Texas Tech

Pre-Med & Medical School Multiple Degree Programs
8

<p>Bopop, you are not reading the article carefully: It says, the “national pass rate for the USMLE was about 92 percent.”</p>

<p>What it doesn’t tell you, is that this national pass rate is putting together all test-takers who test in the United States: U.S. allopathic (M.D.) medical students, U.S. osteopathic (D.O.) medical students, as well as International Medical Graduates, with the latter two categories having MUCH lower passing rates than if you were to take U.S. allopathic (M.D.) students only.</p>

<p>Also mentioned in the article are Texas Tech’s previous pass rates: “The pass rate for step one was 82 percent in 2005, 85 percent in 2006 and 90 percent in 2007.” As even admitted by Dr. Berk in the article, the one time pass rate of 100% doesn’t qualify as a trend.</p>

<p>The real importance in Step 1 is not the percent passing (the percent who achieved a score of 185 or higher), as any U.S. LCME accredited medical school should have a high pass rate on Step 1 (if it doesn’t, that should be a red flag to you, as it is your school’s job to adequately prepare you for these licensing exams to progress in medical school). This is esp. the case when you look at the previous pass rates of Texas Tech stated above (look at the trend, not one data point). The actual real importance of Step 1 is the average score at the school.</p>

<p>For example, Baylor College of Medicine also had a 100% pass rate on the USMLE Step 1: <a href=“https://www.bcm.edu/medschool/successindicators.html[/url]”>https://www.bcm.edu/medschool/successindicators.html&lt;/a&gt;. But as you can see while the national average score is 222, Baylor College of Medicine’s average score is MUCH higher at 239 (so the average Baylor student not only passes, but also does much better than the national average score). They have had a high USMLE Step 1 average score consistently AND their pass rate has been near 100% for quite a few years unlike Texas Tech which has only had it one year and which they did not even tell what their average USMLE Step 1 score at that school was.</p>