Common Questions

Scores for USMLE Step exams are released on Wednesdays. Generally, these will include scores for examinees who tested within four weeks before the release date. However, there are many factors that may delay an individual score release. Your registration entity will notify you by email when your score becomes available. When released, your scores will be posted to your registration entity's secure website. If you have not received your score within eight weeks of your test date, please contact us to determine the status of your score report.

Please note that new scores are not released the week following some holidays, including Independence Day (July 4th), Thanksgiving Day in late November, and New Years Day in early January.

Your score report is provided only for your personal use. When you want a third party (e.g., residency programs) to receive an official record of your USMLE scores, request that FSMB send the transcript (see Requesting a Transcript of USMLE Scores). Under some circumstances, medical schools may receive scores and pass/fail outcomes for their students.

Information on minimum passing scores for USMLE examinations is posted on the Scores and Transcripts page.

The USMLE Management Committee establishes the minimum passing score. The USMLE Management Committee reviews data for each component in the USMLE sequence approximately once every four years and decides whether to change the recommended minimum passing score.

The content-based standard used for setting the passing score means that as many as 100% of candidates could theoretically pass, or conceivably 0%. The number is not arbitrarily predetermined. Similarly, the pass rate can vary from one accredited medical school in the United States to another, and from one year to another. Recent performance data for first-time takers and repeaters for each Step are available.

*USMLE Step 1 score reporting is reported as pass/fail only for exams taken on or after January 26, 2022. On the three-digit score scale, the passing standard is 196. Future reviews of the Step 1 passing standard will not be reported in terms of a three-digit score.

USMLE scores and pass/fail decisions are not determined using a curve, which would necessitate a specific amount/percentage of examinees must fail. Rather, an exam score is determined by an examinee’s performance on the content seen during the test administration. Passing standards are set by the USMLE Management Committee, as a minimum threshold of performance that must be obtained by all examinees. The passing standards are periodically reviewed for each Step. Examinees who perform at or above the minimum threshold (i.e., passing standard) will pass the examination, regardless of the number or percentage of examinees that pass overall.

To obtain your USMLE transcript or have it sent to a third party, you must contact FSMB and pay the associated fee.

FSMB produces and distributes transcripts for all USMLE examinees (both domestic and international medical students and graduates). To have a transcript sent to a medical licensing authority at any time, submit your request through FSMB.

If you have NBME Parts exam and/or USMLE exams, you will also order your transcripts from FSMB. 

Examinees using any residency application service—e.g., Electronic Residency Application Service® (ERAS®)—should continue to follow instructions from the application owner for sending their USMLE transcripts to U.S. training programs.

Within each Step examination, the USMLE program creates various forms that are similar in difficulty and content. Scores on individual examination forms are made comparable through equating, a psychometric process that adjusts scores based on the difficulty of the questions. This can be thought of as small score increases applied to examinees who see somewhat more difficult sets of test questions, and small score decreases applied to test takers who see somewhat less difficult sets of test questions. This process ensures examinees who take different forms are held to the same passing standard. 

Step 1 before pass/fail transition, Step 2 CK, and Step 3: Your performance is compared to other examinees by comparing your three-digit score to that of a recent group of examinees (students from US and Canadian medical schools taking the examination for the first time). The blue bars represent the distribution of this group’s scores, with higher bars indicating more individuals with scores in that range. Your overall performance (three-digit score) is marked with an orange rectangle and solid line. The black rectangle and dashed line indicate the minimum passing score.

If your overall performance (indicated by the orange rectangle and solid line on page 1) is toward the right side of the chart and to the right of the tallest blue bar, your performance was higher than others. If your overall performance is toward the left side of the chart, or to the left of the tallest blue bar, your performance was lower than others.

Additional information about how your performance compares to others (including norm tables and summary data from recent administrations) is available in the Score Interpretation Guidelines. Performance data by group for each Step examination is available each year based on the performance of examinees in that year.

Step 1 after pass/fail transition: After Step 1 transitions to pass/fail score reporting, passing examinees will not see performance feedback on their score report. Examinees who fail will receive the visual described above to help assess how close they scored in relation to the passing standard.

Your score reflects your relative mastery of the concepts and principles that constitute the basis of safe and effective patient care specific to each Step examination.

The average score and standard deviation for recent administrations are included on your score report. Detailed information about interpreting USMLE scores is available in the Score Interpretation Guidelines.

Please note that if your exam is administered over multiple days, only the first day of testing will be reflected on the score report and transcript.

Please see additional information about score reports here.

The new score report format reflects both advances in the underlying science of assessment and changes to the USMLE examinations over time. USMLE score reports were virtually unchanged for nearly two decades. During that time, the USMLE exams experienced incremental changes, including changes to content sampling, item types, and review and modification of minimum passing scores. Simultaneously, measurement researchers, including those who support the USMLE program, continued to advance the science of subscore computational methods, data visualization, and score reporting.

The process used to design a new score report format included:

• The development of prototype score reports that better supported the intended inferences
   
• Approval of the prototypes by USMLE governance committees (composed of medical school faculty, members of state medical boards, and public members)
   
• Focus group studies with USMLE test-takers to identify preferences among prototypes and to evaluate their ability to make correct inferences (and not make incorrect inferences) from the prototype score reports

The examinee focus group results clearly demonstrated that the new score report format was viewed as a substantial improvement by USMLE test-takers. Results also showed that USMLE examinees were both able to interpret the information provided in the new score report format appropriately and were less likely to make incorrect inferences.

The Step 1 examinee score report underwent further modifications to account for the transition to reporting only a pass/fail outcome, which began for examinees taking Step 1 exams on or after January 26, 2022. The new Step 1 examinee score report format supports the transition to Step 1 pass/fail reporting while continuing to provide candidates who receive a failing outcome feedback on content areas requiring further study before they retake the exam.

Please view the sample score reports:

• Step 3 interactive (applies to Step 1 before pass-fail transition, Step 2 CK, and Step 3)
   
• Step 1
  • After Pass-Fail Transition – Pass
  • After Pass-Fail Transition – Fail

Only exams taken will show on a transcript of your scores.

The Step examinations are highly integrative, and you should plan to review all content areas. In prioritizing which areas to review, you should take into account both the representation of that content area on the examination (based on the % items per exam next to the content area label) and your relative performance in that content area. Remediation strategies focused solely on relatively weak areas of performance are unlikely to be the most effective for failing examinees. In most cases, failing scores are best remediated through attention to all content areas.

Your score report is provided only for your personal use. Under some circumstances, medical schools may receive scores and pass/fail outcomes for their students. 

For all Steps, a highly rigorous process is used to ensure the accuracy of scores, including a parallel scoring method involving independent scoring systems. Therefore, a change in your score or in your pass/fail outcome based on a recheck is an extremely remote possibility. To date, the score recheck process has not resulted in a score change.

We certainly understand that historical records may not always be obtainable. We recommend you submit whatever historical documentation you can reasonably obtain and provide as that will help us determine what accommodations, if any, would be appropriate.