Reading a lot of posts on SDN I've read about students getting shelf exam scores in the teens, 20's, 30's how does that happen? Are the shelf exams that hard? How bad is the time restraint on the exams? I thought that at most schools you are required to pass the shelf exams in order to pass the rotation irregardless of what you get on the other parts of the rotation. I'm kind of worried because these people seem to go through weeks of a rotation without trouble and then get a score like that... is that so uncommon?I'm worried because I don't want to get a score in that range but need some advice so that I don't end up in that situation.
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The scores that you mentioned in your post in the "teens" are for "percentile" scores. The raw scores that those percentiles correspond to vary depending on the shelf in question (IM vs peds) and *when* you took the shelf (1st versus 4th quarter). Example, a raw score of 70 (out of a total possible of 100) in IM is a percentile score of 40 in the 1st quarter and 31 in the 4th quarter. So even though you may have "passed" the IM shelf (based on a raw score of 70 (and this varies by medical school)) you are still in the "lower" percentile. Raw score of 60 for IM puts you in the 6th percentile for the 1st quarter and the 4th percentile if you took in the 4th quarter.
