USMLE Step 1 and 2 scores

[mandownunder]

Being an old guy, we had National Board Scores that were like SAt scores - 800 maximum, 600 pretty good and 700 top notch. Will someone explain to me the correlation with USMLE scores, what is considered good or bad and what topics are included?
Thanks

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[fourthyear]

My numbers might not be perfect, but will give you a good estimate:

Passing score varies from year to year, but I think it's around 180. US grads have about a 95% pass rate overall.
Average for US grads is around 210.
Above 230 is really good - probably good enough to get you interviews at the more comptetive programs assuming the rest of the application is equally impressive.

There is also a 2-digit score, which I don't think is too useful since it doesn't correlate to a percentile and most programs seem to go by the three-digit score anyway.

 

[mandownunder]

Thanks for the explanation.

 

[Apollyon]

The pass rate for USMG's is actually going down. For 2001, overall, the pass rate for Step I was 88% (91% for first time takers, and 58% for second or more - which makes it like divorce - if you fail the first time, you're more likely to fail the second, and even more so the third, and on, and on...). It gets better for Steps II and III.

http://www.usmle.org/news/perfdata.htm

The data is a little cluttered, but look at it for a while, and it will sort out.

 

[shaft]

Step 2 this year had a mean (or median) of something like 216 (for US first time takers I think) with a standard deviation of 23. So 239 would be 68th %ile and 262 is 95th %ile. (sorry maybe some younger studs haven't taken biostats yet) Most competitive programs likely have cutoffs of some sort.
Step 1 has a similar breakdown I think and few (if any) programs require you to have taken step 2 before applying (although you might as well because I think it is pretty easy to do A LOT better. )
Some states require a two digit number to get a license and there is some sort of conversion factor.

 

[mhdousa]

Shaft,

As a younger stud who has taken biostats, I noticed your interpretation of
SD is wrong. 68% of people will be within one SD of the mean so 32% of people will be outside of one SD. 16% (half of 32%) will have scores higher than one SD and 16% will have scores lower than one SD. Therefore a 239 on step II would be 84th percentile.

-M

 

[shaft]

you're right I guess that is why I was not a mathematician. Suffice it to say that 239 is pretty good and you end up forgetting biostatistics pretty quickly.

 

[southerndoc]

BTW, I posted a percentile breakdown based on Z tables last year. Do a search for z tables if you want to figure out where you stand (statistically).

Keep in mind that it's an estimate only.