The national numbers.

Step 1 first-time pass rates

Step 1 became pass/fail in January 2022, and the passing standard was raised from 194 to 196 at the same time. The "pass/fail effect" is visible below: the national first-time pass rate for U.S. MD students fell from 96% to 93% in one year.

Source: USMLE Performance Data, published by the USMLE program. "First-time" means first attempt; eventual pass rates are higher and are a different number — never conflate them. Note: starting in 2025, USMLE groups Canadian-school examinees with non-U.S. examinees (previously with U.S.), so 2025 U.S. figures exclude Canada — a small asterisk on year-over-year comparisons.

Step 2 CK norms

Since Step 1 went pass/fail, Step 2 Clinical Knowledge is the score residency programs see — and its pass rate is far higher than Step 1's, while the mean score has stayed put. The passing standard rose to 218 effective July 1, 2025.

Source: USMLE Performance Data. Note the repeat-taker drop: the pass rate falls to roughly three-quarters on a second attempt. Our read: first-attempt pass is a career variable, not just a school metric.

Step 3

Source: USMLE Performance Data. Step 3 is taken during residency — mentioned here for completeness; it doesn't affect your residency application.

What NBME publishes — and what it doesn't

Honesty matters more than completeness, so here's the boundary of public knowledge:

• Published: USMLE Step 1, Step 2 CK, and Step 3 performance data — first-time pass rates by broad examinee group (U.S. MD, U.S. DO, non-U.S.), score norms, and passing-standard changes. The USMLE program (co-sponsored by the NBME and FSMB) releases this annually.
• Not published: NBME subject ("shelf") exam national norms are not released publicly — schools receive them, the public doesn't. NBME self-assessment (CBSSA/CBSE) score data isn't published either. Treat anyone quoting "national shelf averages" without a citable source with skepticism.
• Not published: pass rates by individual school. The USMLE reports only broad groups. If a school quotes its own rate, ask whether it's first-time or eventual — those are different numbers, and the eventual rate is always higher.

How to read these numbers

• First-time vs. eventual. These are all first-attempt figures. Eventual pass rates (after retakes) are higher. When a school quotes its pass rate, ask which one it is.
• Year matters. Never average across years in a way that hides a trend — the Step 1 table above shows why.
• Distance from national, not a fixed bar. Regulators don't use a fixed pass-rate cutoff; they look at how far a school sits below the national rate. The same idea applies to you: what matters is where you are relative to the national picture, not whether you clear some magic number.

What to do with the numbers

Sources

• USMLE Performance Data — Step 1/2/3 first-time and repeat-taker pass rates, score norms, and passing-standard changes.
• NRMP: 2024 Program Director Survey results — official record of the applicant factors directors weigh when deciding whom to interview.
• NRMP: Charting Outcomes, 2026 (now published annually; reports medians, not means) — matched-senior Step 2 CK score data by specialty.

Figures as published through 2026-09-30. The NBME and NRMP publish new data on their own schedules; check the official sites for the latest editions.