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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