Failed MCCQE1

[SwimD]

Recently started residency (PGY1) in Ontario and found out that I failed the MCCQE1. Are there any consequences (ex. in terms of my prescription signing privileges)? Do I need to let my school/program know? 

Any advice and recommendations for resources/study plans would be greatly appreciated!

Don’t know what happened with test day; feeling really bummed about this situation. When would it be best to schedule a rewrite, and how early would I be able to sign up for another sitting of the exam? 

Thanks so much in advance for your help and support! 

[Bluberblubo]

No consequences to failing. No one will know about it unless you tell them. You don't need to let anyone know. 

I used the USMLE step 2 CK question bank but that was overkill. The best time to schedule the rewrite in my opinion depends on what rotations you are on. If first year is busy then maybe schedule it in second year. If you're in family med then I'd do it asap because in 2nd year you'll be studying for your family med exam.

Good luck on your next attempt!

[Mimish]

1 hour ago, SwimD said:

Recently started residency (PGY1) in Ontario and found out that I failed the MCCQE1. Are there any consequences (ex. in terms of my prescription signing privileges)? Do I need to let my school/program know? 

Any advice and recommendations for resources/study plans would be greatly appreciated!

Don’t know what happened with test day; feeling really bummed about this situation. When would it be best to schedule a rewrite, and how early would I be able to sign up for another sitting of the exam? 

Thanks so much in advance for your help and support! 

Hey, just wanted to tell you you are absolutely not alone! I found out I failed by 3 points. And I am your average med student. In fact, this is the first time I fail a test (big or small) in my long career as a student (undergrad, med or otherwise). As written above, this exam has no impact whatsoever on your capacity to continue your residency and take care of your responsibilities as a resident doctor. As for whether you need to disclose your score, it depends on your program. Some programs demand to know whether you fail so they can put in place ressources for you and help you score better. Other programs (like mine) do not offer extra support, therefore they do not ask to know your score. 

Concerning study material, I found OnlineMedEd study notes too late in the game, but I feel they are an excellent summary and really pin down all the important info you need to know. I wish I've had more time to study them (I focused on the Essentials for the Canadian Medical Licensing Exam). I think investing into a practice exam for the CDM part will not be lost money this time around. And doing questions, if you have the chance to find a QBank that works for you. UWorld is most probably the best, but it comes with a hefty pricetag attached to it.

You can do this (and so can I, hopefully)! I've heard of so many residents who failed it because of the CDM component and passed it on the second try without problems!

[Vendar]

Hey man - I am sorry to hear this! But truly does not matter, I have a friend in a super competitive specialty and the result has 0 impact on him

Take this with a grain of salt - but I did only Canada Q Bank and all the medium/easy questions. First I did everything but internal and surgery, then started to add those towards the end. I ended up passing (i wasnt going for the highest score)...and a few of my friends did the same thing as I did it turned out well 

 

Good luck on the next attempt!

[rmorelan]

10 hours ago, SwimD said:

Recently started residency (PGY1) in Ontario and found out that I failed the MCCQE1. Are there any consequences (ex. in terms of my prescription signing privileges)? Do I need to let my school/program know? 

Any advice and recommendations for resources/study plans would be greatly appreciated!

Don’t know what happened with test day; feeling really bummed about this situation. When would it be best to schedule a rewrite, and how early would I be able to sign up for another sitting of the exam? 

Thanks so much in advance for your help and support! 

Just to echo others - it sucks of course but should have no lasting impact really. 

[Supervenience]

As far as I know it has no effect on your residency, and you can re-write multiple times. It's a stupid exam that's constructed very poorly, I wouldn't take it too seriously. In terms of studying, I personally found most question banks not helpful. I just reviewed high yield subjects on toronto notes (FM, public health, ethics, OBGYN, peds, medicine, etc...) and did the official practice exams over the course of a few weeks and passed. I think toronto notes is probably the best comprehensive resource available for this exam.

[mccqefail]

Also failed by a few points, which really sucks. Those CDM questions screwed me I think, so I'm going to invest in the sample exams. It's a costly situation, but fortunately doesn't seem like it will have lasting impact which is good.

My plan is to take a week of vacation and just re-write it then. I don't see anywhere about reporting my scores to my program, so I just won't...

[SwimD]

Hi everyone, 

Thank you all for your very helpful responses and advice! I sincerely appreciate it!

My main worry currently is whether or not I need to report this to my residency program or school. Does anyone know where/how I would go about finding this information? I haven’t been able to find anything so far. 
 

As well, will I be able to sign off on my orders independently? Is there any impact on my residency experience in the next while before I have a chance to rewrite the exam? 
 

Thank you! 

[Mimish]

1 hour ago, SwimD said:

Hi everyone, 

Thank you all for your very helpful responses and advice! I sincerely appreciate it!

My main worry currently is whether or not I need to report this to my residency program or school. Does anyone know where/how I would go about finding this information? I haven’t been able to find anything so far. 
 

As well, will I be able to sign off on my orders independently? Is there any impact on my residency experience in the next while before I have a chance to rewrite the exam? 
 

Thank you! 

Concerning whether you have to disclose your MCCQE1 status, you can find that on the CaRMS website, in your program's description for the year you matched. Most programs have yet to post the program descriptions for 2023, so you can still access those for 2022 directly. Read through the program description, some write about it at the very beginning and some in their program highlights. If there is no mention of CMG's having to disclose their MCCQE1 results, then you are not obliged to do so. You might wish to personally to get extra support, if your program is open to helping you. Or you might decide against it, if you fear your program director/attendings might change their opinion about you (I don't know whether they would or not). 

Concerning signing orders off independently, I could unfortunately do so as a MS3 in a certain hospital ... A fail on the MCCQE1 should in no way impact your ability to do anything expected of a resident. I have acquaintances that decided they would do it for the first time during the fall cycle because they couldn't put up with the multiple crashes on their computers. They couldn't get any in-facility dates before August or September. And they are still taking care of their responsibilities as residents, prescribing, doing night calls independently. For what I understood, you could decide to pass it 2 months before the end of residency if you wished (i wouldn't suggest it). 

[rgu12]

I failed as well, was not even close to passing, which really scares me. I am in a fairly competitive 5-year residency and I’m worried I might not even be able to pass. It really worries me because I actually felt I did enough to pass the exam, but missed the passing grade by quite a lot. I studied very hard for about a week.
 

In the worst case situation, I believe we can only take it up to 5 times (the last time you have to message them and they may grant you the opportunity to write it a 5th time). If we cannot pass the exam… then is everything just over?

[shikimate]

Did the MCCQE get harder in the last few years? Back in the days it seems most people pass easily. Sorry to hear about your (pl) misadventures. 

This is not "official" advice, but one thing I learned in residency is "don't ask, don't tell" works at many levels in medicine (good or bad). I used to be the "honest" med student/junior resident that would discuss all kinds of things with other residents and PD but over the years a jaded, "blasé" indifference seems to have set in. Does the PD really want bad news when he/she has a sh*tload of other crap to deal with as PD? Does it do anyone a favor telling people about your misfortunes? Can you fix up a hole before anyone else notices and let time bury it?

As N=1, there was an older IMG in the program who finally passed MCCQE2 by a thread after doing the royal college! he was still able to practice on a supervised license while he was studying for MCCQE2.

I suppose the only constructive advice I could give here is that I found First Aid for Step 2 CK a great resource back in the day. Was an overkill but I really loved all the First Aid series for reviewing exams.

[Mimish]

15 minutes ago, rgu12 said:

I failed as well, was not even close to passing, which really scares me. I am in a fairly competitive 5-year residency and I’m worried I might not even be able to pass. It really worries me because I actually felt I did enough to pass the exam, but missed the passing grade by quite a lot. I studied very hard for about a week.
 

In the worst case situation, I believe we can only take it up to 5 times (the last time you have to message them and they may grant you the opportunity to write it a 5th time). If we cannot pass the exam… then is everything just over?

I am quite sure we all felt we did decent enough to pass the exam. And we most probably did enough for a passing grade on the multiple choice part of the exam. I honestly think it is the CDM we might have done wrong. They demand for the answers to be written in a particular format and if this format does not come naturally to you, you lose points you might have gotten had you formulated your answer differently.

Don't even CONSIDER not passing. You WILL pass. Not only will you pass this ridiculous, badly-written obstacle on your path, you will do just fine in residency as well. I would however suggest studying longer than a week this time around, though you might find it tiring, whatnot with all the residency responsibilities. Do take vacation time and just study. Shikimate suggests First Aid Step 2 CK. I really like the OnlineMedEd study notes because I feel they are straight to the point. mccqefail (and I agree) suggests buying some of the practice exams off the MCC website, though they are a rip off. Someone else suggested CanadaQBank while others swear by the UWorld USMLE Step 2 CK question bank.

And finally, concerning your fear of not doing well in residency. For one, you are in a residency program you love. And love goes a long way to help you learn all sorts of things. Learning when you love the material is no chore, unlike studying for the MCCQE1, which is pure intellectual torture. I am in a very study-intensive five-year residency at a high-volume program. Yesterday, I told a third-year resident in my program something they didn't know about an entity we came across. They wrote me a message in the evening after having discussed about it with the attending that I had been right about the case, what a good job I did and how proud they were of me. mccqefail above mentioned in another thread how their attendings were satisfied with their work and have been telling them what a good job they did for the last three weeks. Failing the MCCQE1 does not define you as a resident and future specialist. Your program knows why they picked you over other candidates and trusts you will do just fine with residency, including the exams you will have to sit throughout your training!

[Mimish]

43 minutes ago, shikimate said:

Did the MCCQE get harder in the last few years? Back in the days it seems most people pass easily. Sorry to hear about your (pl) misadventures. 

This is not "official" advice, but one thing I learned in residency is "don't ask, don't tell" works at many levels in medicine (good or bad). I used to be the "honest" med student/junior resident that would discuss all kinds of things with other residents and PD but over the years a jaded, "blasé" indifference seems to have set in. Does the PD really want bad news when he/she has a sh*tload of other crap to deal with as PD? Does it do anyone a favor telling people about your misfortunes? Can you fix up a hole before anyone else notices and let time bury it?

As N=1, there was an older IMG in the program who finally passed MCCQE2 by a thread after doing the royal college! he was still able to practice on a supervised license while he was studying for MCCQE2.

I suppose the only constructive advice I could give here is that I found First Aid for Step 2 CK a great resource back in the day. Was an overkill but I really loved all the First Aid series for reviewing exams.

I do not think it got harder. I think the format changed. I believe that back a few years ago, the questions tried to reflect all the material we were supposed to study. So the exam ended up looking like 1/6 medicine, 1/6 family medicine, 1/6 ObGyn, 1/6 surgery, 1/6 psychiatry and 1/6 pediatrics. I think the format changed two years ago. Right now, you could virtually have anything on your exam, with each exam copy being different between candidates.

A friend had 1/3 ethics and 2/3 a mixture of internal medicine and surgery. Another friend had solely internal medicine. I had a vast majority of rheumatology questions, both multiple choice and CDM, which was really unexpected. And I admit it was my fault as I had barely reviewed rheumatology prior to the exam (mea culpa). Has this contributed to a higher proportion of students failing? Or are we just more vocal about having failed and find solace in seeing that it truly can happen to anyone, whatever their residency program and whatever their goals for the future? I don't know. I just know I am still sore about all that rheumatology.

And thank you for your great study material suggestion!

[rgu12]

I've never seen a Premed101 thread with this many people posting that they failed. I mean completely anecdotal, but people have said the cutoff increases year to year.

[Artier]

Personally I found UWorld overkill. The MCC posts "learning objectives" for the Medical Expert related content tested (see https://mcc.ca/objectives/expert/). I just copied and pasted these into a word document and went down the list reading through Toronto Notes/my notes from medical school on each topic listed until I got to the end. Other than Medical Expert content, the exam also had a fair amount tested on medical ethics type stuff which I didn't spend any time preparing for as I thought they were straightforward/common sense.

[la marzocco]

18 hours ago, rgu12 said:

I've never seen a Premed101 thread with this many people posting that they failed. I mean completely anecdotal, but people have said the cutoff increases year to year.

Cutoff has not changed since April 2018. It is 226. The cutoff is established based on a standard-setting exercise that happens every 5 years or so. But the 2022 MCCQE marking is against the April 2018 standard. Of note, the mean has been 260+ consistently exam session after exam session.  

Based on the last technical report (https://h5a9c8a9.stackpathcdn.com/media/MCCQE-Part-I_Technical-Report_2020.pdf). The rate has been very high for CMGs first-time writers. 

The only major change that was made in the last two years was that exam questions that were considered "pilot" were not scored in the past, but they started scoring the pilot questions in the same session if it was psychometrically sound. 

2020-2021 Technical Report: "The exam consists of 210 MCQs and includes pilot questions, also called pre-test questions, which are scored if they perform well psychometrically."

2019-2020 Technical Report: "The MCQ component of the MCCQE Part I consists of 210 items, of which 35 are pilot items that do not count towards the total score."