I wasn't sure where to post this, so sorry if this question would normally go into the Allopathic forum somewhere--
Does anyone know the average score (out of 100) of the Ob/Gyn shelf exam, based on past results? I'm a Year III who just finished my clerkship and took the shelf for Ob/Gyn. I've been considering it as a specialty and so went all out in the prep for the Shelf, reading the texts, working thru Blueprints, doing sample questions and the whole lot, as did the other gunners in the clerkship. (Ob seems to be popular.) After the exam, it seemed as though all of us-- about a dozen-- were seriously bummed.
The Shelf was much harder than we thought, full of what seemed like trick questions of the sort we hadn't encountered e.g. on the USMLE. Most of us felt like we could figure out the cases but the way the answer choices were phrased, we could frequently narrow things down to two almost-equally-good options and then had to guess-- even *after* the exam when we could look things up, we often couldn't decide which choice was better.
And the case descriptions were *really* long and involved, 1-2 paragraphs which made finishing difficult. Most of us thought we were on top of the material, but we had that sinking feeling that it wasn't going to show in our scores, and this includes one guy in our group who broke 240 for Step I but was downing a couple self-pity beers after the exam. <sigh>
I'd heard that the 50th percentile for the Shelf has generally hovered around 70 out of 100, which is nerve-racking b/c quite a few of us aren't sure we even hit much above that mark for this particular administration. I'm pulling out my hair b/c the last thing I want to do if I apply for Ob/Gyn residency is to explain to the Director my lackluster Shelf Exam scores that make me appear like a slacker (especially when I *did* bust my tail to master the material! Few things are more frustrating than being pressed about your apparent slacker-dom when you manifestly were not slacking!). Anyone have ballpark data for this?
Does anyone know the average score (out of 100) of the Ob/Gyn shelf exam, based on past results? I'm a Year III who just finished my clerkship and took the shelf for Ob/Gyn. I've been considering it as a specialty and so went all out in the prep for the Shelf, reading the texts, working thru Blueprints, doing sample questions and the whole lot, as did the other gunners in the clerkship. (Ob seems to be popular.) After the exam, it seemed as though all of us-- about a dozen-- were seriously bummed.
The Shelf was much harder than we thought, full of what seemed like trick questions of the sort we hadn't encountered e.g. on the USMLE. Most of us felt like we could figure out the cases but the way the answer choices were phrased, we could frequently narrow things down to two almost-equally-good options and then had to guess-- even *after* the exam when we could look things up, we often couldn't decide which choice was better.
And the case descriptions were *really* long and involved, 1-2 paragraphs which made finishing difficult. Most of us thought we were on top of the material, but we had that sinking feeling that it wasn't going to show in our scores, and this includes one guy in our group who broke 240 for Step I but was downing a couple self-pity beers after the exam. <sigh>I'd heard that the 50th percentile for the Shelf has generally hovered around 70 out of 100, which is nerve-racking b/c quite a few of us aren't sure we even hit much above that mark for this particular administration. I'm pulling out my hair b/c the last thing I want to do if I apply for Ob/Gyn residency is to explain to the Director my lackluster Shelf Exam scores that make me appear like a slacker (especially when I *did* bust my tail to master the material! Few things are more frustrating than being pressed about your apparent slacker-dom when you manifestly were not slacking!). Anyone have ballpark data for this?
