shelf exam scores

[Casey]

I realize this is a pretty basic question, but I just got my shelf exam score back from my first clinical rotation, Medicine. Our grades were emailed to us as a number (ranges from students I have talked to 72-87). Unfortunately, there was nothing else included in the email to explain the score. Can someone shed some light on exactly what the number means ( for example, is an 87 the 87th percentile?)

Thanks for the help!

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[Scooby Moo]

From various word-of-mouth sources and some classmates who searched for this info last year...

Shelf exam scores are scaled so that everyone taking a particular form of an exam belongs to a population with a mean score of "70" with standard deviation of something like 8. I don't think anyone truly knows what all this translates to as far as percent of questions answered correctly.

 

[mpp]

Ask your school for the scoring sheet that should come with the score as reported by the NBME. The mean 70 with standard deviation 8 is the score from the first administration of the exam in 1994.

There is a table that breaks down the score with percentile ranks depending on which quarter you took medicine in (since people taking medicine later in the year tend to do better than those that take it earlier). For first quarter medicine shelf exam from last year the national mean was 72.6 with a standard deviation of 8.3.

The NBME suggests a minimum score of 60 for passing and a minimum score of 82 for honors, but obviously your clerkship director can choose their own standards.

 

[energy_girl]

I'm still confused.... does 80 correspond to 80th percentile of test-takers or to the total % correct? Our school requires 88% (I would imagine 88% of test takers) to get Honors--does that also mean we should be scoring 88% correct? If so, I'm a loooong way off!

 

[mpp]

Neither.

The score is just a number to compare one test to the next. Nobody knows what % correct corresponds to the score except for the NBME.

But, for last year's Medicine test, a score of 80 corresponds to the 78th percentile across the country for all test takers in 2001-2002 school year. It is the 83rd percentile if you are just comparing it to those that took the test in the first quarter of the school year.