How long does it take for clerkship grades to come back?

[pls accept me]

What is it like at your school?

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[domer621]

What is it like at your school?

Usually 4-5 weeks for everything to come back, although IM took like 10.

 

[MrBurns10]

As little as 2 weeks and as long as 4 months- that was surgery which I did first, after which the clerkship director decided to get on everyone about getting in their grades because 4 months was a bit long to wait...

 

[Ashers]

Ours are supposed to be in 4weeks after the clerkship is done. My OB/gyn took 10 weeks, FP took about 8.

 

[Law2Doc]

What is it like at your school?

If it has a shelf exam the minimum it can ever be is something like 4 weeks because that is how long the scoring supposedly takes to get back to the school. If your school is bad at chasing evals it can be months longer.

 

[blz]

If it has a shelf exam the minimum it can ever be is something like 4 weeks because that is how long the scoring supposedly takes to get back to the school. If your school is bad at chasing evals it can be months longer.

Your school gets the scores a lot quicker than that. I took a shelf on friday and got my score back 4 days later on tuesday. your school is slacking on you.

 

[Biscuit799]

My school generally takes about 3-6 weeks, depending on the rotation (IM is notorious for taking the longest).

 

[domer621]

Your school gets the scores a lot quicker than that. I took a shelf on friday and got my score back 4 days later on tuesday. your school is slacking on you.

Yeah, I've gotten mine within 2 weeks before.

 

[joe6102]

Yeah, I've gotten mine within 2 weeks before.

Yeah, mine take about a week, usually 5-6 business days.

 

[vtucci]

At least 4 weeks for any clerkship with a shelf exam.

The longest was 3 months due to a staff change.
The shortest was unofficial notice over the phone with the clerkship coordinator in less than 1 week.

 

[gleep and gloop]

Your school gets the scores a lot quicker than that. I took a shelf on friday and got my score back 4 days later on tuesday. your school is slacking on you.

Wait, are these NBME shelf's or are they made by your department. I don't think I ever got a shelf score back quicker than 3 weeks at my school, since they supposedly need to send them to NBME central HQ for grading.

For clerkship grades - quickest was 4 weeks, longest was 7 months (damn you, surgery!).

 

[blz]

Wait, are these NBME shelf's or are they made by your department. I don't think I ever got a shelf score back quicker than 3 weeks at my school, since they supposedly need to send them to NBME central HQ for grading.

For clerkship grades - quickest was 4 weeks, longest was 7 months (damn you, surgery!).

these are official NBME shelf exams

 

[jocg27]

It pretty consistently takes ~8 weeks for ours, for just about every rotation I've done so far...Supposedly (although I don't know this for certain firsthand), people who fail the shelf find out 2 weeks later, so if you don't get a page in the middle of the next rotation you at least know you passed the shelf.

 

[Law2Doc]

Wait, are these NBME shelf's or are they made by your department. I don't think I ever got a shelf score back quicker than 3 weeks at my school, since they supposedly need to send them to NBME central HQ for grading.

For clerkship grades - quickest was 4 weeks, longest was 7 months (damn you, surgery!).

Agreed. The school folks say with a straight face that it takes NBME a month, and it seems to be the same story regardless of rotation. I can't imagine everyone is in on the same lie.

 

[Mayhem]

Anything even remotely affiliated with the Dept of Surgery takes 10 weeks minimum to come back because the insist on internal exams and then refuse to mark them. O&G took 12 weeks when I did it because they decided to use an essay format and then no one had time to read them. The people that run my school need to organize themself better. Apart from those it usually takes 5 weeks.

 

[UCLAstudent]

It takes forever. My quickest one was surgery (8 weeks). Ob/gyn took 16 weeks and pediatrics took 14 weeks. This is week 6 after internal medicine --- I don't know why I'm even checking the clerkship evaluation site at this point. It'll be at least another month.

 

[UCLAstudent]

Your school gets the scores a lot quicker than that. I took a shelf on friday and got my score back 4 days later on tuesday. your school is slacking on you.

Lol, that's funny. I emailed the IM coordinator at my school to find out my shelf score 3 weeks after the exam, and he replied with, "We don't even have the scores back yet!" and proceeded to reassure me/told me not to worry. The scores were probably already back at that point.

 

[teh t]

our school gets our NBMEs back in 7 days or less, and we take the tests on friday

 

[blz]

Agreed. The school folks say with a straight face that it takes NBME a month, and it seems to be the same story regardless of rotation. I can't imagine everyone is in on the same lie.

It depends on how your school reports your score. In the past, our school used to get the scores and then manually mail the scores to us (eventhough most of us are across the street from the school). That usually resulted in like 3wks to get the scores back. They recently started an online reporting system at our school so as soon as the school gets our scores, they report it on our student site.

Your school is probably taking their time to send your shelf exams off to get graded.

But in the end, we don't get our clerkship grades until a month later. It means squat if you aced the shelf because in the our school grades are mostly on evals.

 

[vtucci]

Your school gets the scores a lot quicker than that. I took a shelf on friday and got my score back 4 days later on tuesday. your school is slacking on you.

How is it possible to get shelf scores 4 days later? Was yours a written exam or computer version?

 

[teh t]

our school usually takes the shelf on fridays and the scores are uploaded into our grading web page by wed or thursday morning of next week. Now i think the NBME charges a bit more for this service as opposed to a printout that has to be manually entered

 

[blz]

How is it possible to get shelf scores 4 days later? Was yours a written exam or computer version?

It's the written exam.

I really don't know what to tell you guys. All I know is I got my score when I did. My school does it the same way as "teh t" with online reporting.

i have no reason to lie.

these shelf exams are just annoying for everyone. I keep hearing stories about schools who get like 3hrs to do these exams. id rather have that than early score reporting.

 

[joe6102]

It's the written exam.

I really don't know what to tell you guys. All I know is I got my score when I did. My school does it the same way as "teh t" with online reporting.

i have no reason to lie.

these shelf exams are just annoying for everyone. I keep hearing stories about schools who get like 3hrs to do these exams. id rather have that than early score reporting.

My school is the same way. I took a written shelf on Friday (with the whole bubble-in name, test form, birthday, and everything) and got a page yesterday (Thursday) saying the scores were in. I went by the office and they told me my score. I don't know why it would take so much longer for other schools.

 

[smq123]

our school usually takes the shelf on fridays and the scores are uploaded into our grading web page by wed or thursday morning of next week. Now i think the NBME charges a bit more for this service as opposed to a printout that has to be manually entered

Wait - let me get this straight.

The NBME can provide an electronic score report that can easily be uploaded into your school's computer system - but this is more expensive.

Alternatively, the NBME can provide a paper score report that must be manually entered into your school's computer system by someone at your school - and this is cheaper.

That explains a whole lot, then. 😡

I don't think I ever got a shelf score back quicker than 3 weeks at my school, since they supposedly need to send them to NBME central HQ for grading.

I know - I wondered why it took 2 weeks for our scores to come back, particularly when I go to school less than 25 city blocks away from one of the NBME's HQ sites...

 

[vtucci]

We just found out our surgery shelf grades in less than 2 weeks- by far and away the quickest turnaround at USF. I don't know why the shelf exams "took so long to get back" in the other clerkships but we had been told it took a month to get from NBME.

 

[redbeans]

going on 5 months for internal medicine...

 

[Punkn]

Sometimes we get NBME/department exam grades back quickly, but 5-6 weeks is not unusual. Still waiting on my FP grade from back in October. Average is probably 4-8 weeks...

 

[metallo]

Minimum of 6 weeks at my school for final evaluations. Sometimes we can get our shelf scores after 2-3 weeks.

 

[Zetterberg07]

I still havent gotten my grade for the elective I did in July. After months of being told not to worry about it by the records office, they finally did contact the clerkship director to find out whats up. Her response was that she'll fill out my eval but needs a picture first to remember who I am.

 

[SGuttenberg]

NBME scores are back within 1 week, maybe 10-12 days at the latest. This is with the paper test and mailed back score reports. Rotation grades will take up to 4 weeks for us which from what I've been reading on this forum is relatively good.

Anybody else find this COMPLETELY unacceptable considering the insane amount of money we pay our schools? Should someone even consider a comment card filled out 3-4 weeks since the last time an attending/resident has seen a student considering the number of students who rotate with them?

Why is it that this situation the norm? There is no excuse for this. Sometimes I want to smack the course coordinators for not keeping people on the ball and submitting grades and evals on time. 2 weeks should be the absolute maximum time they should be allowed and 1 week should be the goal. It pisses me off so much because I find it hard to focus on one rotation when the previous one is "incomplete" in my mind.

 

[2012mdc]

NBME scores are back within 1 week, maybe 10-12 days at the latest. This is with the paper test and mailed back score reports. Rotation grades will take up to 4 weeks for us which from what I've been reading on this forum is relatively good.

Anybody else find this COMPLETELY unacceptable considering the insane amount of money we pay our schools? Should someone even consider a comment card filled out 3-4 weeks since the last time an attending/resident has seen a student considering the number of students who rotate with them?

Why is it that this situation the norm? There is no excuse for this. Sometimes I want to smack the course coordinators for not keeping people on the ball and submitting grades and evals on time. 2 weeks should be the absolute maximum time they should be allowed and 1 week should be the goal. It pisses me off so much because I find it hard to focus on one rotation when the previous one is "incomplete" in my mind.

Yeah man one of my evaluators on FM didn't do the evaluation until a couple months later. The evaluation seemed pretty generic and I think they forgot who I was. It didn't make it into my main eval for the course and didn't drop my grade so I just let it go. Unacceptable though

 

[medsend]

In our school, FM/Neuro take the longest about 2-3 months. I really dont understand why, the shelf is just a scantron and my school does not curve so i have no idea what the wait is...its ridiculous.

 

[TheSlyme]

Medsend, does everyone take the same shelf exam or does it change based on the time of your rotation?

 

[bioteach]

Our NBME shelf exam scores come back in less than a week. We take it friday and score is usually posted by thursday of the following week unless there is a holiday, etc. The rest depends on the department. Surgery grade was back in about a week after the rotation ended, whereas I'm still waiting on psych that ended at christmas.