Third year shelf exams have a national mean of 70 with a standard deviation of 8. so, you are 2 SD's above the mean which translates into high 90s% - tile. You are probably like 97% - tile. That is a very good score on the shelf exam. Congrats.
Thanks for the information. The course director basically emailed us the class average, which was a raw score of 75. She didn't give the standard deviation so I wasn't sure how well I did exactly...
I'm not an expert on shelf exams, but the key I think is to read a textbook-- not the big ones, but a medium sized one. For pediatrics, there are several good medium sized textbooks that are written mainly for medical students, such as Rudolph's medium sized book. There is also a good one titled "Pediatrics for Medical Students."
Second, you should work some questions from Pretest.
But the shelf exams, not to minimize the point, are difficult. The questions are much more difficult than the ones I encountered on Step 1, by far.
