<p>Congrats to Curm’s D and P-gal’s S.!</p>
<p>congrats Pgal’s son and curmie’s D! Wonderful news. Wonderful scores.</p>
<p>(And wow, it appears I will be holding my worry beads the entire beginning of 2013. D2 is taking her MCAT the end of January and D1 is taking her Step 1 in mid-February.)</p>
<p>Thanks, y’all. She is very pleased. And that pleases me. I don’t know much about what is to come but I know that few, if any, doors are auto-closed to her now. She and I shared 30 minutes of googling around at some randomly selected “top” (whatever that means) programs in cities she’s interested in and apparently based on her score alone (and she knows there’s much more) she’ll be in the running for interviews. IOW, the score is not too low for consideration. Well, in the running with a whole lot of others, but in the running nonetheless. ;)</p>
<p>Thanks, everyone. Thanks for your recommendations and comments throughout as well. I have been passing these along to DS. They have certainly helped him to get where he is.</p>
<p>^^^^Ain’t that the truth. Thank you very much. Now, gang. Let’s get them all into the residency of their choosing. Soon as they choose it. ;)</p>
<p>
True. I think somebody asked me when I was goning to stop worrying about her over on the Parent’s Board. I said “3 days after I’m dead.” That may have been a little optimistic. ;)</p>
<p>post numbers 65 and 66 - super like</p>
<p>D. is thinking again about the most competitive specialty, which was originally her top choice. It just whenever she has opportunity to have this experience, her interest is back. She will need very very top score for this one and lots of research with publications (not interested too much in research though). Hopefully, she will keep it in prospective, she is pretty grounded person. The problem is, it is so hard to identify other “attracitve to her” specialties, but she absolutely love to deal with patients of any ages and any kind of health problems, she feels privileged to be in this position even now.</p>
<p>I got a pm from a parent today who doesn’t post topside much but we shared some Step tips along the way through pm’s…260!!</p>
<p>O.K… The parent who p.m.'ed me about the 260 has raised a point I want to address which may be of some benefit to others. He/she “posited” the possibility (paraphrased) that a student at a top school would have a better Step 1 score, and it just doesn’t work that way in small numbers. In big numbers, class to class, yes. Apparently it does. </p>
<p>Here was my response: </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So, the takeaway point for students at top schools…you better study. The takeaway point for students at less than the usual suspects…you better study. ;)</p>
<p>^Would not it be true generally speaking that the one who usually have better standardized test scores than GPA, would do better on Step 1 than others in the same school/the same regular (class lecture) test scores? I am sure that my question is confusing. So, as an example, if HS GPA was at much higher level than SAT/ACT and college GPA was at much higher level than MCAT score, should we logically predict that Med. Student will do worse on Step 1 than in his/her “end of block” Med. School exams?</p>
<p>Jeez. I’m spamming my own threads. lol</p>
<p>I found this piece of extrapolated Step 1 percentile data on scores for those entering the match in 2009. IOW, I think if you flunked Step 1 you aren’t included. So I guess these are really “percentiles of those who passed” which I guess again is more helpful in assessing the competitiveness of your score. </p>
<p>Whatever. 
It’s interesting. To me. </p>
<p>[Step</a> 1 Score Distribution and Percentiles - REAL DATA | Step I | Student Doctor Network](<a href=“Step 1 Score Distribution and Percentiles - REAL DATA | Student Doctor Network”>Step 1 Score Distribution and Percentiles - REAL DATA | Student Doctor Network)</p>
<p>Lots of interesting statistics.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nrmp.org/data/chartingoutcomes2011.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nrmp.org/data/chartingoutcomes2011.pdf</a></p>
<p>O.K… I am going to apply some chimp math to the numbers in the sdn chart. </p>
<p>26,651 total N.
2,665 is 10%.
1,333 is 5%
267 is 1%</p>
<p>So assume without the data to back it up that the score distributions within a “band” are equal (just go with me here, I said it was chimp math ;)), we can “calculate” (and I say that as a History major) that:</p>
<p>260 is top 2%
248 is top 10%</p>
<p>of all students entering the match in 2009.</p>
<p>We can further assume that the percentiles would be better when compared to all test takers.</p>
<p>Yup. Miami. I posted that in post 51. I have been going over the charts. I think breaking out the independent students from the US school grads is helpful.</p>
<p>Another sdn chart for 2011. </p>
<p>[NEW</a> 2011 Step 1 Score Distribution and Percentiles - REAL DATA | Step I | Student Doctor Network](<a href=“NEW 2011 Step 1 Score Distribution and Percentiles - REAL DATA | Student Doctor Network”>NEW 2011 Step 1 Score Distribution and Percentiles - REAL DATA | Student Doctor Network)</p>
<p>Thanks for this link, Curm. This is extremely helpful.</p>
<p>Being a little OCD never hurts. ;)</p>
<p>It should be very eye-opening for the boy, P-gal. He is in rare territory, indeed.</p>
<p>It is interesting that the boards have become so important when they used to be just another exam to pass. I think this is an unintended consequence of the efforts by the medical schools to decrease student stress. The students all look the same after two years without rankings or grades. Now most of the stress is in studying for weeks and weeks for one test.</p>
<p>^I imagine that my own kid would be more concerned with Specialty stats. She never cared about 'prestige" of any school/program, so as long as she has enough for very few of specialties on her Yes list that seems not be growing. She expanded her locations though to southern states, will see, too many variables to predict anything at this early stage.</p>