UWorld practice percentile accuracy

[Salt Salt]

I'm in the middle of studying for my first shelf of clinical year and my school has percentile cutoffs for Honors for most clerkship (e.g. You must score above the 50th percentile nationally on the Psych shelf to be eligible for Honors in psych).

The UWorld practice questions offer a percentile for overall performance *compared to other UWorld practice question users*. My question is, how predictive are these scores of the actual exam percentiles? E.g. If someone was scoring 75th percentile on the practice UWorld questions, what would they most likely score in the actual exam, percentile-wise? Trying to get a sense of how I'm doing so I'm not blind-sided when I get my score back.


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[Bobcat18]

Try using the search button...

 

[Salt Salt]

Try using the search button...

I really did look, but couldn't find anything after 10-15 min of searching. I appreciate the reminder though (I definitely try not to be one of those people who are too lazy to search!)


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[jw3600]

I really did look, but couldn't find anything after 10-15 min of searching. I appreciate the reminder though (I definitely try not to be one of those people who are too lazy to search!)


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No, just one of those who are bad at doing so.

 

[Salt Salt]

If you have particular threads that prove me wrong, you're welcome to post them here! Otherwise, why make the effort to complain but not the effort to answer my question?


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[sliceofbread136]

Geez 50th percentile and still possible to get honors is really low

 

[jw3600]

My advice would be to stop thinking in your current manner because it's too hard to predict and not very helpful. Do uworld questions. Read explanations. Supplement with psych first aid if you wish. This should be more than enough.

 

[Salt Salt]

My advice would be to stop thinking in your current manner because it's too hard to predict and not very helpful. Do uworld questions. Read explanations. Supplement with psych first aid if you wish. This should be more than enough.

I don't think it's "too hard to predict." If just a few students who used UWorld for all their Shelves (as almost all students do) weigh in, then we have an approximate answer. If you don't find that a valuable question, that's fine—no need to read this thread further. But I'm genuinely curious to know how to interpret the UWorld results. There's nothing wrong with wanting to assess how you're doing.


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[general admission]

I don't think it's "too hard to predict." If just a few students who used UWorld for all their Shelves (as almost all students do) weigh in, then we have an approximate answer. If you don't find that a valuable question, that's fine—no need to read this thread further. But I'm genuinely curious to know how to interpret the UWorld results. There's nothing wrong with wanting to assess how you're doing.


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You need to keep in mind that shelf performance is not static - ie your peers, to whom you are compared, do increasingly better as the year goes on, so the raw number of questions correct to score highly keeps going up. The same process is happening for the Uworld bank as well (percentile) and the actual Step 2 CK. As a result, it probably isn't worth your time to try and derive anything from your Uworld performance, and instead follow the advice of many other students before you and study/do the right things to do as well as you can on the exam.

Also, 50th percentile for Honoring is extremely low, geez.

 

[Salt Salt]

You need to keep in mind that shelf performance is not static - ie your peers, to whom you are compared, do increasingly better as the year goes on, so the raw number of questions correct to score highly keeps going up. The same process is happening for the Uworld bank as well (percentile) and the actual Step 2 CK. As a result, it probably isn't worth your time to try and derive anything from your Uworld performance, and instead follow the advice of many other students before you and study/do the right things to do as well as you can on the exam.

Also, 50th percentile for Honoring is extremely low, geez.

I understand that shelf performance is not static, but I don't think it varies so much that a few M4s (who have done ALL shelves, and thus observed the changing scores over clinical year) couldn't give me the general impression I'm looking for. So far, no one has actually tried answering my question (it's easier to just tell me to mind my own business and get back to studying).

And 50th percentile doesn't get you Honors, it's (an example of) a prerequisite cutoff that you need to even be eligible for honors. My school bases almost all grading (85-95%, depending on the clerkship) on real-life clinical performance.

 

[Jabbed]

I understand that shelf performance is not static, but I don't think it varies so much that a few M4s (who have done ALL shelves, and thus observed the changing scores over clinical year) couldn't give me the general impression I'm looking for. So far, no one has actually tried answering my question (it's easier to just tell me to mind my own business and get back to studying).

And 50th percentile doesn't get you Honors, it's (an example of) a prerequisite cutoff that you need to even be eligible for honors. My school bases almost all grading (85-95%, depending on the clerkship) on real-life clinical performance.

It's still really low. Most programs have a similar structure where Honors is obtained by meeting several requisites (Shelf > 75%, clinical evals > 88, blah blah). Functionally though, the shelf score ends up being the limiting factor for most places as scoring over the 75th percentile is actually pretty tough to do against a pool of US medical students.

Anyways, to your question. The consensus has always been that UWorld should be used for learning and not assessment. If you're pulling 75%+ regularly on random sets you can take that as a reassuring sign that you have a high probability of honoring (especially with a cutoff of 50th percentile, which is again almost an absurdly low threshold given that 50th percentile is by definition average). However, you can very well honor even if you're only in the 50's or 60's provided that you're learning from the questions. To that end, it's not a useful metric for most people. The practice NBMEs for each shelf are more reflective of the actual shelf and are far more useful for gauging your progress and estimating a score, although you're basically paying $0.50 a question for these.

At the end of the day though, this isn't Step 1. You don't have 4-8 weeks of dedicated study. You're not taking serial practice exams for the purpose of trending your score and trying to ensure that 250+. You are trying to squeeze in a UWorld question or two while you're in between cases in surgery. You're flipping through SUTM for an hour or two at the end of the day. You can't really predict your shelf score like you can with Step 1 as you don't have nearly the same amount of time or resources. You will almost assuredly see a question or two on each shelf that is based on something that you've never even read about before.

 

[Amygdarya]

I'm with @Jabbed on this: UWorld is for learning, NBMEs are for assessment. Why don't you do some subject NBMEs and see where you stand? They'll give you the scores and the percentiles, which, in my experience, predict actual shelf scores and percentiles pretty well.

 

[Amygdarya]

It's still really low. Most programs have a similar structure where Honors is obtained by meeting several requisites (Shelf > 75%, clinical evals > 88, blah blah). Functionally though, the shelf score ends up being the limiting factor for most places as scoring over the 75th percentile is actually pretty tough to do against a pool of US medical students.

It depends on the school and even on individual rotations. For most rotations at my school, grades are determined mostly by clinical evals, which are kind of a crapshoot. Eg., I got 98th percentile for my surgery shelf and consistently solid evals, but apparently my evals didn't contain enough effusive praise, so I ultimately got an HP. (I don't necessarily care about my surgery grade specifically, just kind of pissed off at the grading system. And no, I'm not at all the kind of student who just waits for an opportunity to go home and study; I'm just not great at small talk and the subtle art of sucking up.)