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hakksar said:It is not true that "some med school has to be getting below the national average on step 1" The average for step one is derived from all takers of the exam. First of all since there are many people taking step 1 from foreign medical schools it is actually a lot less likely that an allopathic med school will average below the average on step 1. Second even if only US med school students took step 1 there is no guarantee that any med school would be below the average. All medical schools could have some people below the average and some above the average. They all could be right on the average or even above the average since the national average is based on individual student scores and not the average of schools. It is pretty basic statistics that prove that it is not true that "some med school has to be getting below the national average on step 1".
Actually, you seem to be a little confused about statistics. First off, I'm looking back at my Step 1 score report, and it says "The mean and standard deviation for first-time examinees from U.S. and Canadian medical schools are approximately 216 and 24." So, fmgs have no impact. I'm pretty sure osteopaths also don't have an impact, since they are lumped off in a separate category when the NBME reports the failure rate among first-time takers. Second off, I just gave you the Stanford average for the last four years (232), and so, your statement that basically boils down to "all the med schools might have similar means" is simply not the case.
Also, here is at least one med school that definitely has a below average Step 1 score--
http://www.nmanet.org/JMNA_Journal_Articles/Sept-05_jnma/OC1258.pdf
Apparently, Charles R Drew Medical School/Program (it's a UCLA offshoot for underserved populations) had a 24.8 average incoming student MCAT and a 194 average Step 1 score from 1992-2001 (that's not as bad as it looks, because the Step 1 national average has gone up from about 200 back in the early 90s when it was phased in to 216 today, probably due in large part to First Aid and other resources focusing studying on more high yield stuff).