nbme shelf average scores

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obiwan

Attending Physician
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Does anyone know what the NBME shelf exams are curved to? I've read that its 70 with std deviation of 7.

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All of the shelf exams are scaled such that the national mean is 70 and the standard deviation is 8.

Just look at the NBME website.
 
All of the shelf exams are scaled such that the national mean is 70 and the standard deviation is 8.

Just look at the NBME website.

Thats what I was thinking but that goes against my most recent shelf score and the corresponding percentile.
 
Thats what I was thinking but that goes against my most recent shelf score and the corresponding percentile.

NBME does not release student percentiles with their scores, only the raw score. Perhaps the percentile you were given was your percentile among your cohort group in your class. I'd bet that is what it was.
 
NBME does not release student percentiles with their scores, only the raw score. Perhaps the percentile you were given was your percentile among your cohort group in your class. I'd bet that is what it was.

NBME does give the median (70) and the SD (8) though, so you can calculate the percentile without too much trouble. That is assuming, of course, that the scores are in a normal distribution which probably holds true as long as you are within a couple SD's of the median.
 
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