How are shelf exams graded?

[nope80]

Are these on a curve or is it absolute value of questions you get right? I'm wondering because when they say 68% to pass does that mean you have to get 68 questions right or does it depend on how everyone else does? Also to that end, does everyone have the same exam so that it is standardized?

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[ChiDO]

It's probably just like step 1. There is a bank of questions on the subject and each test has a random combination. The test is probably standarized to some sort of mean, so that the shelf scores remain consistent year after year.

 

[Re3iRtH]

I dunno about you guys, but we do not get any sort of three-digit score or two digit score. We just get the raw score and our school grades it however they want based on how other students in the rotation did. And we don't get any national mean raw or otherwise, just the mean of the students from that round from our school.

 

[ghimmy ghons]

http://www.nbme.org/programs-services/medical-students/tabs/samplereports/medscoreint1.html

 

[GreenShirt]

The NBME will give you a score report with the mean and the standard deviation for the exam you took. It's up to your school to decide what constitutes passing. Usually, it's a certain number of SD's from the NBME mean.

Check out:http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=664798

 

[ShyFly]

At our school it was 2 SD within the mean to pass and honors was in top 5% of nation. And this is an osteopathic school (not fair)

 

[Instatewaiter]

It's probably just like step 1. There is a bank of questions on the subject and each test has a random combination. The test is probably standarized to some sort of mean, so that the shelf scores remain consistent year after year.

Everyone in your part of the class that takes it together will get the exact same questions. Perhaps in a different order but the questions will be the same.

I have no idea if they change the questions for each administration of the exam though.

At our school it was 2 SD within the mean to pass and honors was in top 5% of nation. And this is an osteopathic school (not fair)

Your raw score is not actually a raw score. They take your real raw score (# correct) and then scale that so that the mean is a 70 and std is ~8. It does vary by time in the year.

 

[yalla22]

The thing that is ridiculous to me is the fact that the curve imposes failing on 10% of students; at this point, it just makes no sense to mandatorily make 10% of students fail. We all work hard, try hard and therefore these exams should be graded such that if get above a certain score you pass. Not you have to beat most of the students in your class - if you know your material thats all that should matter.

 

[NonTradDO]

For our school, they require your score to be 2 SD within the mean (so ony 5% of students who took that version can be below your score). The raw score always increases per block by 1 or 2 points as people realize these things are no joke and study that much harder.

 

[yalla22]

Our school doesn't talk about SDs - they just say if you are below 10% you fail. Isn't that totally ridiculous???? Why do 10% of people have to fail?? We all study hard!!! For Gods sake...its like they TRY to make our lives that much harder. I'm so frustrated.

 

[NonTradDO]

Our school doesn't talk about SDs - they just say if you are below 10% you fail. Isn't that totally ridiculous???? Why do 10% of people have to fail?? We all study hard!!! For Gods sake...its like they TRY to make our lives that much harder. I'm so frustrated.

10% of the class or if you are below 10% of the national scores?

 

[yalla22]

it says anywhere from 5-10% of class receives a fail in the syllabus - that sounds insane to me. it also says that 62 is that passing score for the shelf which corresponds with the 10th percentile.

 

[NonTradDO]

It sucks that they place a cut-off raw score/percentage... but I don't think it means that 5-10% of the class MUST fail, just that they do on average. Just use it as motivation to study that much harder. Good luck