Q about NBME shelf exams

[theunderdog]

pertaining to the NBME shelf exams for years 3 and 4, does the NBME curve the exams at all?

one thing i noticed is that the clinical shelfs (pediatrics, internal medicine, etc.) all have 100 Qs (compared to 120 Qs on pharm and path shelfs).

or is what you get correct out of 100 questions pretty much your raw score?

thanks!

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[masterofmonkeys]

pertaining to the NBME shelf exams for years 3 and 4, does the NBME curve the exams at all?

one thing i noticed is that the clinical shelfs (pediatrics, internal medicine, etc.) all have 100 Qs (compared to 120 Qs on pharm and path shelfs).

or is what you get correct out of 100 questions pretty much your raw score?

thanks!

It wouldn't be very raw if they curved it. I know they don't penalize for guessing (unlike the SAT) so I wolud guess it's just how many you get correct.

 

[Pinkertinkle]

No, its a big mystery. The world may never know.

 

[MrBurns10]

The NBME shelf exams are curved so that a raw of 70 is the 50th percentile. I have no clue beyond that how the raw scores correlate to percentiles, though.

 

[thesauce]

The NBME shelf exams are curved so that a raw of 70 is the 50th percentile. I have no clue beyond that how the raw scores correlate to percentiles, though.

It says on their website that median is 70 with a std dev of 7 to 8. So if you get 80, that would be like 90th percentile or so. It's definately not your raw score.

 

[MrBurns10]

It says on their website that median is 70 with a std dev of 7 to 8. So if you get 80, that would be like 90th percentile or so. It's definately not your raw score.

That's what I meant. If your score says you got a 70, then you got in the 50th percentile. Beyond that I don't know.

 

[Transformers]

That sucks...so a 70 is a 50 and an 80 is a 90 if you by percentiles?!

 

[WaylonS]

That sucks...so a 70 is a 50 and an 80 is a 90 if you by percentiles?!

Yes and no, while NBME says the mean is 70, in reality, it's usually in the mid 70's

 

[Transformers]

I just find it hard to believe that that a difference of 10 questions spans a spectrum from fail (70 aka 30qs wrong and hence 50th percentile) to honors (80 aka >85th percentile) ...can someone clarify this?