Do schools use "percentiles" from Shelves to calculate final grades?

[traxxradiorocks]

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Just wondering
Because the email we got said that they will use the "standardized scores" from NBME in a "simple formula" to calculate a numerical value, does it mean that they are using percentiles for our final grades?
If so, that would be f--ked up.

 

[McGillGrad]

You seem pretty worried about the shelf exams. They are not that difficult once the NBME curves them. Your school can also curve it or leave it at the NBME's curve.

 

[Smurfette]

Between my own medical school and the medical school associated with my residency program, yes, the grades are based on the NBME curve. Both the schools I'm familiar with used a cutoff for grades based on the NBME scores. The cutoff shifted higher as the year progressed (most people score better on shelf exams over time due to familiarity with the format) and if the students averages did not correlate with the NBME ones, they would shift the curve accordingly. In my experience, they normally curved it down more readily than they curved it up.

 

[bioteach]

I don't know what other schools do, but ours uses the percentile. So 50th percentile gets you 20 pts out of a possible 40. For example, the rotation I'm on now...we have 40 pts possible from the shelf + 40 pts from evaluations + 20 osce/etc. = 100 pts.

 

[DrBowtie]

One rotation just directly plugs our scaled score from NBME (70 +/- 8 SD) into a component of our grade in the 10 point ABCF scale. So ridiculous it takes 2.5 SD to get a 90% for the shelf portion.

 

[2012mdc]

Just wondering
Because the email we got said that they will use the "standardized scores" from NBME in a "simple formula" to calculate a numerical value, does it mean that they are using percentiles for our final grades?
If so, that would be f--ked up.

My school uses the scaled score the NBME provides. Some rotations have a convoluted formula for using the scaled score, others just set a minimum score needed to have a chance at an A/honors

 

[vicinihil]

We get a percentage and it gets averaged into our grade. I'm not sure how they get such percentage but sometimes our shelf exams have a high of 85% so I'm guessing it's not the school's percentile but NBME percentile or just raw 😵

 

[Dirt]

We get a percentage and it gets averaged into our grade. I'm not sure how they get such percentage but sometimes our shelf exams have a high of 85% so I'm guessing it's not the school's percentile but NBME percentile or just raw 😵

I assume that the NBME sends the schools the percentiles for the raw scores. My school uses percentiles for our grades, and the occasional clerkship director will tell you the percentile for your raw score.

 

[Sol Rosenberg]

Like that of another previous poster, ours just uses the "raw" score (mean of 70 with sd of 8) as a percentage that gets averaged with your evaluations. Yes, that's right folks, scoring in the ~97.5th percentile (86) would get you a B if that were the only component of your grade.

 

[Ableton]

Like that of another previous poster, ours just uses the "raw" score (mean of 70 with sd of 8) as a percentage that gets averaged with your evaluations. Yes, that's right folks, scoring in the ~97.5th percentile (86) would get you a B if that were the only component of your grade.

Sucks bro.

At my school it, the exact values vary for each clerkship, but the scoring is generally done in one of two ways:
1. They use the raw score and assign H/HP/P/F according to the mean and standard deviation for everyone on the rotation (e.g. you need to finish 1 SD above the mean to get H, between 0.5 and 1 SD is HP, etc.)
or
2. H/HP/P/F are set as ranges of the raw score (e.g. above 85 is H, between 80-84 is HP, etc.)

Then the shelf grade is mashed together with the subjective grades.