Step 1 Score Creep

[sanityonleave]

---

Members do not see this ad.

So there's been some discussion of this topic in the MD/PhD forums, but I haven't seen much here.

Do you guys feel like the Step 1 averages seem to be going up? We have better test prep regimens, schools are better at preparing for the exam, and students are taking it more seriously. Since the NBME is so secretive, there's not much information about how (or whether) they normalize scores, so it's hard to know if they're going to control for an increasing average that way. Thoughts? Are the averages going to continue to go up, or is the NBME going to normalize the data in such a way to push them down (and/or harder questions)?

 

[beeitchness]

Averages are creeping up since the release of Pathoma and rapidly increasing popularity.

 

[shan564]

I don't think it's much of a secret that the averages are going up. Several years ago, the average was somewhere in the 210's.

If you look at NBME's Charting Outcomes document, it generally has an average score every year for people who applied for residencies... which is probably almost all US med students. Based on that document, the average was 224 or 225 (can't remember exactly) last year and 221 for the two years before that. I can't remember specific data before that, but I think it was around 217 in 2006-2007ish.