Board pass rate by schools?

Started by deleted212936
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deleted212936

Is there any source that lists all the board pass rates and/or average board scores for each med school?
 
Also note that merely passing the boards isn't what most people want to do. If in a year, I merely pass Step 1 boards, I will be heartbroken.

Better schools, students, etc score higher than other schools. Bust your ass and you'll be fine.
 
Athens said:
Is there any source that lists all the board pass rates and/or average board scores for each med school?
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It's a useless number. The most competitive schools often admit the most competitive students who are comparatively more self-driven and motivated on the test than the general average.
 
ButImLETired said:
Oh dear.

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=102875&highlight=board+scores

Make sure to read all the comments there about how useless it is to look at those things, the fact that most schools lie about it, blah blah.
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In fairness, pass rates were asked for as well and those ARE somewhat useful. Averages scores aren't, but if 15% of a class is consistently failing step 1 then something is off with the curriculum. The key is to look at trends and not discrete points.

I don't have the documentation to prove this, but I am fairly convinced that once students are IN medical school, there is a fairly even spread of people. Nearly everyone is pretty damn driven if they were accepted. For many med schools, the average GPA and MCAT score might differ by .1 or 1 respectively. In classes of 100-150ish where we don't know the circumstances why they chose the school, that isn't much.

I go to a "low tier" school, yet we have people here who were accepted to UC-Davis (as an OOS), Colorado (as an OOS), University of Chicago, Penn, UF, Pitt, Wake Forest, Emory and even Michigan. For a school with a 27-28 MCAT average, that is pretty impressive. They chose the school because the tuition is less or they bought into what the school was saying...or they were offered money to attend. I'm sure there are similar stories at damn near every medical school in this country.
 
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MossPoh said:
In fairness, pass rates were asked for as well and those ARE somewhat useful. Averages scores aren't, but if 15% of a class is consistently failing step 1 then something is off with the curriculum. The key is to look at trends and not discrete points.
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I think it's probably more based on factors like lack of emphasis on the boards, lack of study time, and relative lack of test taking skill as a class rather than more curricular things. After all, almost all med students study exactly the same materials for the boards. Only extreme circumstances (Yale some years back) can really be attributed to curricular differences IMO.
 
Passing isn't THAT hard. Doing well is hard. You don't want to pass the boards, you want to do well. Pass rates are basically worthless....unless for some reason they are ridiculously low.
 
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