Step1 240 vs 250

[chef]

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just curious, how much diff is there bet 240 and 250? approx how many more qs do u have to get right for the additional 10 points? and where would each score rank in 2 digit percentile? is 240 or 250 a matter of 2 or 3 lucky guesses?

 

[florisio]

Most recently, I believe the national average was 217 with a SD of 24. ASSUME the bell shaped distribution and you can calculate that a 240 is the 83rd percentile and a 250 is the 92nd percentile. This is roughly a 9% difference (more exactly, 8.5%), which given that nearly 16,000 students take the exam in a given year, correlates with a difference of nearly 1,360 takers. This is undoubtedly more than 2 or 3 lucky guesses. My guess would be nearly 20 or 30 questions, but really there is no way to answer that question reliably.

-F

 

[jed2023]

No one REALLY knows the true correlation between the 3 digit score and the number of questions you get correct because the NBME just refuses to release this information. There is, however, a lot of speculation out there. I guess I'll add my bit.
Everyone knows that there are 350 total questions. This is simply a fact. It is also a fact, or at least most of the prep companies believe, that some questions are not counted (either because they are poorly written or "experimental," in the sense that they are used for calibration for future test takers.) Kaplan estimates that this pool of questions may be around 50 questions per exam, although this is probably just a rough guess.
So, that leaves 300 questions. It is possible that the relation between the 3 digit score and the number of questions is 1 to 1. The highest step 1 score I have ever heard reported, by the way, was 288, which seems to support this conjecture. If this is the case, then the difference between 240 and 250 would be 10 questions out of 300, or 3.33%.