Is this possible, a >260 without studying??

[automan2]

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True story,

I buddy of mine just took the NBME #1 to see where stood before he started studying for the boards. The kid is 4.0 academic stud, and he lit the test up for a score of >260!!!

I think his three digit was something like 760

It is scary to think what his score is going to be when he finishes studying after six weeks!!!!

I love the kid to death, but that kind of thing makes me depressed!

 

[Taus]

please smack him for me...jk...the guy has got to be a sponge to hold onto every detail from the last 2 years w/o any review....unless hes yankin ur chain and has been reviewing all along

 

[GOGETA]

I know him, his from the SuperSaiyans family😀

1- He might review some old questions that are actually the NBME questions and wala a false positive.

2- Studying and reviewing and not telling nobody.

3- He is a very special boy, sorry bjebus for using your moto😎

Tell him to take NBME 3 to see where he stands

 

[automan2]

The kid is amazing. Yet he is still worried about this test. I told him to study for three weeks, then take a month off. No way, he is going to study until the week before third year starts. He is a machine. I really think he is trying to break 280. (He said his goal was 270 a few months ago, who knows what it will be now)

I am sure he has been doing some review, but he hasn't started seriously studying yet. He tried to start studying earlier, but his grades in class suffered, so he is only doing class work now.

I looked at the printout that you get, and almost every section was * That means he didn't miss any in that section. He didn't have a single area where he was anywhere near the average. Everything was shifted to the right.


He really learns the material well during second year, and for some reason, he is able to hang onto it. I think I am going to take the exam this weekend to see where I stand. I don't do nearly as well as he does in class, so I am going to shoot for 200.

 

[GOGETA]

good luck on your test

 

[AmoryBlaine]

Highly unlikely. Friends of mine that are near genius in intelligence studied like crazy to break 250.*

If this is true than this guy is off the charts (read: like 4 std devs off the mean) as far as recall and comprehension.

So, no, it is not possible for us mortals.



* It get a bit confusing b/c SDN self-selects for intelligent students who want to post their board scores, but think about what getting a 255+ on step 1 means... If the avg is like 215 and the std dev is around 20, that means a 255 is 98th percentile or thereabouts. This is not 98th percentile of the population, this is 98th percentile of medical students.

 

[Terpskins99]

* It get a bit confusing b/c SDN self-selects for intelligent students who want to post their board scores, but think about what getting a 255+ on step 1 means... If the avg is like 215 and the std dev is around 20, that means a 255 is 98th percentile or thereabouts. This is not 98th percentile of the population, this is 98th percentile of medical students.

Are you implying that a group consisting solely of medical students are naturally more intelligent than the rest of the population? Because I've met more than my fair share of dunderheads in medical school.

Yes, a population consisting of *gasp*... medical students. 😱 Blasphemy, I know!

 

[KNightInBlue]

Are you implying that a group consisting solely of medical students are naturally more intelligent than the rest of the population? Because I've met more than my fair share of dunderheads in medical school.

Yes, a population consisting of *gasp*... medical students. 😱 Blasphemy, I know!

regardless, I am still pretty sure that if I were to throw a dart out the window and guess which kind of ***** I would hit, a med student or one from the general public, my money would be on the latter..........just because there are so many more of them..........so yeah, I would agree with Amory in that a group of random med students would be more intelligent than a group of random ppl off the street

 

[doctorp82]

There's a dude in my class that got a 263 on NBME form #2, I think that's something like a 770.
He's been studying since before med school. He memorized (literally) First Aid before M1 year, and did QBank and some Princeton question book as well.

We're all pretty sure he can light up Step 1 for over 270, maybe 280. Should be good for the school, bring our class board average up a bit 🙂

 

[Law2Doc]

There's a dude in my class that got a 263 on NBME form #2, I think that's something like a 770.
He's been studying since before med school. He memorized (literally) First Aid before M1 year, and did QBank and some Princeton question book as well.

We're all pretty sure he can light up Step 1 for over 270, maybe 280. Should be good for the school, bring our class board average up a bit 🙂

Of course there is always going to be someone like that who gets hit with a bad case of test anxiety at the real thing and comes out of it with a 190. High expectations often mean you have further to fall.

 

[Taus]

There's a dude in my class that got a 263 on NBME form #2, I think that's something like a 770.
He's been studying since before med school. He memorized (literally) First Aid before M1 year, and did QBank and some Princeton question book as well.

We're all pretty sure he can light up Step 1 for over 270, maybe 280. Should be good for the school, bring our class board average up a bit 🙂

plastics, derm, optho?....or just plain old masochist?

 

[doctorp82]

Used to talk about doing peds cardiothoracic. Not sure if he's still into surgery or something else.

Oh, and as far as text anxiety, machines don't get anxious. This guy is the iceman. I'm certain his hippocampi are as big as oranges, and his circle of Papez is supercoiled.

 

[Tired]

We're all pretty sure he can light up Step 1 for over 270, maybe 280. Should be good for the school, bring our class board average up a bit 🙂

Then you will probably all be pretty suprised when he comes up with that 223, eh?

You're overestimating the correlation of NBME and Step 1.

 

[AmoryBlaine]

Are you implying that a group consisting solely of medical students are naturally more intelligent than the rest of the population? Because I've met more than my fair share of dunderheads in medical school.

Yes, a population consisting of *gasp*... medical students. 😱 Blasphemy, I know!

Dunderheads possibly, but obviously posessing more intelligence by far than the average population. It is more impressive to get in the 98th percentile of med students than the 98th percentile of people who live in, say, Scranton. That's all I was trying to say.

 

[KNightInBlue]

Dunderheads possibly, but obviously posessing more intelligence by far than the average population. It is more impressive to get in the 98th percentile of med students than the 98th percentile of people who live in, say, Scranton. That's all I was trying to say.

Unless they work at "The Office"........in which case, its MANDATORY to score in the 98th percentile when comapred to them

 

[PhatGtDmB]

i think medical students (including me) grossly underestimate the mean "intelligence" in a population of medical students vs. general population due to selection bias (lol)....The mean intelligence in the general population is and always will be an IQ of a 100.....students in any given medical school have a LEAST a mean IQ of 120 (trust me, even though you see some donks in your class they are at least at this level)....with that being stated, 98 percentile on any test that are exclusively taken by medical students is quite a feat....

 

[rishi718]

this does make sense in a wierd way, cus with the crazy interconnected world of cell phoens and internet communication every one prolly know SOMEBODY who got 270 and 280s

cus if u do the math, 98th percentile, means 2% of all kids taking step get these insane scores. and since theres thousands n thousands of kids taking it, i guess theres a ctually a lot of people getting this high, no?

 

[illixir]

It's really an exercise in futility to think about percentiles for this test when the USMLE doesn't even tell you what yours is. The two-digit score is unrelated to percentile.

 

[MedMan25]

...

 

[Aphtalyfe]

It's really an exercise in futility to think about percentiles for this test when the USMLE doesn't even tell you what yours is. The two-digit score is unrelated to percentile.

They give you the SD and mean... so from that you can calculate your approximate percentile.

 

[deleted103644]

They give you the SD and mean... so from that you can calculate your percentile.

It's thinking like that that loses you a few points on the biostats portion of the test. That's true ONLY if you assume a normal distribution. It takes some fancy math (i.e. the calculus you've already forgotten) to calculate the percentile of X standard deviations from the median, and there's no guaranteeing two different types of distributions will show the same relationship.

I'd bet USMLE scores show at least a bimodal distribution (IMG vs. US), and even if you looked individually at any one of those populations, there's no guaranteeing it would be close to a normal distribution - most likely would show a positive/negative skew, etc. etc.

 

[illixir]

It's thinking like that that loses you a few points on the biostats portion of the test. That's true ONLY if you assume a normal distribution. It takes some fancy math (i.e. the calculus you've already forgotten) to calculate the percentile of X standard deviations from the median, and there's no guaranteeing two different types of distributions will show the same relationship.

I'd bet USMLE scores show at least a bimodal distribution (IMG vs. US), and even if you looked individually at any one of those populations, there's no guaranteeing it would be close to a normal distribution - most likely would show a positive/negative skew, etc. etc.

That's an excellent point, thank you for pointing that out. I was thinking he had me. There is undoubtedly skew in certain areas, I couldn't say what obviously but there's no way it would follow a normal distribution.

Regardless, there is a serious problem if you have to measure yourself against others and decide the exact percentage you're better than rather than accept your own performance via your three digit score.

 

[Aphtalyfe]

They give you the SD and mean... so from that you can calculate your approximate percentile.

Corrected.

 

[Krazykyle]

Sorry, but I don't believe anyone can get a 260+ with no directed board studying. There is just too many esoteric topics that can not be covered adequetely during the two preclinical years in coursework alone. Now he may have scored that on his NMBE exam, but he is either

1) Studying using more than your course material to learn the material beyond what the school wants to test, which is in itself board work.

2) lying

 

[EBI831]

I,too, think it's a lie when people claim to get above 240s or so (arbitrary) without direct boards studying. it's comparable to those in med school who dont go to class and claim they didn't read and did well. there is no way you would come across any of the minutia in every day life. similarly, i feel bad for people who study for tests for 4 years...that's a little much/intense/gunnerish. the problem, however, will be when he doesn't have 4 years to study and there's a huge discrepancy between step 1, 2, and 3 when he's bogged down with aways or whatever or residency and can't afford to dedicate 4 years to studying. but, at the same time just to contradict myself, i dont think it's possible to make a 260 without being exceptionally smart no matter how hard you study (unless you memorized every single question possible which you prob can't even do in 4 years) and someone who's onlly average can't study for 4 years and get a 270...240 probably.

 

[starkcrazy]

Of course there is always going to be someone like that who gets hit with a bad case of test anxiety at the real thing and comes out of it with a 190. High expectations often mean you have further to fall.

thats why people shouldnt go around bragging about their practice test scores. not saying that your friend was bragging OP but those kinds of things are better kept confidential.

 

[Stark]

Without studying - impossible.

With little studying - possible only with a photographic memory.

I spent most of med school trying to come up with mnemonics and reading and re-reading everything. My best friend had a photographic memory and would just ask me:

"Why make up a mnemonic for the causes of hypercalcemia? Why not just remember it?" - - - That got annoying.