How does your school curve NBME finals?

[orthoman5000]

It's shelf exam time again and my classmates are once again bitching and moaning about how the NBME finals are curved. I was wondering how other schools do it.

The way my school does it is like this. We take the class average before the final and then subtract the class average (not National average) on the NBME to get a correction factor. That is then added to everyone's 2 digit NBME score. That number is then treated like a percentage and applied to how ever many points the final is worth. For example:

Class average before final: 85%
Class average on the NBME: 72
Correction factor: 13
Joe Blow gets a score of 82 on the NBME so he get 95% of the points for the exam (usually around 20-25% of the total grade).

Does anyone else do it like this? If not how does your school grade the NBME.

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[Entol]

Unless I'm reading this wrong, it seems like you're saying that the average score is 85% and the correction factor is 13, so your class average on the exam is 98%? Why are they bitching and moaning, it seems like honors for everyone. Sorry if I read this wrong!

It's shelf exam time again and my classmates are once again bitching and moaning about how the NBME finals are curved. I was wondering how other schools do it.

The way my school does it is like this. We take the class average before the final and then subtract the class average (not National average) on the NBME to get a correction factor. That is then added to everyone's 2 digit NBME score. That number is then treated like a percentage and applied to how ever many points the final is worth. For example:

Class average before final: 85%
Class average on the NBME: 72
Correction factor: 13
Joe Blow gets a score of 82 on the NBME so he get 95% of the points for the exam (usually around 20-25% of the total grade).

Does anyone else do it like this? If not how does your school grade the NBME.

 

[orthoman5000]

No, the 13 would be added to the 72 (2 digit score on the NBME), not the 85% (class average before the final).

 

[EM Junkie]

Most of my classes have taken the NBME score and added 10 points, then used that grade as a % for final grade calculations.

-Scott, MS2

 

[cooldreams]

Unless I'm reading this wrong, it seems like you're saying that the average score is 85% and the correction factor is 13, so your class average on the exam is 98%? Why are they bitching and moaning, it seems like honors for everyone. Sorry if I read this wrong!

hehe you read it wrong... quit drinking so much hehe

 

[orthoman5000]

Students love our method when it's for a class with a high average but low NBME scores (easier classes), but hate it when it comes to classes with lower averages but higher NBME scores (more rigorous and prepare you better for the shelf-exam). With the former it leads to a big curve, but for the latter a much smaller curve.

 

[denali]

For the lone class we've taken a shelf exam for (Biochem), our percentile rank was worth 25% of our total class grade.

ETA: The final class grade, however, was curved.

 

[fernj1975]

At my school there is no curve; this blows. However they usually don't count more than 15 percent of your final grade.

 

[Samoa]

I don't know yet how my school does it, but I found this the other day and thought it was interesting...

http://www.som.tulane.edu/ome/helpful_hints/shelf_scores.pdf