Whats a Pass on Shelfs at your school

[yl99]

I was wandering if people would share what a pass is on your shelfs at your schools, at ours its 10% but it seems that a lot of our students fail them,

I'm a second year but I was wandering what is the reason for students who get past 2 years of med school to fail at such a high rate, What do you need to do to get past these #$@# tests...third year should not be the weedout year thanks

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[Medical123]

I think that at my school, a Pass on the Shelf exam is technically a 70%. However, it generally gets curved a little lower based on the class average. I think that surgery went down to 58% last year and people still failed it.

 

[Frijolero]

I think there's some confusion b/w straight percent correct and percentile. OP, at my school 10th percentile is also the cutoff for a fail. Straight 70% as a cutoff seems a little high, I imagine it would correlate to 15-25th percentile depending on the clerkship. In any case, at least for us, it's not a "weedout". Usually the people in that bottom decile didn't read much and simply have to repeat the shelf, not the clerkship, with the majority of them passing and graduating on time.

 

[elz787]

I'm so glad someone started this thread,

so I'm a second year also and recently I spoke to a third year who was so negative about his experience thus far.....saying stuff like theres no way to pass these shelfs and your life only gets worse,,blah blah blah, ,

I know one complaint he had which was legit is that here they dont get a week to study like at some schools,

anyway I usually dont let people get under my skin, but his comments for whatever reason did,I'm assuming people fail these things because they slack off, so I guess the question is how does one not fail a shelf with no study time,

 

[jdh71]

at my schoo,l for most shelf's . . . >7th%ile nationally

 

[MSHell]

...Straight 70% as a cutoff seems a little high, ...

Why is that high? (not referring to relation to percentiles). This assures that everyone has a grasp on the material and that if everyone gets >70%, then everyone passes.

 

[Frijolero]

Depending on the difficulty of the questions, a 70% cutoff is fine. At that level, though, I'm guessing around 15-20% would fail the shelf. Which means either that our training is inadequate, or, more probably, that the cutoff is too high. To the OP, to pass these things you need to read about things you realize you don't know throughout the rotation, which takes maybe 30 minutes a day. Then, a week or two before the shelf, read a good review book for the subject. It usually takes me a few hours a day that last week or two to get through it. I prefer case based books instead of bullet-type like first aid because I can't retain info from that format. I've found case files to be an excellent series for every clerkship I've been on. I've had friends failing clerkships that jumped up to 40's/50's (percentile) when they switched to case files. It's also the only medical book thus far that doesn't bore me to tears to read through.

 

[arthrodisiac]

<70=fail
70-84 pass
85-89 high pass
90+ honors

 

[Frijolero]

<70=fail
70-84 pass
85-89 high pass
90+ honors

Wow, that's rough. Any idea what your class breakdown was for grades? You must have literally less than 5% of the class honoring. For the last two shelfs I know that 96th percentile correlates with 86 and 89

 

[Blue Frog]

So at our school its either 5 or 10th percentile...possibly variable based on rotation. I've never heard of anyone failing a test, though I'm sure it happens and people just don't advertise the fact. However, I'm not sure if failing the exam = failing the rotation. In general I've heard that to fail a rotation you have to do something like lie or cheat...or just be really pathetic. I could be wrong though...just watch...after saying this i'll fail my next rotation.

 

[arthrodisiac]

apparently before our year, there was grade inflation where like 40% of the class was getting honors. Now, its underinflated, where 5% get honors...and those that get honors almost always do it by the skin of their teeth...like having a 90.03 average. its ridiculous. there needs to be some national conference for curriculum development deans and they need to develop a uniform evaluation method.

 

[elz787]

its good to see that most people get through them, because I was also told by a third year, that he felt they were trying to "weed him out", with the shelfs

It doesnt make much sense for a school to try to fail people out after 2 years though, I mean even if they fail 10% of the students that would seem like a large number, but of couse I havent gone through yet!