Step I NBME grade calculation

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blkkd

blkkd

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I took the Form 4 NBME today and only received a 226. Which i'm not necessarily happy with but thats really not the point here. I went through the "answers" and counted up all the ones i got wrong and according to the "answers" I only had 33 wrong on the entire exam. 167/200=83%=226😱??? That doesn't seem correct at all. Did anyone else come across this? Are the "answers" wrong, is there some computer glitch in my nbme calculation, or is it really scored like this???
 
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how are you able to tell which ones you got right and wrong? When I took the online nbme, it just gave me a printout, not a score key.
 
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Nevermind, as it was explained to me, the NBMEs are calculated on a scale. So it makes sense.
 
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blkkd said:
I took the Form 4 NBME today and only received a 226. Which i'm not necessarily happy with but thats really not the point here. I went through the "answers" and counted up all the ones i got wrong and according to the "answers" I only had 33 wrong on the entire exam. 167/200=83%=226😱??? That doesn't seem correct at all. Did anyone else come across this? Are the "answers" wrong, is there some computer glitch in my nbme calculation, or is it really scored like this???
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Even giving that whatever "answer" site you used is actually correct. The above does not suprise me at all.

Passing was 186 when those tests were made lets pretend that is 70% (who know but just throwing it out there.) this means that 1% increase in the number correct is 3 points to the three digit score. Thus a 90% is a score of 246 95% 261 and so forth. Now of course the test has some level of curve in it so it is possible that 95% is really like 285 but the closer you are the the median the closer the correlation works. So 226 may very well be 83% who knows. If you ask me the test is scored my meth-infused monkeys with a Magic 8-Ball.

I would not stress about it because if you go into the test counting the number you think you missed hoping to get a certain percentage you are going to need a vodka IV just to finish up the last two blocks.
 
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hey blkkd,
I too got a 226 on test 4 but felt I missed more than you said. If you hook me up with that link for the answers I can get back to you on how many I missed to see if it correlates. Whattya say?
 
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blkkd said:
I took the Form 4 NBME today and only received a 226. Which i'm not necessarily happy with but thats really not the point here. I went through the "answers" and counted up all the ones i got wrong and according to the "answers" I only had 33 wrong on the entire exam. 167/200=83%=226😱??? That doesn't seem correct at all. Did anyone else come across this? Are the "answers" wrong, is there some computer glitch in my nbme calculation, or is it really scored like this???
Click to expand...

I think that's accurate. I got 168/200 on form 3 and it was a 232. If I had a question about an answer, I would look it up, and there was only one that I was sure was incorrect.
So I guess it's true that form 3 is harder, since the same number correct is about 5 points higher on the scale.

Can we start a thread where we discuss specific questions and answers on these exams, or is that illegal? mods? anyone?
 
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Thanks for the warning, if I had anything to post, there is no way i'd post it in this thread, but I didn't say I had any illegal items to post anyway...😎
 
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Before you run around comparing % correct to get a 226... as I understand it, on the Real Thing, questions are weighted by difficulty. That's why there's so many #^)*&%$% experimental questions (up to 20% of the test). I would guess that the practice tests are probably also weighted, so % correct won't correspond perfectly to scaled score.
 
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joe6102 said:
I think that's accurate. I got 168/200 on form 3 and it was a 232. If I had a question about an answer, I would look it up, and there was only one that I was sure was incorrect.
So I guess it's true that form 3 is harder, since the same number correct is about 5 points higher on the scale.

Can we start a thread where we discuss specific questions and answers on these exams, or is that illegal? mods? anyone?
Click to expand...

If you're 168/200 is accurate, then they definitely weight questions differently to calculate the score -

I got a score that differed by 4 from yours while getting 174/200 (based on thoroughly going over the exam, and looking up virtually every question)...
 
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