Percentile

[VincentAdultman]

I see a lot of talk about percentiles on shelf exams. How do you find that out? Does your school release them with your raw score?

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[2TIM4:7]

I see a lot of talk about percentiles on shelf exams. How do you find that out? Does your school release them with your raw score?

from my administration: the national average for shelf exams is 70 (scaled NOT raw score) with a SD of 8. So with those numbers, you can find out your %iles.

 

[bigfrank]

I see a lot of talk about percentiles on shelf exams. How do you find that out? Does your school release them with your raw score?

I've found that it varies with the time you take the Shelf exam over the course of the year. For example, an 85 on the Medicine Shelf when I took it (early) was around a 95%ile but if you took Medicine Shelf last (late) it was a lower %ile. I can't recall exact numbers.

Your best bet is to ask the person that you get your score from, "Hey, thanks -- can you tell me what percentile the score corresponds to?"

 

[VincentAdultman]

I've found that it varies with the time you take the Shelf exam over the course of the year. For example, an 85 on the Medicine Shelf when I took it (early) was around a 95%ile but if you took Medicine Shelf last (late) it was a lower %ile. I can't recall exact numbers.

Your best bet is to ask the person that you get your score from, "Hey, thanks -- can you tell me what percentile the score corresponds to?"

Thanks...yeah the cutoffs change over the course of the year since they do release to us the passing score, which has gone up over the year.

 

[loveumms]

Thanks...yeah the cutoffs change over the course of the year since they do release to us the passing score, which has gone up over the year.

I was informed that my schools OB/GYN department uses the raw score to compute the grade - great

 

[bulldog]

i think the percentile varies for each raw score (the two digit score some people may get back) depending on the test.

Here's what I've remember:
For neuro, I think the national raw score mean was 72 for our group. course director didn't give the SD or percentile.

for psych, i think it's the only rotation where a high raw score gives u a really crappy percentile. i heard the national raw score for psych was something like an 82. if anyone has different info, please post. i'm interested in this as well.

for ob, i think i read somewhere the high 80's raw score was 99%tile...

didn't get the mean for peds, didn't even get my surgery score back....

 

[Reaganite]

i think the percentile varies for each raw score (the two digit score some people may get back) depending on the test.

Here's what I've remember:
For neuro, I think the national raw score mean was 72 for our group. course director didn't give the SD or percentile.

for psych, i think it's the only rotation where a high raw score gives u a really crappy percentile. i heard the national raw score for psych was something like an 82. if anyone has different info, please post. i'm interested in this as well.

for ob, i think i read somewhere the high 80's raw score was 99%tile...

didn't get the mean for peds, didn't even get my surgery score back....

Not taking into account corrections for the date in which the test was taken:

For OB, a score of 88 or higher was 99th percentile.
For surgery, upper 80s corresponded to 99th percentile.
For psych and IM, you had to score in the 90s to get 99th percentile.
For Neuro, curve was very generous, although I don't know the details.
For Peds, I have no idea; I just know it was the easiest shelf I ever took!

 

[bulldog]

Not taking into account corrections for the date in which the test was taken:

For OB, a score of 88 or higher was 99th percentile.
For surgery, upper 80s corresponded to 99th percentile.
For psych and IM, you had to score in the 90s to get 99th percentile.
For Neuro, curve was very generous, although I don't know the details.
For Peds, I have no idea; I just know it was the easiest shelf I ever took!

cool. interesting info. for me, interesting thing about pscyh was that i thought it was one of the harder shelfs...harder than neuro...but i ended up doing much better than neuro. i thought peds was relatively easy but didn't do so hot and surgery, it was brutal..... oh well, let the randomness countinue...

 

[zeloc]

Not taking into account corrections for the date in which the test was taken:

For OB, a score of 88 or higher was 99th percentile.
For surgery, upper 80s corresponded to 99th percentile.
For psych and IM, you had to score in the 90s to get 99th percentile.
For Neuro, curve was very generous, although I don't know the details.
For Peds, I have no idea; I just know it was the easiest shelf I ever took!

How is this possible? I thought all shelf examinations have a mean of 70 and a standard deviation of 8. Doesn't this mean that 87 or above on any shelf exam would be the top 2 1/2%, since 95% of students fall within 2 standard deviations of the mean?