Surgery Shelf Percentiles

[neuroticdreamer]

Hi peeps,
So I just did my surgery shelf, and found it fairly challenging. There were a good 25-30% of the questions I found challenging. I was able to reason through some of the challenging ones, but I know of 9 questions of the challenging ones already that I got wrong. My school's criterion for honors is at least 85th percentile on the shelf, so I am genuinely nervous, as I want to go into surgery, and so a lot is lying on the line here.

What does 85th percentile equates to in terms of % correct? Also, for those who did well on the shelf, how did you feel coming out of the exam?

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[FindersFee5]

This says 85th percentile is around 80 - 83. It's not completely accurate, but it has been pretty consistent with my shelf grades thus far this year.

 

[longhaul3]

I remember the surgery shelf being pretty hard. I think the numerical score for 85th percentile is around 80, depending on the time of year.

Good luck, try not to beat yourself up if you don't make honors—you can still match into any surgical specialty as long as you make the next-highest grade.

 

[longhaul3]

Update: so I scored 74 (48th percentile). It’s enough to get High Pass, but not enough to make the Honors cutoff. I’m really disappointed, because I wanted to go into a competitive surgical subspecialty.

Sorry you didn't make the cutoff. Being disappointed is understandable, but unless you're a DO the HP is really not that big of a deal. Don't talk yourself out of it until you've talked to your advisors in your departments of interest.

 

[Frogger27]

I feel you OP, I got ~90th percentile on the surgery shelf but got still got an HP because of one douche grader. It happens third year, don’t let it knock you off from chasing your goals

 

[kopftonmd]

Also took the recent surgery shelf and... struggled. It happens. Shake it off, grind for the rest of your clerkships and your sub-I. Take it as a growth experience and move forward; that's all you can do right now. Wishing you the best going forward.

 

[efle]

I also searched far and wide for percentile tables on subject-specific shelves. Never found any. Just have to assume the distribution is similar to the overall sample given here:

https://www.nbme.org/sites/default/files/2020-01/Clinical%20Score%20Report.pdf#page=5

So for you it would be 74 = 37th-47th percentile depending on when it was taken, sounds like that's spot on.

 

[kb1900]

I also searched far and wide for percentile tables on subject-specific shelves. Never found any. Just have to assume the distribution is similar to the overall sample given here:

https://www.nbme.org/sites/default/files/2020-01/Clinical%20Score%20Report.pdf#page=5

So for you it would be 74 = 37th-47th percentile depending on when it was taken, sounds like that's spot on.

Really? Our school provides us with them for each shelf exam from the year prior. They look exactly like those you linked but with the data filled in

feel free to dm don’t know if this is sensitive or not if it’s not on the web.

 

[efle]

Really? Our school provides us with them for each shelf exam from the year prior. They look exactly like those you linked but with the data filled in

feel free to dm don’t know if this is sensitive or not if it’s not on the web.

They must be circulating something internal, because I've never found anything like that publicly listed. We get to see our percentile next to our scaled score, but nobody has ever shown us the full breakdown for any specific subject exam.

 

[Shirafune]

This was pretty accurate for me and my shelves: https://www.ttuhsc.edu/medicine/documents/policies/SOMOP30.01.A.pdf
I was pretty much always within 3 percentile points of this chart for my given percent correct.