How to rake in money from med students

[exPCM]

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What a nice gig the NBME has going.
Look at page 9 of this pdf.
http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments//2008/231/352/2008-231352238-0538600b-9.pdf
They are raking in over 77 million bucks a year from med students.
I bet they will be raking a lot more in with all the new schools and enrollment increases.
Do you think they would even consider lowering their fees? I doubt it when they can continue to extract money from all the "rich" med students.

 

[thesauce]

What a nice gig the NBME has going.
Look at page 9 of this pdf.
http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments//2008/231/352/2008-231352238-0538600b-9.pdf
They are raking in over 77 million bucks a year from med students.
I bet they will be raking a lot more in with all the new schools and enrollment increases.
Do you think they would even consider lowering their fees? I doubt it when they can continue to extract money from all the "rich" med students.

Step 2cs alone is 30-40mil/yr will all centers running at full capacity.

 

[Raryn]

Step 2cs alone is 30-40mil/yr will all centers running at full capacity.

There's really no reason US MDs should have to take 2CS. The test was developed to basically make sure foreign grads could speak English for God's sake!

 

[Antibodies]

They actually lost money this year. Their expenses are more than their revenues. Page 1.

 

[exPCM]

They actually lost money this year. Their expenses are more than their revenues. Page 1.

Yes. So you think they should raise the exam fees again so they can pay themselves even higher salaries?

 

[greg1184]

With that money, the least they can do is find a different company that would provide testing centers that have something better than garbage 10 year old computers and crummy CRT monitors with 640x480 resolution and <60hz refresh rate.

 

[Antibodies]

With that money, the least they can do is find a different company that would provide testing centers that have something better than garbage 10 year old computers and crummy CRT monitors with 640x480 resolution and <60hz refresh rate.

I don't know which centers they use (haven't taken the boards yet) but the center where I took the MCAT sucked. The monitors just blew.

 

[Raryn]

With that money, the least they can do is find a different company that would provide testing centers that have something better than garbage 10 year old computers and crummy CRT monitors with 640x480 resolution and <60hz refresh rate.

I just hope that wherever I take the exam has better systems than my schools computer lab. The monitors are all right, but when we take exams they put these ridiculously bad privacy screens on all of them that have waterstains or air bubbles or something all over the place. Practically gives me a headache after a 2 hour exam staring at those, I can't imagine taking an 8 hour one.

 

[45408]

I just hope that wherever I take the exam has better systems than my schools computer lab. The monitors are all right, but when we take exams they put these ridiculously bad privacy screens on all of them that have waterstains or air bubbles or something all over the place. Practically gives me a headache after a 2 hour exam staring at those, I can't imagine taking an 8 hour one.

Prometric is a pretty nice place. I wouldn't worry about it.


But I agree that Step 2 CS is a total scam for American med students. Utter waste of my time. The NBME entrusts my school to train me to become a doctor, but they don't trust them to administer a test? We had an end-of-the-year OSCE after M3 that was cumulative and basically was Step 2 CS that we all had to take. That should have been sufficient.

 

[thesauce]

Prometric is a pretty nice place. I wouldn't worry about it.

Depends on the site. One of the proctors started singing half-way through my test 😕

I had to take a break just to tell her to stop.

 

[greg1184]

I don't know which centers they use (haven't taken the boards yet) but the center where I took the MCAT sucked. The monitors just blew.

They use Prometric, the same company the MCAT uses. My testing center was in a pretty fancy building, but the computers were horrendous. They used old HP Pavillion PC's. Each time I would go to another passage, the hard drive would crank away taking 5 seconds to load the passage. And, as I said, the flicker of the CRT monitors was terrible. It is as if the computers were in Safe Mode. Hopefully in a couple of years things have changed.

 

[Dr Oops]

They actually lost money this year. Their expenses are more than their revenues. Page 1.

seems fishy though, the prior year they had 15 mill profit, then the next year they are in the red?

 

[Raryn]

seems fishy though, the prior year they had 15 mill profit, then the next year they are in the red?

Bad economy? Looking at line 10, their investment income went down by a factor of 3.

 

[thesauce]

Bad economy? Looking at line 10, their investment income went down by a factor of 3.

Hence they raised the cost of CS

 

[badasshairday]

The monitors are all right, but when we take exams they put these ridiculously bad privacy screens on all of them that have waterstains or air bubbles or something all over the place. Practically gives me a headache after a 2 hour exam staring at those, I can't imagine taking an 8 hour one.

I hate that!