Indicates sessions with Audience Response Systems (ARS) or Poll Everywhere available
Indicates sessions that require a ticket for attendance
Indicates Practice Management and Allied Staff Sessions Day Pass. Visit the 
Indicates sessions with recordings available for purchase.Sam S. Bae, Adina Robinson, Sean P. Edwards
Statement of the Problem
The Comprehensive Basic Sciences Exam (CBSE) is a standardized examination created by the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) to provide medical schools with a tool for measuring examinees' understanding of the basic sciences. The medical students utilize this examination as a study tool to help them prepare for the Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE). The American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (AAOMS) have recently started to require applicants to the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (OMFS) residency training programs to take the CBSE. This was implemented starting the 2013 application cycle, to “provide an enhanced mechanism for OMFS training programs to evaluate applicants for the residency positions”. However, interpretation of the CBSE scores remains a controversial issue. OMFS program directors are still trying to figure out how to utilize the CBSE scores to help evaluate the quality and the academic ability of the applicants. This peaked our interest to determine the value of the CBSE in predicting the quality of the applicants applying to the University of Michigan OMFS residency program, in relation to other measures of academic achievement, namely the undergraduate GPA, dental school GPA, and dental school class ranking.
Study Aims
1. To determine the correlation between CBSE scores and the applicants' undergraduate GPA, dental school GPA, and dental school class rank.
2. To determine whether CBSE scores impact the program’s decision to invite vs. waitlist vs. reject candidates to interviews.
Methods of Data Analysis
This is a retrospective study based on two groups of data, i.e. two application cycles (2013 and 214). The 2013 group consists of 111 applicants and the 2014 group consists of 105 applicants, leading to a total sample size of 216. Of these, only 178 applicants met our inclusion criteria and 38 applicants were excluded from our analysis. All 178 applicants had CBSE scores and college GPAs available for analysis, while only 129 out of 178 had dental school GPAs with or without dental school rankings. All of the demographic and academic data of the applicants to the University of Michigan OMFS residency program were obtained from the American Dental Education Association Postdoctoral Application Support Service (ADEA PASS).
Results
Preliminary results demonstrate significant correlations between CBSE scores and dental school GPA (p=0.001), dental school rank (p=0.000), and college GPA (p=0.0423). CBSE scores do not play a significant role in the decision to invite (p=0.104) or waitlist (p=0.241) a candidate. However, the probability of receiving a rejection decreases by approximately 1.57% with each point increase in the CBSE score (p=0.002). The mean CBSE score of invited, waitlisted, and rejected candidates are 67.13 (SD 10.93), 62.86 (SD 8.24), and 58.99 (SD 8.79), respectively. CBSE scores do not have a significant effect on incomplete or withdrawn applications (p=0.279).
Conclusions
Correlation results indicate that applicants with higher dental school and college performance tend to score higher on the CBSE. Regression analysis suggests that CBSE scores are used as a minimum cutoff or threshold in the decision to reject a candidate. In other words, CBSE scores do not seem to help with the decision to invite a candidate but low scores guarantee a rejection. Also, CBSE scores are not the reason why candidates withdraw or fail to complete their application. We will continue to add data from subsequent application cycles for analysis. Our long-term goal is to undergo a multi-center study to assess CBSE score with resident performance.