Ok, so the fool has just recertified for Internal Medicine, and the results are PASS! Yay! So thought we’d pass along a few statistics from the latest test. According to ABIM, the 2013 Internal Medicine Recertification exam in Spring has 2971 test takers. A shockingly low 67% passed! 80% of FIRST TIME test takers passed and they made up 1692 candidates, or about 57% of test takers. What this means is that for subsequent test takers, the pass rate was just under 50%! yikes. So, moral of the story is to work hard to pass the FIRST TIME! The score is put into a scale of 800 (like the ol SAT right?) and a score of 591-800 gets you into the 10th Decile of test takers! On this exam a score of 366 is a pass, and this is just into the 3rd Decile. Using some rough math, with 180 questions on the recertification exam, you need just over 50% to pass the exam. Results of each exam are posted officially within 3 months, but the Fool got his results about 7 wks later online, and then a paper explanation of all the results followed about 2 weeks later.
To break down the categories by # of questions:
Other/Misc followed by Cardiology, Pulmonary, Infectious Disease, Gastroenterology, Endocrine, Rheumatology/orthopedics, Medical Oncology, Hematology, Nephrology/Urology.
Good luck everyone!