Do ABD exam results include Percentile Ranks and what do they mean?

Do ABD exam results include Percentile Ranks and what do they mean?

The following ABD exam results include Percentile Rank information:

BASIC Exam:
The candidate's overall percentile rank, across the entire exam

CORE Exam:
The candidate's percentile rank within each module (MED, PEDS, SURG, DERMPATH)
The candidate's percentile rank within each type of item on a given module: Image, Written, Virtual Dermpath, Basic Science

APPLIED Exam:
The candidate's percentile rank within each content area   (MED, PEDS, SURG, DERMPATH)

A percentile ranking is not used to determine a candidate's pass/fail status. Rather, it allows candidates to compare their performance  relative to the performance of reference group candidates.  (The reference group consists of candidates who took the exam for the first time in the given administration.) These Percentile Ranks provide normative data, which means that the ranks are based on one’s performance relative to other candidates in the reference group. That is, percentile ranks do not provide information about absolute score performance (the number of items answered correctly), they provide information about one’s performance relative to the performance of the rest of the reference group.

Percentile ranks are expressed as a number between 0 and 100, with 50 being the average and indicating performance that is equal to or better than 50% of the reference group.

Using the APPLIED Exam as an example, if a candidate has a percentile rank of 87 in Medical Dermatology, that candidate performed as well as or better on the Medical Dermatology items than 87% of all candidates taking the APPLIED Exam for the first time.

Content area percentile rank data should be interpreted with caution. As each content area contains a relatively small number of items, a small change in the number of items answered correctly can result in a large change in the content area percentile rank.