Official NBME details from AAOMS

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I do hope the actual mean and SD comes out today. This mess in its entirety was brought on from a single poster WITHOUT any validated information.

-Why would someone recommend contacting AAOMS prior to having any factual information?

-Secondly, if some kind of unethical behavior took place for the examination then those individuals should self report. For example if a second testing was offered somebody who scores in the top 5% of MEDCIAL STUDENTS would reliably repeat their performance. The first testing mean in September had the top 5% of dental students scoring LESS than the MEAN for medical students. Therefore, if the 14 from Harvard and the 4 from an anonymous state school that people have mentioned would mean 7% of the takers (230) scored in alignment with the top tier medical students. This would be statistically impossible based on the last decade of the 20K/year medical students which take Step I for dental students to have a higher percentage of people in this scoring bracket.

- I am rambling but until we see real numbers the posters who refuse to put any validated information are just trying to create controversy.

I don't doubt that these people could have cheated. However, the percentages that you are comparinf don't make any sense. We only have 240ish people and the 12 or so( not even sure if that number is real) from harvard could have easily scored a 240, just like their medical school colleagues (they apparently score 240 + for their average). I think people from there scoring high makes perfect sense, but 4 people from a normal dental school like mine that does not take medical school classes does not make sense. It is not that we are not capable of getting these scores, but just that we don't learn the same stuff (and also have dental classes, unlike many of the medical school based dental schools).

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I do hope the actual mean and SD comes out today. This mess in its entirety was brought on from a single poster WITHOUT any validated information.

-Why would someone recommend contacting AAOMS prior to having any factual information?

-Secondly, if some kind of unethical behavior took place for the examination then those individuals should self report. For example if a second testing was offered somebody who scores in the top 5% of MEDCIAL STUDENTS would reliably repeat their performance. The first testing mean in September had the top 5% of dental students scoring LESS than the MEAN for medical students. Therefore, if the 14 from Harvard and the 4 from an anonymous state school that people have mentioned would mean 7% of the takers (230) scored in alignment with the top tier medical students. This would be statistically impossible based on the last decade of the 20K/year medical students which take Step I for dental students to have a higher percentage of people in this scoring bracket.

- I am rambling but until we see real numbers the posters who refuse to put any validated information are just trying to create controversy.

Dude. The upload date for the cheat sheet was 4/15/13. About 3 weeks before our exam date. You can't fake that upload date. Not sure how many cheated, but the fact that this document exists is pretty damning evidence that the playing field was not level. Curious to see how AAOMS & NBME will react.
 
The NBME is a testing organization that has a pretty big reputation to uphold. If it gets out that they have tests that may be compromised, then the trust students and schools (and specialty programs) put into them may be invalidated. So everyone saying we should call AAMOS, should change gears and call The NBME. They may be more likely than AAMOS to void the scores due to a compromised exam.
 
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The NBME is a testing organization that has a pretty big reputation to uphold. If it gets out that they have tests that may be compromised, then the trust students and schools (and specialty programs) put into them may be invalidated. So everyone saying we should call AAMOS, should change gears and call The NBME. They may be more likely than AAMOS to void the scores due to a compromised exam.

The problem is that the nbme exam we took is not suppose to be a real exam for score purposes. It is only for practice purposes, but AAOMS decided to use it for a score purpose.
 
The problem is that the nbme exam we took is not suppose to be a real exam for score purposes. It is only for practice purposes, but AAOMS decided to use it for a score purpose.

But either way, it is an /accurate/ score predictor. If people aren't able to use it as such, and can study old remembered questions to achieve a high score, what does the NBME have to offer that Kaplan or uworld can't for a lower price? They want to uphold their standards of administering accurate predictions of USMLE exams.
 
To all the May 4th Takers. Remember this one?

232. Knockout mouse has a shorter bone than wild-type mouse, why?

I think it might have been in Block 3. I remember pondering over this question for 5 minutes.

Document says answer is Calcineurin
 
To all the May 4th Takers. Remember this one?

232. Knockout mouse has a shorter bone than wild-type mouse, why?

I think it might have been in Block 3. I remember pondering over this question for 5 minutes.

Document says answer is Calcineurin

bro,

don't make this worse by posting remembered questions. please.
 
I don't doubt that these people could have cheated. However, the percentages that you are comparinf don't make any sense. We only have 240ish people and the 12 or so( not even sure if that number is real) from harvard could have easily scored a 240, just like their medical school colleagues (they apparently score 240 + for their average). I think people from there scoring high makes perfect sense, but 4 people from a normal dental school like mine that does not take medical school classes does not make sense. It is not that we are not capable of getting these scores, but just that we don't learn the same stuff (and also have dental classes, unlike many of the medical school based dental schools).

Dont believe all the crazy talk here. Only 11 kids from Harvard even took the test, and I know of 5 who didn't get a 240. The other 6 I have no idea, but most likely 4 or 5 did. For a school with a med school curriculum its not that crazy. I dont know if any of them got a 90, but if some did it was definitely less than 4.
 
Thank you for taking the time to report your concerns regarding the recent AAOMS exam administration. The NBME takes issues of security very seriously and is actively reviewing the material provided. We welcome any additional information you wish to provide.

Sincerely,

Helen T. Moser

Manager, Test Administration

Medical School Services

National Board of Medical Examiners

3750 Market Street

Philadelphia, PA 19104-3102

Phone: 215-590-9718

Fax: 215-590-9456

Email: [email protected]


I've sent her a copy of the link. And attached the document in PDF form.
Shoot her an email guys. More the merrier. Don't sit by and let this happen, lets do the right thing. Even if only one person benefited. That's one too many.
 
wow, did you email the NBME directly?

Surprising that AAOMS has yet to say anything

Yea. I think like previous posters said. The NBME may be more likely to void all scores moreso than the AAOMS. They have a reputation to uphold. I don't know if anything is going to come of this, but I have to try.

There's an old saying, "Evil Prevails When Good Men Do Nothing"
 
Yea. I think like previous posters said. The NBME may be more likely to void all scores moreso than the AAOMS. They have a reputation to uphold. I don't know if anything is going to come of this, but I have to try.

There's an old saying, "Evil Prevails When Good Men Do Nothing"

well, we still don't know if there are reallllly any statistical irregularities as a result of this (though i agree that this doc should have never existed)

i just dont want to take this again :(
 
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Yea. I think like previous posters said. The NBME may be more likely to void all scores moreso than the AAOMS. They have a reputation to uphold. I don't know if anything is going to come of this, but I have to try.

There's an old saying, "Evil Prevails When Good Men Do Nothing"

I will gladly email upon evidence of unethical behavior. We have yet to see the score breakdown from our testing period. Sure this document was loaded up in mid-April, does that mean any prospective test taker actually saw the document?

Until we see actual numbers this is pure speculation that some people actually saw the information.

For those of us applying this cycle this has become a real nightmare. Do we need to take it again, pay for more time on the question banks, how to relate our scores, etc....
 
Thank you for taking the time to report your concerns regarding the recent AAOMS exam administration. The NBME takes issues of security very seriously and is actively reviewing the material provided. We welcome any additional information you wish to provide.

Sincerely,

Helen T. Moser

Manager, Test Administration

Medical School Services

National Board of Medical Examiners

3750 Market Street

Philadelphia, PA 19104-3102

Phone: 215-590-9718

Fax: 215-590-9456

Email: [email protected]


I've sent her a copy of the link. And attached the document in PDF form.
Shoot her an email guys. More the merrier. Don't sit by and let this happen, lets do the right thing. Even if only one person benefited. That's one too many.
:thumbup:
 
I will gladly email upon evidence of unethical behavior. We have yet to see the score breakdown from our testing period. Sure this document was loaded up in mid-April, does that mean any prospective test taker actually saw the document?

Until we see actual numbers this is pure speculation that some people actually saw the information.

For those of us applying this cycle this has become a real nightmare. Do we need to take it again, pay for more time on the question banks, how to relate our scores, etc....

I understand your point of view and agree that part of it is pure speculation without a confirmed number from AAOMS. And I personally do not want to retake this exam.
What bothers me though is the mere fact that basically the entre exam with the answers was 'released' before the actual exam and was available on the web to mass number of people.
I think the fact that 'the exam' was availble before the official test date is enough to invalidate any standardized test. I think the issue at stake here is not how many people had unfair advantage nor did it actually impact the statistics in a significant way but the principle of a standardized test was violated regardless of the intention of any parties involved. Even if the numbers come out and either the mean happens to be significantly higher than that of September exam or we see a lot more people who have high scores compared to September exam, can we use it as 'evidenc of unethical behavior'? I don't think so. Although very suspicious but not a cold 'evidence' simply because it is 'possible' that many people just did better than those in September no matter how statistically unlikely it may seem. Can we say the reverse is true when the mean comes out to be comparable to that of September exam that no one benefited from the document? No, because same argument applies here and although I agree it is likely to be significantly higher if people had unfair advantage but it is also 'possible' even with a number of people with unfair advantage the mean and number of people with high scores may closely resemble that of September just because the other significant number of people might have performed sub par. What I'm saying is the numbers from AAOMS(whatever it may suggest) does not change the fact the exam was available on the web and even if there's a possiblity of one person having unfair advantage(which was as in this case) the test has lost its ability to fairly measure what it wants to measure thus invalid in principle.
 
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Dude. The upload date for the cheat sheet was 4/15/13. About 3 weeks before our exam date. You can't fake that upload date. Not sure how many cheated, but the fact that this document exists is pretty damning evidence that the playing field was not level. Curious to see how AAOMS & NBME will react.

+1. The fact that this document exists completely warranted the attention this matter is getting. We need this attention to get things done. The NBME has made it clear that they are lazy f*'s - all the BS about taking security and testing anomalies seriously could be a bunch of lies. They obviously had no problems releasing the 90's without taking a moment and saying... hey maybe we should look into this. I don't know why the USMLE takes weeks to receive scores but I assume it's to verify legitimacy and ensure no cheating indicators etc... bringing this up will FORCE THE NBME TO DO THEIR JOB AND INVESTIGATE THIS ISSUE AND STAND BEHIND THEIR EXAMINATION/SCORES SO THAT FUTURE PD's CAN BE CONFIDENT IN THIS EXAM AS AN INDICATOR OF APPLICANTS.. I don't know why you are so against the attention this is receiving - it will FORCE THE NBME TO AT LEAST DEAL WITH THE FACT THAT THE DOCUMENT EXISTS WITH AN OFFICIAL STATEMENT ABOUT THE MAY EXAM AND ALSO FORCE THEM TO PROVIDE A REASON TO BELIEVE IN THEM FOR FUTURE EXAMS FOR OMFS APPLICANTS... INSTEAD OF JUST REPORTING THE SCORES AND COLLECTING THEIR FEES.


Toronto - I don't know if you happen to have done exceedingly well but the fact that you don't seem to realize this or be bothered by this makes me think you are being too optimistic. I know you're worried but still.. there's a bigger issue at hand here. If not for this exam then for the legitimacy of the next exam in Sept.

I've already started downloading as many remembered exams as I can find online for the test in Sept and charged back my UWORLD subscription... [/end sarcasm]

Go ahead and google "NBME CBSE remembered questions" ... what is the 2nd top result? What would the top result have been had this thread not been made (i.e. a week before the May test...)

The problem is that the nbme exam we took is not suppose to be a real exam for score purposes. It is only for practice purposes, but AAOMS decided to use it for a score purpose.

I am sure the AAOMS told NBME what they planned to use the exam for when they wrote up the deal to get this set up... That's not an excuse AT ALL. First off NBME is being TRUSTED to provide an exam that is fair and effective and HAS NOT BEEN COMPROMISED. If anything they make enough money to have one guy searching the internet for this kind of stuff and get it taken down. They make such a big deal of testing policies but that's only half the battle.

FINDING THIS DOCUMENT WAS NOT HARD AT ALL - ANYONE WHO HAS TAKEN NBDE PROBABLY SEARCHED FOR THE SAME THING (ok not everyone) AND IF YOU JUST APPLY THAT PREVIOUSLY SUCCESSFUL STRATEGY AND REPLACE NBDE WTH NBME OR CBSE THEN YOU WERE SET FOR THE MAY EXAM.

But either way, it is an /accurate/ score predictor. If people aren't able to use it as such, and can study old remembered questions to achieve a high score, what does the NBME have to offer that Kaplan or uworld can't for a lower price? They want to uphold their standards of administering accurate predictions of USMLE exams.

+1. The reputation of NBME is really at stake here. Whether or not you want to believe it's as serious as that is up to you but if you make your living on being an accurate and reliable test writer then things like this matter A LOT. Yeah I know there isn't much competition at the moment to really affect the NBME right now but as their reputation degrades then institutions etc. will start having to re-evaluate their contracts with NBME if they can't provide a fair product.

Thank you for taking the time to report your concerns regarding the recent AAOMS exam administration. The NBME takes issues of security very seriously and is actively reviewing the material provided. We welcome any additional information you wish to provide.

Sincerely,

Helen T. Moser

Manager, Test Administration

Medical School Services

National Board of Medical Examiners

3750 Market Street

Philadelphia, PA 19104-3102

Phone: 215-590-9718

Fax: 215-590-9456

Email: [email protected]


I've sent her a copy of the link. And attached the document in PDF form.
Shoot her an email guys. More the merrier. Don't sit by and let this happen, lets do the right thing. Even if only one person benefited. That's one too many.

Can you ask her if she plans to provide an official statement eventually - I think someone OFFICIAL is what we are all dying for. But don't get me wrong - POSTING THIS WAS IN NO WAY OUT OF LINE AND IF YOU THINK THAT CREATING "DRAMA" (ATTENTION) TO THIS MATTER IS WRONG THEN YOU ARE EITHER TRYING TO HIDE SOMETHING, OKAY WITH PEOPLE WALKING ALL OVER YOU IN LIFE, NOT SEEING THE BIG PICTURE (SELFISH) THAT IT IS NOT JUST THIS EXAM (MAY) THAT IS REALLY AFFECTED BY THIS WHOLE INCIDENT, OR PLAIN NIEVE. SURE THEY MAY NOT DO ANYTHING THIS CYCLE - EVERYONE IS LAZY - BUT IF GETTING OMFS ENDS UP BEING ALL ABOUT HOW WELL YOU CAN BEAT THE SYSTEM THEN ALL THAT HARD WORK YOU PUT IN WILL GET YOU NOWHERE COMPARED TO LAZY F*'s WHO ALWAYS AIM TO BEAT THE SYSTEM AND CUT CORNERS AND THOSE WHO HAPPENS TO HAVE THE BEST INTERNET SKILLS.

VOIDING THIS TEST IS SIMPLY THE EASY WAY OUT AND I DO HOPE THEY DON'T CHOOSE TO DO THAT. THE RIGHT THING TO DO IS PROPERLY INVESTIGATE AND VOID INDIVIDUAL SCORES BECAUSE THESE INDIVIDUALS VIOLATED ETHICS BY NOT REPORTING THIS ON THEIR OWN AND JUST TOOK THIER UN-EARNED SCORE AND KEPT QUIET. THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO HEAR THE NBME PLANS TO DO. 95's?97's? 98's? REALLY? THIS ISNT HARD. SURE A FEW MIGHT SLIP THROUGH FROM PEOPLE WHO SUCK AT MEMORIZING BUT FOR THIS EXAM AND THE LOGISTICS INVOLVED IN VOIDING AND RE-ADMINISTERING - I DON'T THINK THE IDEAL SOLUTION IS GOING TO WORK
 
Wow. Very sad that this has happened. I would think that all scores will be invalidated regardless of the mean this time around versus the September exam. As mentioned, the exam was compromised. I still don't understand how this NBME is exactly, word for word, the same as a previous exam? That's crazy. I understand that most med students probably treat the NBME as a joke but it has now become instrumental in the field of OMS and extremely important to dental students looking at a possible future in the field.

Perhaps this will instead make the USMLE, as mentioned before, a more reliable exam. I have yet to take the NBME but I would imagine it is rather comparable to the USMLE. I feel so sorry for those of you who took the exam and will likely need to re-take it. I would hope that it will be free of charge and unfortunately I doubt further arrangements would be made to compensate you all for your time and probably money spent on UWorld.
 
There doesn't seem to be any easy solution to this. This is going to be a s-show through and through. With applications coming up and people already sacrificing lots of time from clinic for the May exam a re-test would be really hard on us.. I for one don't know if I could do it again. I might not graduate. That and the fact that we now have to go through the stresses of this exam all over again.. not to mention the costs of renewing resources. Oh man.. I have no doubt that a re-test would be free but there is just so much going on right now... I really don't know what to do. I am tempted to agree that I would be okay with letting some "cheaters" slip by and just have the NBME invalidate the obvious outlier scores?.. I know some of you may hate me for this and this is highly unlikely but maybe force anyone with 90+ to take another exam and say they must score within like 10 points to keep their score? Unlikely and not very fair to people who didn't cheat.
 
There doesn't seem to be any easy solution to this. This is going to be a s-show through and through. With applications coming up and people already sacrificing lots of time from clinic for the May exam a re-test would be really hard on us.. I for one don't know if I could do it again. I might not graduate. That and the fact that we now have to go through the stresses of this exam all over again.. not to mention the costs of renewing resources. Oh man.. I have no doubt that a re-test would be free but there is just so much going on right now... I really don't know what to do. I am tempted to agree that I would be okay with letting some "cheaters" slip by and just have the NBME invalidate the obvious outlier scores?.. I know some of you may hate me for this and this is highly unlikely but maybe force anyone with 90+ to take another exam and say they must score within like 10 points to keep their score? Unlikely and not very fair to people who didn't cheat.

I feel for you, I really do. This is going to be a tough one. Anyone know of other publicized compromised exam such as this and what was done?
 
Stats from May exam just released:


The CBSE scores are scaled to have a mean of 70, a range of approximately 45 to 95, and a standard deviation of 8. The corresponding statistics for the OMS applicants who participated in the May 2013 exam is a mean of 59, range of 28 to 92, and a standard deviation of 11.6. The AAOMS has developed a score interpretation guide to assist you in understanding your examination score.
 
Welp, we have our answer now. Looks like there was no real effect of cheating.
 
Welp, we have our answer now. Looks like there was no real effect of cheating.

What a relief. The results look good to me, a bit of an increase in the mean as 50% took the exam in the fall.

I can now start to work on my application and am pissed that I renewed my UWorld account this weekend as it was expiring Saturday.

Thanks for creating all the hype folks.
 
peopleshouldkno, you got some 'splainin to do

tumblr_m4syx5lpRP1qbgyx2o1_500.gif
 
Well it looks like according to AAOMS that a 65 is still the magic number...I hope the exam is changed for September but at least that number didn't change.
 
Well it looks like according to AAOMS that a 65 is still the magic number...I hope the exam is changed for September but at least that number didn't change.

How many people took the test this time around? It was around 300 or 400 right?
Does anyone know how to make sense of where your rank might be like if you were in the 70's?
 
How many people took the test this time around? It was around 300 or 400 right?
Does anyone know how to make sense of where your rank might be like if you were in the 70's?

You can use the mean and std deviation to figure where you would rank.

A mean of 59 and std dev of around 12 would mean a score of 71 would put you in the ballpark of 85 percentile.
 
You can use the mean and std deviation to figure where you would rank.

A mean of 59 and std dev of around 12 would mean a score of 71 would put you in the ballpark of 85 percentile.
But do we know how many people took the test? I was hoping to brag to my mom when she got back from work. Lol
 
We don't know, but tell her you got around the 90th percentile (depending on how high into the 70's you got). Congratulations!
 
Can someone post the score interpretation guide from this exam? Thanks in advance!
 
Well that hype was interesting but the large bold black font hurt my eyes...
 
Is everyone taking this at face value? I still feel a little weary of things..

Why didn't she at least discuss everything that's going on especially since they definitely know people are concerned. She also did not provide any reassurance that future exams won't be compromised now that the it's clear that cheating is indeed possible.

Also why did it take them so long to release numbers that were already calculated the night we took the exam?

I know it's not technically cheating to have seen that document but everyone worrying about people memorizing the exam might be a little too extreme. If it were me I would have skimmed the document and that may have netted maybe 10-15 questions by recognition? I guess that's equal to about maybe 8-12 points on the NBME - perhaps thats the reason for the increased mean? If this document was seen (it is a pretty easy find on google) then I would expect a lot of 60's and 70's inflated to 80's and maybe 90's the way that the scale works. I wouldn't really expect 50 or whatever 90+ scores but I would expect a lot of 80's and this is not really clear from the stats she provided.

Is anyone else thinking the same thing or am I just over-thinking. I really want to know what they were doing this whole time - I hope they were looking for scoring anomalies and stuff but they should at least acknowledge it and be more transparent.

I think whoever suggested a rough histogram or some type of statistics of scores above 80 and above 90 or something is on the right track - it would really help settle at least my discomfort with this whole predicament.

tl;dr - I am not happy that there was absolutely no mention of the exam being compromised and no effort to assure us that future exams won't be about finding old questions. And "cheating" most likely resulted in score inflation by ~10 points instead of everyone getting 90's IMO.
 
Is everyone taking this at face value? I still feel a little weary of things..

Why didn't she at least discuss everything that's going on especially since they definitely know people are concerned. She also did not provide any reassurance that future exams won't be compromised now that the it's clear that cheating is indeed possible.

Also why did it take them so long to release numbers that were already calculated the night we took the exam?

I know it's not technically cheating to have seen that document but everyone worrying about people memorizing the exam might be a little too extreme. If it were me I would have skimmed the document and that may have netted maybe 10-15 questions by recognition? I guess that's equal to about maybe 8-12 points on the NBME - perhaps thats the reason for the increased mean? If this document was seen (it is a pretty easy find on google) then I would expect a lot of 60's and 70's inflated to 80's and maybe 90's the way that the scale works. I wouldn't really expect 50 or whatever 90+ scores but I would expect a lot of 80's and this is not really clear from the stats she provided.

Is anyone else thinking the same thing or am I just over-thinking. I really want to know what they were doing this whole time - I hope they were looking for scoring anomalies and stuff but they should at least acknowledge it and be more transparent.

I think whoever suggested a rough histogram or some type of statistics of scores above 80 and above 90 or something is on the right track - it would really help settle at least my discomfort with this whole predicament.

tl;dr - I am not happy that there was absolutely no mention of the exam being compromised and no effort to assure us that future exams won't be about finding old questions. And "cheating" most likely resulted in score inflation by ~10 points instead of everyone getting 90's IMO.

You are not thinking.

Many of the people who didn't score as well as they wanted retook the test in May, which explains the increase in the score. Spaceman is a perfect example of this, as he retook the exam and went up by 5 points.

Also, looking at that document WOULD have been cheating. It is just that no one would have caught you viewing that doc.

However, I agree that AAOMS should have at least mentioned that no irregularities were seen.
 
One would expect an increase but at the same time this is not really true. About 50% of the test takes are brand new and since first years are probably trying this now they COULD be really diluting the scores. Look at that 28. That guy should give up on OMFS or prepare for a GPR if he is a 2nd or 3rd year (just kidding). We don't know exactly how many "i don't know what i'm doing but I wanna do OMFS so i should see what i'm getting into" scores there are which is why a more detailed distribution would help.

In my class many re-takers did not improve much if any (some went down). When you're at 70 many of us though it wouldn't be too hard to grab like 5-10 points with 2 months additional studying on top of what we knew for the Sept exam but we were put in our place when scores came out. This is probably why the medical distribution puts a 70 at like 75 percentile and a 80 at 94 percentile... deceptively hard to break past 70 for us without a medical school background or integrated curriculum

Second years did not take this test (they are planning for Sept) but I know of a handful of first years who did. Maybe this is not typical of the other schools but this is how the May exam turned out for us.
 
But do we know how many people took the test? I was hoping to brag to my mom when she got back from work. Lol

Alx,

- There were 230 peopled signed up for the May test, 55% of those took it last September.

I had posted this long ago after I contacted AAOMS following the deadline for the exam registration.
 
You are not thinking.

Many of the people who didn't score as well as they wanted retook the test in May, which explains the increase in the score. Spaceman is a perfect example of this, as he retook the exam and went up by 5 points.

Also, looking at that document WOULD have been cheating. It is just that no one would have caught you viewing that doc.

However, I agree that AAOMS should have at least mentioned that no irregularities were seen.

As I have mentioned earlier, looking at only mean, range, and SD does not tell you anything about 'cheating' if you wanna call it that. what if one person 'cheated' and got 80 instead of 60, would that make huge difference in mean? what if two people who cheated and got 70 instead of 50 or 60. what if a number of people who got 70 instead of 50 they deserve? would that increase the mean by 5? hell yeah... There are so many permutaions like these that are possible
Also there are too many variables and unknowns as someone pointed out to assume just because 55% retook the exam the mean should go up.
Bottom line is you Do NOT Know whether or not people cheated based just on the statsitics out to us. Even if a number of people cheated they may blend in a slightly increased mean if the numbers are a minority. Moreover, I am unhappy at even one cheating and finding his/her way into the OMFS residency when he/she does not deserve because it would mean one deserving applicant may not match and that's not fair.
p.s. I hate using cheating in this case because honestly we do not know the intention of who benefited; they may have stumbled on the document and 'studied it' and got lucky as they had no way of knowing this may test would be exaclty the same as the document but if you wanna call it cheating than I guess it's cheating. I want a better explanation from AAOMS than just releasing mean,range, and SD as if nothing happened. This is serious issue in my opinion and could affect future applicants in a tremendous way and AAOMS has to deal with it accordingly as it's reputation is at stake. It's unfortunate but it has happened and we have to deal with it to fix it.
 
You are not thinking.

Many of the people who didn't score as well as they wanted retook the test in May, which explains the increase in the score. Spaceman is a perfect example of this, as he retook the exam and went up by 5 points.


Yep. mine went up significantly as well.

more people taking + the general pool knowing better how to study = higher scores for sure.

but it wasnt by much the mean only changed by 5 points.
 
This is serious issue in my opinion and could affect future applicants in a tremendous way and AAOMS has to deal with it accordingly as it's reputation is at stake. It's unfortunate but it has happened and we have to deal with it to fix it.

:thumbup:
 
I know that there were several 1st year students that took the test in Sept from my school (7 1st years), so I am sure that the number was similar at other schools last time and this time. I doubt this played much into the average. However, the students from my class all did better (>5 points) from their previous exam, except one person who scores 2 points below (he was retaking with a 65 score).
 
About 50% of the test takes are brand new and since first years are probably trying this now they COULD be really diluting the scores.

We don't know exactly how many "i don't know what i'm doing but I wanna do OMFS so i should see what i'm getting into" scores there are which is why a more detailed distribution would help.

This.

Cheating in dental school, on the NBDE, and on the CBSE would be almost extinct if the test makers did their jobs --> which is to MAKE tests. How hard is to make another 184 questions about anything related to the human body? Ridiculous.

It's a student's ethical responsibility to not seek such information. It is also the test makers ethical responsibility to do their job. I feel like my $175 registration fee is mostly subsidizing the next AAOMS meeting in Honolulu. Can I at least get a free lei?
 
:thumbup:
This.

Cheating in dental school, on the NBDE, and on the CBSE would be almost extinct if the test makers did their jobs --> which is to MAKE tests. How hard is to make another 184 questions about anything related to the human body? Ridiculous.

It's a student's ethical responsibility to not seek such information. It is also the test makers ethical responsibility to do their job. I feel like my $175 registration fee is mostly subsidizing the next AAOMS meeting in Honolulu. Can I at least get a free lei?

http://edge.studentdoctor.net/images/smilies/thumbup.gif
totally agree
 
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Even if 75$ of the 100$ goes to prometric and AAOMS that's like 125$ a question... I'm sure you can find someone out there willing to write a single question for 100 bucks...
 
Need some advice...

So I got a 69 on the May exam and am trying to decide whether or not to take it again. I know its a good score and it'll most likely be good enough to get me in, the general pattern has been that people taking it a second time see a solid 5-10 point increase in their score. I know if I put in about a months worth of studying I could bump up to around a 75. Is it worth it? Am I a masochist?

I'm just finishing up 2nd year btw.
 
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