2024 Nepal USMLE Cheating Scandal Explained

unprecedented Medical School exam Scandal left both us and international students wondering about the future of their medical education here is everything you need to know about the Nepal USMLE score Scandal Dr Jalal insiders.com the United States medical licensing Examination usml for short has incredibly strict practices that ensure every medical student taking their board exams is on an equal playing field they go much further than checking if photo ID matches test Reg rtion and Proctors to m

onitor unusual behavior they go as far as to measure how long it takes to answer each question in addition to comparing your correct and incorrect answer choices with other test takers in your vicinity they are extreme with their anti-cheating tactics because the USM Elite is designed to determine who is qualified to be a physician and treat patients in the United States not having strict anti-cheating measures in place could result in patients being harmed if unqualified students become practic

ing doctors at the beginning of 2024 the USMLE announced that a large number of test takers from Nepal had unusually high step exam scores and many had selected the exact same answer choices for the vast majority of questions regardless of whether it was the correct answer or not the odds of this occurring without cheating are near impossible to catch everyone up to speed we first need to look into how the Nepali testers were cheating to get a sense of the scale of their operation the evidence t

he USMLE released to the public suggests the examinees were most likely using recalls this is when examinees write down the questions they saw during their exam to later sell to others this has been occurring since the dawn of the USMLE and will likely always continue however these recalls are usually fairly low quality as they're based on the test taker's memory and memories are fallible the other important detail to note is that the USM Elite likely has fewer test questions than we think they

do writing and validating questions that tend T of thousands of people will interpret in nearly the same way regardless of their individual biases is not a simple task there is a great chance questions will be recycled from one exam to another which makes recalls an unethical but lucrative business some defending the Nepali test takers have argued these recalls are no different from resources like first aid and uor however those resources are used to teach students medical Concepts whereas recal

ls are live USMLE test questions that are sold to classmates and future test takers since recalls are exact exam questions they are often memorized rather than used as a tool to deeply understand the correct answer naturally creating selling and buying these recall questions is strictly against the rules of taking board exams as is even speaking about questions you saw with friends it's part of the terms every test taker agrees to before they step foot inside the testing center and again right b

efore they take the test napali test takers joined WhatsApp groups design designed to help others earn the highest possible test scores the scale of this cheating operation is unprecedented and at the release of this video 832 test takers have had at least one of their board exams invalidated the document titled savior was over a, pages long and included over 90% of the live USMLE test questions the people who bought these perfect recalls which were unauthorized materials were able to memorize t

he questions and the correct answers before they ever ENT entered the testing center looking at this graph you can see how Nepal's average score skyrocketed to well above any other country as a result of Savior fortunately the nbme was tipped off in January 2023 due to the high number of suspicious scores from Nepali students nbme focused its initial investigation on Nepal before launching a full investigation they were able to join these WhatsApp groups to discover firsthand how accurate and ho

w widespread the cheating was in the year since those initial tip offs the nbme notified individuals whose exams were invalidated and this is where things get interesting one test taker chose to sue the nbme for discrimination after being identified as a potential cheater claiming many napali students were being wrongfully targeted and that it violated their civil rights this case went to court and the judge ruled in favor of the nbme saying the choice to look at napali students was based on dat

a not discrimination us mily's calculations found there was less than one one in a 100 million chance that these test takers from the same region would have answers that matched so similarly so how did they get caught and why was the motion to restore scores denied the simple answer is math the emergency motion to restore score validity was denied by a Washington DC District Court Judge due to clear evidence of cheating each USMLE question is designed to take 90 seconds as that's generally the a

mount of time it takes to fully comprehend the question and answer the data shows this particular test taker got every single question right that they spent fewer than 20 seconds on while performing much worse on questions they took longer on Additionally the test taker claimed that the reason it only took them 20 seconds was because they were quickly guessing if this were true they naturally would not have guessed correctly 100% of the time when choosing between five different answer choices du

e to the strict anti-cheating measures USMLE exams have in place the performance of test takers on stolen questions shared in WhatsApp groups can be compared to their performance on the non-compromised test questions if they perform approximately the same across all questions it suggests the test taker was likely not cheating and raises the probability of a false positive in the USMLE system however if the test taker performs much worse on the non-compromised test questions it's a huge red flag

that indicates access to past test questions with all of their data it's extremely easy for the usml to find what they called a pattern of anomalous test performance suggesting prior unauthorized access to secure exam content the students who were suspected of having unauthorized access to past test questions have had their exams invalidated having their scores invalidated doesn't mean they cheated instead they now need to prove they didn't cheat those who received a message about an invalidated

score were given three options to choose from one they could request that nbme reconsider its decision this is a process that could take up to 10 weeks two they could choose to retake the test or three they could choose to do nothing for both options 1 and two the right to sue nbme would be waved if the identified cheater was aiming to match this year they now will no longer be eligible for this cycle as they no longer have a validated test score if they retake their exams and if they legitimat

ely pass they will be allowed to apply to the match again next year of course when they apply program directors will be able to look at their entire transcript and see the highly suspect invalidated score indicating they likely cheated on their prior exam attempt however the usml was able to go several years back to identify current residents and even attendings from Nepal who they think had access to secure exam content before they took their board exams because their ecfmg medical license whic

h is the licensing foreign medical graduates need to be able to practice in the US depends on having valid passing scores on USMLE Step 1 step two and step three these individuals will immediately lose their ability to practice in the US so what does this all mean for future Med students if you've already taken your step exams you don't need to worry that you might have received a worse score due to the abnormally High number of cheaters in the past few years the curve the USMLE uses is only bas

ed on MD students in the US and Canada who are firsttime test takers they set the curve for everyone else do's imgs fmgs and even repeat test takers have no influence on the curve if you already took the test honestly you can be rest assured that the score you received is actually yours and will not be invalidated due to usm's extremely high threshold and degree of certainty for catching cheating students there will likely be some false negatives which means some cheaters will slip through the c

racks however this degree of certainty all but ensures no false positives will occur meaning no one will be falsely accused of cheating lastly the unfortunate victims of this Scandal are the patients who have been treated by unqualified residents and Physicians as well as the imgs applying to match this year who were not involved in the cheating scandal the USM Elite will continue to heavily scrutinize test takers to ensure there is no variation in score reports they have already collected large

amounts of suspicious data in countries like Pakistan India and Jordan the organization will will be aggressive in assuring cheating is impossible on board exams as this is one of the best ways to make sure the Physicians practicing in the US are qualified to take care of patients here in the wake of this Scandal it's expected that they will create a great deal of new test questions along with removing the compromised ones from circulation at med school insiders we always aim to bring you the u

nbiased facts but if you want my unfiltered take on this cheating scandal check out my reaction video over on the Kevin Jal MD Channel