Guest heparin2 Posted May 14, 2003 Report Share Posted May 14, 2003 Does anybody know what the passing rate is for the MCCQE Part I for Canadian medical students? thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Carolyn Posted May 14, 2003 Report Share Posted May 14, 2003 We were told that only about 4% of Canadian Medical Grads fail. I believe it is a lot higher for IMGs - likely due to a) English as a second language (some of the questions were very wierdly worded when I took the exam last week)... and many of the IMGs have been out working in their specialty for many years... to remember back to the details of surgery when you have been doing peds for so many years is likely very difficult. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest heparin2 Posted May 14, 2003 Report Share Posted May 14, 2003 Thanks for your response. How hard did you and your classmates find the exam? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ian Wong Posted May 14, 2003 Report Share Posted May 14, 2003 I just wrote the thing yesterday. 7.5 hours long. Not bad. The trouble is that the exam is computerized, and it's adaptive. What that means is depending on how well you did on previous questions, the computer will vary the difficulty of future questions. So, if you got everything right in the beginning, you'll start seeing some ridiculously difficult questions (this is a good sign). If, on the other hand, you start getting questions like: "Which end of the stethoscope goes in your ear?", then you'd be best to start concentrating harder. The exam is scaled in such a way that the bottom 5-7% of test-takers fail (I forget which number). That means that there's usually a very small number of people per class who end up failing the exam, but that doesn't prevent you from graduating and starting residency. It just means you need to re-write the exam during residency, and shell out another $650 test fee. I'm sure this exam would be a lot more difficult for IMG's. In my exam yesterday, there were a number of them, most in their mid 30's or even 40's. I'm sure that a number of these individuals were likely specialists wherever they used to practise, and it'd probably be pretty tough for someone whose sub-specialty was orthopedic surgery to answer a slew of questions about brief psychotic disorder, or for a pediatrician to remember the latest information on endometrial cancer, etc. There also a large component of Canadian ethics and medicolegal stuff which I'm sure would be tough to write as an IMG (it certainly was tough to write for me, and I've lived here all my life!). Half of the exam is multiple choice questions (196 questions), and the second half is 52 case vignettes where you may need to type in answers, or check off diagnosis/management strategies off a list. The kicker is that if you don't check off enough items, you won't get full marks, but if you check off too much stuff, then you get penalized (and have marks taken off) for excessive test-ordering. So again, this is probably a bit difficult to handle, because your own personal strategy on tests to order probably had a lot to do with what your teachers taught you, and also with the availability and expense of those tests. The standard of care for diagnosing a ureteral stone might be an intravenous pyelogram, or it might be a spiral CT scan. Both work, but one may be the standard of care in one institution, and not in another. However, only one of those answers may be right in the LMCC. Where to go from there? Anyway, the bottom line I guess is that most people pass this exam, and since everyone faces the above issues, I guess it all sort of averages out in the end. It's not that bad of an exam. Ian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ian Wong Posted August 16, 2005 Report Share Posted August 16, 2005 Floating back to the top... Ian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.