Apparently everyone at Advocate christ is in the top 1% of USMLE scores

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My guess is that whoever's putting up the profiles is confusing the two digit score for a percentile.
 
No, not all of them scored that highly. Just a lot of them.

USMLE does factor into their rank list, but personality, as judged by interviews, carries at least equal weight.

Also, in spite of what was mentioned in the ROL thread, Christ is not a "religious" hospital. There are no restrictions on what providers can prescribe w/r/t women's health.
 
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Redrox said:
My guess is that whoever's putting up the profiles is confusing the two digit score for a percentile.
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Yeah I agree, I bet 85% of them scored 99 on the step 1/step 2 but not top 1%. Top 1% is like 265+
 
Those're so weird, who writes them anyway? It's a little disconcerting that whoever it is doesn't understand the way the usmle is scored; I wonder if they'll be really disappointed w/ the quality of applicants next year now that it's virtually impossible to get a 99.
 
what's more weird is that they post this stuff. it's like a doting parent bragging about their kids. big turnoff to me. who cares what their board scores are.
 
Yeah it sure sounds like the two digit score. Is there even any data on the actual % score?
 
EMFreakz said:
what's more weird is that they post this stuff. it's like a doting parent bragging about their kids. big turnoff to me. who cares what their board scores are.
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absolutely agree... i had no desire to apply there, even though my scores woulda fit right in...
 
What's really strange is that they say it themselves; "test taking skills". You openly admit that the test is basically irrelevant to the quality of the physician and then highlight the number?

"Jim's white coat is over 2 inches longer than the national average."

But yea, hard to believe their lowest board score is a 263 (excluding the one who didn't get a score mentioned).
 
This has been the case there for a long time. When I applied (graduated med school in 2006) they were doing the same thing. Had a friend in that residency.. he liked it and was happy. I am unsure if they realize how weird and creepy it comes across.
 
DeadCactus said:
What's really strange is that they say it themselves; "test taking skills". You openly admit that the test is basically irrelevant to the quality of the physician and then highlight the number?

"Jim's white coat is over 2 inches longer than the national average."

But yea, hard to believe their lowest board score is a 263 (excluding the one who didn't get a score mentioned).
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its not just weird, its impossible http://www.nrmp.org/data/chartingoutcomes2009v3.pdf page 66

Of all the EM programs across the country there is no way this program magically got 7 out of the 12 people with 260+. I think they are using two digit scores...look at the 2 digit score equivalencies...those look alot more accurate right? http://www.usmle.org/transcripts/score-conversion.html

P.S. You can advertise all the intelligence you want, but its major fail...when I see broken images next to each paragraph when viewing the website in chrome.


Needless to say the person making the website would not score in the top 1% nor understands basic html.
 
All this info was gleaned from their ERAS application, probably by an administrative assistant. I'm sure they looked at the "99" two digit score, and assumed what most people would- "top 1%".
 
Haha what a joke. Ever heard of modesty? Better yet, ever heard of not being complete dbag?
 
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I spoke with one of the residents there about this. She said they have been working on changing that. I think it gets mentioned in interviews and they realize it can send the wrong message. Though I see nothing wrong with being proud of your residents (even if they are actually misinterpreting the scores).

Mine would read "{Name} graduated from med school and is a resident here."

Edit: I certainly don't disagree with most of you on this, but keep in mind this isn't entirely different than other residencies that post what their residents have done in the past. Some of those bios are absolutely insane and I have to imagine that some of those activities are greatly embellished. For example, the guy who spends a couple weeks in Central America before med school on a medical mission on two different occasions may have "Spent two years in Guatemala serving poor rural communities' health needs and improving quality of life" when in reality he helped hand out toothbrushes and hats to villagers.

Don't get me wrong, the posting of actual wrong statistics is one thing, but it's not too dissimilar from what I described above.
 
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Dane07MD said:
Don't get me wrong, the posting of actual wrong statistics is one thing, but it's not too dissimilar from what I described above.
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I'm an MS3 applying for EM next year and have read resident bios from probably 30-40 different program websites at this point (yeah I have no life). While I hear what you're saying...no other website seems to laud their residents in such a soccer-mom way.

The title of this thread could have been "Name the residency where everybody has a top 1% Step 1 score" and I could have told you it was Advocate Christ even though it's been over two months since I looked at their website. It's totally bizarre that virtually every resident bio was fixated on board scores, and it's actually the first thing that pops into my mind when I think of the program. If I were going to brand their website, I'd go with "Advocate Christ: the other 99% need not apply."
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=12175856#post12175856
And FYI I am not in any way bashing the program or soccer moms--I have tremendous respect for both.
 
That's fair, I suppose.... There really isnt any other program that has that kind of posting.

Good luck with 4th year and applications!
 
I'm a resident at Christ and I'll be the first to say its pretty ridiculous to have the erroneously placed numbers put up on the website (which our class asked to take down and apparently they are).

That being said you're still crazy if your reason for not applying is because the website hurt your feelings. We don't control the website, and it has nothing to do with the clinical training here. I realize as a med student it is hard to grasp which programs are "good ones", and so you rely on website and word of mouth, but I'm pretty sure if you ask your colleagues, prior graduates or med studs who rotated here with us it is a pretty amazing place to be.

PS- We're looking into embroidering our ITE scores on our white coats and making bumper stickers for our cars.

-ORL
 
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ORL10 said:
I'm a resident at Christ and I'll be the first to say its pretty ridiculous to have the erroneously placed numbers our coordinator puts up on the website (which our class asked to take down and apparently they are).

That being said you're still an idiot if your reason for not applying is because the website hurt your feelings. We don't control the website, and it has nothing to do with the clinical training here. I realize as a med student it is hard to grasp which programs are "good ones", and so you rely on website and word of mouth, but I'm pretty sure if you ask your colleagues, prior graduates or med studs who rotated here with us it is a pretty amazing place to be.

-ORL
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Christ is one of our core rotating sites and the general consensus is if you are interested in a specialty they are one of if not the premier place in the city to go. Residents are overall fantastic and lend to one of the better teaching experiences for rotations. You can't have this reputation across the MAJORITY of specialties if you're not doing something right.
 
leviathan said:
For what it's worth, to be in the top 1% on the USMLE requires a score of 282 or better.
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Your guess may be close to correct or off by 10+ points. Your statement sound very matter of fact, but you can't know since they don't release enough data for you to actually crunch the numbers. My guess would be somewhere in the mid to low 270's is the top 1%.
 
ORL10 said:
I'm a resident at Christ and I'll be the first to say its pretty ridiculous to have the erroneously placed numbers our coordinator puts up on the website (which our class asked to take down and apparently they are).

That being said you're still an idiot if your reason for not applying is because the website hurt your feelings. We don't control the website, and it has nothing to do with the clinical training here. I realize as a med student it is hard to grasp which programs are "good ones", and so you rely on website and word of mouth, but I'm pretty sure if you ask your colleagues, prior graduates or med studs who rotated here with us it is a pretty amazing place to be.

PS- We're looking into embroidering our ITE scores on our white coats and making bumper stickers for our cars.

-ORL
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No where on this thread did I see anyone say they werent going to apply to this program because of the website. Have fun with your bumperstickers

-WW
 
richse said:
Your guess may be close to correct or off by 10+ points. Your statement sound very matter of fact, but you can't know since they don't release enough data for you to actually crunch the numbers. My guess would be somewhere in the mid to low 270's is the top 1%.
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According to the NBME the mean score for US/Cdn students is 221 with a SD of 24. That equates to the score I gave which is as close an estimate as we can get.
 
They probably posted the two digit board score. It was a simple oversight, I think... I hope.
No offense, but someone with 260/270/280 board scores would probably welcome a shot at NYP, Yale, Hopkins etc. Besides, it is a waste of board scores to get into EM with such eye-popping scores. You can get into plastics with those...
 
hikikomori said:
They probably posted the two digit board score. It was a simple oversight, I think... I hope.
No offense, but someone with 260/270/280 board scores would probably welcome a shot at NYP, Yale, Hopkins etc. Besides, it is a waste of board scores to get into EM with such eye-popping scores. You can get into plastics with those...
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Since when have Hopkins and Yale had top EM programs? and you would have to pay me a hell of alot of money to go into plastics...it just sounds miserable.
 
leviathan said:
According to the NBME the mean score for US/Cdn students is 221 with a SD of 24. That equates to the score I gave which is as close an estimate as we can get.
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Actually, that's not true. Based on the numbers you gave if the distribution was ideal (which it isn't) then 277 is the 99th percentile. Additionally, based on the numbers they released for scores in 2009 (that can be found here) the distribution is skewed so that the top 1% would contain scores even lower than the ideal curve predicts. As you can see, in 2009 a 261 was in the 98.65 percentile.
 
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hikikomori said:
They probably posted the two digit board score. It was a simple oversight, I think... I hope.
No offense, but someone with 260/270/280 board scores would probably welcome a shot at NYP, Yale, Hopkins etc. Besides, it is a waste of board scores to get into EM with such eye-popping scores. You can get into plastics with those...
Click to expand...
Odd post--I'm not sure what you're getting at.
 
hikikomori said:
They probably posted the two digit board score. It was a simple oversight, I think... I hope.
No offense, but someone with 260/270/280 board scores would probably welcome a shot at NYP, Yale, Hopkins etc. Besides, it is a waste of board scores to get into EM with such eye-popping scores. You can get into plastics with those...
Click to expand...

MS2 here grinding out the end of the year and simultaneously preparing for Step 1....Yo if I got a 290 (I know impossible) I would still apply to do EM in the match....could not really see myself doing anything else
 
richse said:
Actually, that's not true. Based on the numbers you gave if the distribution was ideal (which it isn't) then 277 is the 99th percentile. Additionally, based on the numbers they released for scores in 2009 (that can be found here) the distribution is skewed so that the top 1% would contain scores even lower than the ideal curve predicts. As you can see, in 2009 a 261 was in the 98.65 percentile.
Click to expand...

Interesting, thanks for that link. How did you get 277 being the 99th percentile? I haven't done stats in a long time, but I just calculated the z-score for the 99.0 percentile (ok, a website did it for me) to get the number (mean + z-score*SD).

And that's very interesting that >260 is already 98.65th....wow.
 
leviathan said:
Interesting, thanks for that link. How did you get 277 being the 99th percentile? I haven't done stats in a long time, but I just calculated the z-score for the 99.0 percentile (ok, a website did it for me) to get the number (mean + z-score*SD).

And that's very interesting that >260 is already 98.65th....wow.
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I used a website to calculate it too. I guess one of them is flawed. Oh well, the ideal is probably somewhere between 277 and 282.
 
Personaly I think the top 1% is in the 260s, i have no numbers to back that up, but it is few and far bw when you see a score in the 270s.
 
...are you guys really arguing what score someone has to have to be considered top 1%? res ipsa loquitur
 
Well, I feel better about that rejection......
 
Based on a normal distribution:

Percentile---Step 1 score
99.9---295
99---277
98.5---273
98---270
97.5---268
97---266
96.5---264
96---263
95.5---262
95---260
94.5---259
94---258
93.5---257
93---256
92---255
91---253
90---252
80---241
70---234
60---227
50---221

So the top 1% would be ≥277.
 
Residencies spend a lot of time developing great curriculum, ensuring balance and helping their residents (who never look at the website after they match). Websites often do not reflect the quality or vision of the residency (although I agree, in an ideal world they would). They are intended to get your attention, and often do not get reviewed enough. Given that most residencies have over 50 applications per residency spot, some might not feel that they need to increase applications via perfect websites.

I am not at Christ Hospital but the people I have met from there are fantastic and do not reflect the attitude you might think looking at that post.

I realize in the current world that the web reflects reality, but just realize in most residencies it does not. In a world of new ACGME rules, duty hours and desire to really spend quality time with your residents sometimes the website doesn't get the attention it deserves.
 
strongboy2005 said:
Based on a normal distribution:

Percentile---Step 1 score
99.9---295
99---277
98.5---273
98---270
97.5---268
97---266
96.5---264
96---263
95.5---262
95---260
94.5---259
94---258
93.5---257
93---256
92---255
91---253
90---252
80---241
70---234
60---227
50---221

So the top 1% would be ≥277.
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I'm in the top 10% (actually better) and going into ER.. woohoo! :claps:
 
It's the Lake Wobegon of emergency medicine.

Y'all who started arguing about what would constitute the top 1% crack me up. Seriously?
 
Perfect timing to make the claim. The year a 99 was changed to mean something.
 
fahimaz7 said:
I'm in the top 10% (actually better) and going into ER.. woohoo! :claps:
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We are all super impressed! I would highly suggest that you really talk this up in interviews, especially totally unsolicited and with no real point except to show everyone how awesome you are!!

BTW, what specialty is ER? Erectile Repair? Weird that you're posting here in the EM forum....
 
I can safely say that Christ Advocate is an exceptional program (and no, I am not their PD :) ) I used to know some of the people there and I have always liked how they talk up their resident's best qualities. Websites for residencies are usually governed by higher powers within the institution, so that is why some some show less information than others.
 
Mr. Hat said:
We are all super impressed! I would highly suggest that you really talk this up in interviews, especially totally unsolicited and with no real point except to show everyone how awesome you are!!

BTW, what specialty is ER? Erectile Repair? Weird that you're posting here in the EM forum....
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Lol. I like Mr. Hat. He has a good sense of humor and a keen eye for detail.
 
I going to send the Advocate Christ PD an email and tell them to drop their pants and prove they're packing those scores.

I want to see posted USMLE transcripts. Because we can all say we're a 9, but truth is most are 5's.
 
BoogieWoogieWow said:
I going to send the Advocate Christ PD an email and tell them to drop their pants and prove they're packing those scores.

I want to see posted USMLE transcripts. Because we can all say we're a 9, but truth is most are 5's.
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5 inches?
 
I'm pretty sure they think the two digit score is a percentile.
 
get over it guys. Simple clerical error or over zealoussness. Person was probably proud of their residents and felt like they were awesome and wanted to share it with the world. No biggy.
 
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