question about score

[sondavis92000]

hello everybody :

i have one question about the way the score is computed
anybody knows what's the number of questions you have to answer correctly to pass the exam or ace the exam,
Is there a way to predict how did you do the exam, i am worried about that issue because the score doesn't give you any idea on how many questions did you fail
when I read those posting of people who have an 99/255, 99/260
i wonder how many questions do they have failed.
my overall performance in kaplan CD was 82.
i really appretiate your responce
thank you in advance.

[bts4202]

I have read that you need to answer 55-60% of the questions correctly on the USMLE to pass. I hope that helps.

[sondavis92000]

but do you know how many questions fail the people who ace the exam

[bts4202]

I am sorry, I don't quite understand your question.. can you rephrase it?

[neilc]

there is no way to know this. the nbme will not say how many you need to pass, there are several experimental questions on each exam, questions of different levels of difficulty are weighted differently.

just do the best you can....this kind of information isn't going to do you any good in the long run, anyhow.

good luck!

[Anonymous]

Hi Neilc,
I don't know that questions of different difficulty levels are weighted differently. Do you know which type of question is weighed more heavily, the difficult type or the easy type? Are we penanlized more for getting a easy question wrong than for getting a hard question wrong? Thanks.

[neilc]

you are not "penalized" for getting a question wrong. you simply get zero out of how ever many points were possible....

i don't know exactly how it works, but the NBME is pretty closed mouth on the scoring, so we will likely never know.