usmlekiller
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Why cant the usmle tell everyone how the steps are graded? wats there to hide? it will help people tremendously to know how many % one needs to get a certain score or how many of the tough answers correct are needed to get high score.....i just dont understand y they r makin thousands of people suffer trying to figure out how its scored....if they were to expose their system....i dont think its gonna change scores of future takers.....just a thought
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| gray
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mean 222 sd of 20 i think.
askdoc says to pass about 55% right in hard block
65% right in easy block.
he says usmle sets exam so most people can get between 55-65% rt in block. ie mean.
i read a post from someone who got 266 who said he did not know the answer to 5-10
qs per block and guess those with a half chance.
so my take on passing is about
know 40% qs cold , and guess the other 60% ( with .3 chance of correct)
ie know 20qs cold per block guess 30qs ( .3 chance correct) another 10 per block.
so you should be able to pass even if you are unsure of 60% of qs.
askdoc says exam has 10% fail rate. and i assume they put people on a percentile
curve for your score and adjust this once in a while. I think askdoc has very good theory
on this but i do not know where he gets his info from.
your score thus is not against the exam, but against a percentile curve of recent amg test takers.
what do you think
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| usmlekiller
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good theory.....but again a theory.......no one knows for sure
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| askdoc
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to gray, usmlekiller,
You can find the information in the USMLE and NBME websites and other sites that discuss the mandate given by the NBME to the USMLE. They are too numerous for me to remember them all as that was 2 years ago.
The mandate of the USMLE is to set the score so that 90% of AMG will pass the examination and 10% will fail the exam. However, since the score is not updated yearly, more and more AMG are passing every year. This is because medical schools and review schools soon catch on to exam techniques used by USMLE to make an exam tough and incorporate them into their USMLE prep for their students. Although tougher questions are added into the question pool (after being tested first as experimental questions:nod they are not enough to catch up with increasing exam competence. So from time to time, the USMLE is forced to raise their scores. The last time they raise their scores was because 96 to 97% of AMGs were passing Step 1 and if the rate of rise continues 100% of AMGs will pass the Step 1 eventually. The new cutoff score was based on the score where 10% of AMG scored below it.
IMGs are never considered in the process at all. So the USMLE is not increasing the passing score because many IMGs are getting 99's, which by the way is very true, thus increasing the competitiveness of the match, but only for IMGs. 99 will always be 85th percentile but only for AMGs, while for IMG it depends on the year to year performance of IMG's taking the examination.
Although, the score is based on a percentile curve, this is done from the score of a large pool of multi-year examinees and never from the present batch of examinees. Therefore it is possible for later batches to have more people passing than 90% which is always happening, hence the recent adustment in passing grade. One of the mandate of the USMLE is to make scores taken in different years comparable and the only way to do that is to set the standard score scale using multi-year data and not data for a single year.
The 55 to 65% correct needed to pass is in the USMLE website and if I am not mistaken in First Aid. It is only logical that the difference is because of difference in difficulty level.
Although the USMLE has given the way it scores the examination and the guidelines for determining passing scores, etc. It cannot give the details out because a lot of people will be finding ways to beat the system (like what I'm doing now) rather than try to just study Medicine and take the USMLE as just another exam you will have to pass to prove you know Medicine.
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Step1 99/256, Step 2 99/258, Old IMG, 1989 grad. A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's heaven for. http://blogs.askdoc-usmle.com
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| usmlekiller
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haha well said askdoc.......thanks a lot
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