship prospects? Just got our scores today...

depends on the residency and fellowship aspirations. some programs will put you on probation if below a certain percentile. some will fire you for continued poor performance (extreme). some fellowships could care less about your ABSITE score but the majority will at least look at them. only one person during fellowship interviews commented on mine, so i don't really know how much they factored into the decision overall

 

[nutcrackers]

@ram006 ,

I will be starting intern year in a few months and I'm interested in going GS --> PRS. As someone who has successfully gone that route, what would you say constitute a "good/solid" Absite score above which one should really aim? Just like a 240 on Step 1 is generally considered a target score that would make one fairly competitive for most specialties (but by no means off the chart), I'm wondering what the equivalent would be for the absite?

Thank you again so much. Very few people on here have gone independent PRS recently and I really appreciate your contribution to this community

 

[SLUser11]

Well, they don't matter if you aren't planning on fellowship after residency. It isn't like scores come up when applying for jobs.

Disagree. ABSITE is one of the most predictive factors for passing your ABS certifying exam. Most studies, of which there are several, place the cutoff at 30th percentile, below which the risk of failing goes way up.

There are certainly some programs that don't place emphasis on the ABSITE, and that's an outdated mentality, as it has clearly become a high stakes test. There are still a few holdout fellowships that don't seem to care, but if you take a closer look, it's typically the fellowships that don't have the luxury of caring based on their applicant pool (e.g. transplant).

For most fellowships, ABSITE scores are important. This is especially important to fellowships that have their own set of boards to take, as the fellowships are graded on their board performance, and this is negatively impacted by drafting fellows that can't even pass the GS boards.

Here's a study that I posted on SDN when it first came out...now I'm a bit embarrassed that it was 7 years ago, as most of my contemporaries have moved on from SDN (but not all!): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20630424

To some degree, ABSITE performance is determined by the resident's hard drive, i.e. the ability to memorize a bunch of information....on that level, step 1 and 2 scores will be predictive.

Another contributing factor is the program's curriculum, which is perhaps the weakest predictor of performance, but still important.

The other main contributor is resident effort. Literature shows that residents that study throughout the year (versus January + or - December) do the best. This has been my experience, as all residents levels 1-5 take the same test, and we occasionally have junior residents with less clinical experience achieving higher raw percentage scores than senior residents...these same junior residents appear to be the most motivated. I would argue that this approach to the ABSITE tends to translate into their general approach to residency, and these residents are typically all-stars in other areas as well.

 

[dpmd]

Disagree. ABSITE is one of the most predictive factors for passing your ABS certifying exam. Most studies, of which there are several, place the cutoff at 30th percentile, below which the risk of failing goes way up.

There are certainly some programs that don't place emphasis on the ABSITE, and that's an outdated mentality, as it has clearly become a high stakes test. There are still a few holdout fellowships that don't seem to care, but if you take a closer look, it's typically the fellowships that don't have the luxury of caring based on their applicant pool (e.g. transplant).

For most fellowships, ABSITE scores are important. This is especially important to fellowships that have their own set of boards to take, as the fellowships are graded on their board performance, and this is negatively impacted by drafting fellows that can't even pass the GS boards.

Here's a study that I posted on SDN when it first came out...now I'm a bit embarrassed that it was 7 years ago, as most of my contemporaries have moved on from SDN (but not all!): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20630424

To some degree, ABSITE performance is determined by the resident's hard drive, i.e. the ability to memorize a bunch of information....on that level, step 1 and 2 scores will be predictive.

Another contributing factor is the program's curriculum, which is perhaps the weakest predictor of performance, but still important.

The other main contributor is resident effort. Literature shows that residents that study throughout the year (versus January + or - December) do the best. This has been my experience, as all residents levels 1-5 take the same test, and we occasionally have junior residents with less clinical experience achieving higher raw percentage scores than senior residents...these same junior residents appear to be the most motivated. I would argue that this approach to the ABSITE tends to translate into their general approach to residency, and these residents are typically all-stars in other areas as well.

I suppose i will clarify to say that as long as you are making appropriate effort to learn the material and are not below the cutoff for risk of failing boards it doesn't necessarily matter how high you score when you look for a job (and if you are below the cutoff it doesn't necessarily matter how far below you are but what you do to correct that). It can matter for fellowship of course but I would guess the number of times where it comes down to a small difference in numbers is not huge. Competition for competition's sake for the absite would logically include trying to improve your rank by screwing over others, not sharing study materials, not studying together. If instead the focus is on learning and doing a good job for patient care then doing things that could move your rank down because everyone in your program does well becomes more logical. I suppose that is the beef I have with the attitude of scores being a huge deal.

 

[SLUser11]

I suppose i will clarify to say that as long as you are making appropriate effort to learn the material and are not below the cutoff for risk of failing boards it doesn't necessarily matter how high you score when you look for a job (and if you are below the cutoff it doesn't necessarily matter how far below you are but what you do to correct that). It can matter for fellowship of course but I would guess the number of times where it comes down to a small difference in numbers is not huge. Competition for competition's sake for the absite would logically include trying to improve your rank by screwing over others, not sharing study materials, not studying together. If instead the focus is on learning and doing a good job for patient care then doing things that could move your rank down because everyone in your program does well becomes more logical. I suppose that is the beef I have with the attitude of scores being a huge deal.

Here's another important study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24913429

I agree that residents should remain professional, but I would argue that the residents are usually competing with the 5,000 other residents taking the exam rather than their co-residents, so sharing study materials, etc, won't impact their percentile scores.

The correlation between ABSITE scores and QE pass rates is strong, even when looking exclusively at the chief's scores. For ABSITE scores above the 50th percentile, the QE pass rate is 95-100%, with almost nobody failing that scored >80th. Meanwhile, the failure rate for scores <30th is about 25%, and it's about 40% for scores <15th percentile.