Passing at Your School

[ANCAdoc]

What is the passing level at your school? (Please list your school)

Here at IU, I believe the Indianapolis campus sets around a 70 as a pass whereas at other campuses one must score above a 75 to pass. Doesn't make sense that IU doesnt have a standardized grading scale across the campuses.

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[Law2Doc]

What is the passing level at your school? (Please list your school)

Here at IU, I believe the Indianapolis campus sets around a 70 as a pass whereas at other campuses one must score above a 75 to pass. Doesn't make sense that IU doesnt have a standardized grading scale across the campuses.

At most med schools I've seen a 70 is the minimum passing grade.

 

[boilerbeast]

I'm at the Indianapolis campus and we don't really have it any easier than the rest of the campuses. It varies by the class, but mostly the cutoff is 75 and we have the same NBME requirements and statewide exams. Everyone thinks we're slackers, but it's not the case....lol...and we have the grad students and PT students to fight with for the Honors.

It sucks that you're in Ft. Wayne, I'll give you that, but I'll bet a few phone calls could fix it. I've heard a few instances of campus shuffling over this summer. It's not too late. You're investing a bunch of money and I think you're entitled to be your own advocate. THe worst you could get would be a no.

 

[boilerbeast]

I'm at the Indianapolis campus and we don't really have it any easier than the rest of the campuses. It varies by the class, but mostly the cutoff is 75 and we have the same NBME requirements and statewide exams. Everyone thinks we're slackers, but it's not the case....lol...and we have the grad students and PT students to fight with for the Honors.

It sucks that you're in Ft. Wayne, I'll give you that, but I'll bet a few phone calls could fix it. I've heard a few instances of campus shuffling over this summer. It's not too late. You're investing a bunch of money and I think you're entitled to be your own advocate. THe worst you could get would be a no.

 

[nosugrefneb]

It varies from class to class at Pritzker, but typically we're at 65. I seem to remember there were some classes set at 60 and a few at 80, but 65 was the most common by far.

 

[anamarylee]

For first year, 70%. For second year: 2 standard deviations below the class mean. For third year clerkships: 70%, must pass all components (shelf, in-house exam, OSCE). If you don't pass them all, you have to do remedial work depending on what you failed and get 70% for it no matter the grade (ie if you have to retake the shelf and get 95%, you get 70% in the clerkship grade)

 

[Evil Monkey]

2SDs below the mean is the pass/fail line.

 

[100041]

How does it make sense to do it based on SDs? You could know the material well, get good grades, and still fail... just because you didn't score as high as your classmates. If there are 100 people in your class and everyone else got a 99, you could fail with a 98! Is this implemented for classes where low grades are common?

 

[beefballs]

How does it make sense to do it based on SDs? You could know the material well, get good grades, and still fail... just because you didn't score as high as your classmates. If there are 100 people in your class and everyone else got a 99, you could fail with a 98! Is this implemented for classes where low grades are common?

how often is this gonna be the case?

 

[100041]

how often is this gonna be the case?

Not often, but the point is that a situation could arise where students would be learning the material and doing well on exams and yet fail because of the need to fail someone. If, however, this system is implemented as something of a curve to help cover for students who are doing reasonably well compared to classmates but where a passing grade is really hard to get... well, I could understand it.

 

[CanIMakeIt]

2 SD below mean here but 70 is still passing even if the 2sd below mean is > 70 (to cover hypothetical situations like put forward by grogdamighty).

 

[CCLCMer]

What is the passing level at your school? (Please list your school).

We don't take tests at CCLCM, so there is no passing level here like what you're describing. If you meet the nine competency requirements, you pass.

 

[Evil Monkey]

No one gets near a 98 or 99. Occassionally a few people will break 90. The class inevitably is a bell-shaped distribution. So the -2SDs standard helps to identify poor performers that likely need greater attention. However, the -2SDs line does not always mean fail. If the class does particularly well and the fail line is higher than normal, then the faculty makes the decision about what the fail line is. Typically people in the 0-65 range fail.

 

[100041]

2 SD below mean here but 70 is still passing even if the 2sd below mean is > 70 (to cover hypothetical situations like put forward by grogdamighty).

Thanks... this makes a lot more sense to me.

I wasn't saying that people all get 99s, just that it is possible to drag the failing line up dramatically with an outlier performance from the class. I would consider it just as crazy to pull the failing line up to 72 or 75 for what I think of as artificial reasons.

 

[Bubb Rubb]

pass was 70 during 1st and 2nd year, with rare classes dipping into the 60s if overall performance dictated as such. honors was set really arbitrarily, from 80 to 95 +/- writing a research paper or taking an additional exam (or both).

 

[Shane2150]

For our school, 1st and 2nd year classes each have their own specific passing criteria, usually >70-75%. Third year, passing cut-offs range from 62-70 on the NBME shelf exams.

BTW, does anyone know if the score you receive on an NBME exam is a straight-up reflection of how many questions you answered correctly, or is it scaled/curved in some way? I've heard posters refer to their "percentiles" on the NBME shelf exams.

 

[ANCAdoc]

Shane 2150 - "Third year, passing cut-offs range from 62-70 on the NBME shelf exams."

Your institution must take your 3 digit score from NBME, find out its percentile, and then magically give that a score for your class. The 62-70 you mention cannot be the percentile score because that means they would flunk appx 30-40% of a med student popn. Unfortunately, the NBME does not report how many q's you got right or wrong. Your school ONLY gets the 3 digit score and somehow get its percentile ranking (NMBE likely provides this as well).

The NBME gives very little data about these shelf exams. I bet its because they do not want the secret to get out - that these exams in no way reflects how you will score on STEP 1. I have yet to find any data on intra-student variability for a given shelf nor evidence that shelf scores predict STEP 1 scores.

If you go to the NBME website, they tell you that the score should not be used for assigning grades. Yet, our lovely med schools for some reason want to do this. Very unscientific (to rely on such arbitrary numbers without research data to support the purpose of these exams).