In-Service Exam Results

[alittlestory]

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I was wondering how to interpret results of the in-service exam- I am clueless as to what is a "good" score and what is a "needs significant improvement" score.

I tried to google it, not much luck.

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

 

[smq123]

In service exam in which specialty?

 

[alittlestory]

oh wow, i left that out. Internal Medicine.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

Doesn't your PD explain this to you?

 

[alittlestory]

technically, yes. but they haven't been explained to me. what's the ballpark figure for an average pgy-1 %correct?

 

[NotAProgDirector]

Your percentile is right on the report. The first number is your raw score, % questions correct. The number under it is your percentile compared with all other similar PGY's nationwide.

For all PGY-1's, 53% of the questions correct was the 49th percentile -- so that's the mean.

In general, being under the 20th percentile is high risk for failing the boards, and being over the 30th percentile is very low risk for failing.

 

[dragonfly99]

Just look at the score report. Try to see if you placed around the average for your PGY year. For any sections where you got less than average (% ile-wise) for your PGY year, you should go study that. If you got 20 or 30 %ile on 1 or 2 sections, that doesn't mean you are going to fail the IM boards. However if you are getting 10 or 20th %ile on a whole bunch of sections, that suggests a knowledge gap. You also have to take into account how tired you were when you took the test...I took it postcall after no sleep the prior night when I was an intern and only scored 50 or 60th %ile for interns, which my PD thought was truly awful, but since I didn't study for the test (didn't really have much time with Q3/Q4 call all the time, and PD told us not to study and that the test was only for practice for interns) it probably wasn't so terrible. ...