Understanding How Your Exam Is Scored
The AAMC collaborates with medical school representatives to develop the scoring key for the PREview exam (i.e., the key effectiveness rating for each response). These medical school representatives include admissions officers, faculty, student affairs representatives, and others who work closely with medical students and understand the expectations and professional standards of medical students.
Your PREview exam score is based on the extent to which the effectiveness ratings of your responses (items) align with medical educators’ consensus ratings. Full credit is awarded for an item if your rating matches a consensus of medical educators’ ratings. Half credit is awarded if your rating is one rating away from the medical educators’ consensus rating but still on the same side of the scale (i.e., Effective/Very Effective responses or Ineffective/Very Ineffective responses).
For example, if an item is keyed “Effective” and you rate it “Very Effective,” you receive half credit. If you rate the same item “Ineffective,” you do not receive credit as the item key is on the opposite side of the scale.
Higher scores suggest that your ratings align more closely with medical educators' consensus ratings, whereas lower scores mean your ratings align less closely.
Receiving Your Score
Scores will be released according to your testing window. Note the specific score release dates for each window in the Testing Calendar. When your score is available, the AAMC will send you an email with instructions on how to access your score report. If you elected to have your exam scored, your score report will include your total score, confidence band, and percentile rank table. AAMC staff will not provide scores over the phone.
Selecting and Reporting Your Score to Medical Schools
The process for reporting your scores to schools and programs varies depending on how you apply to the school. Your score report will include all exams you have taken and scored since 2020, regardless of when, how, and where your scores are reported.
Reporting Your Score to AMCAS Program-Participating Medical Schools
When you initiate or submit the AMCAS application, your PREview scores will be automatically uploaded to your AMCAS application. If you take the PREview exam after submitting your AMCAS application, your score will be automatically uploaded to your AMCAS application when it is available on the published score release date.
Selecting and Reporting Your Score to Schools That Do Not Participate in the AMCAS Program
When your score is available, or when you are ready to send your score report to a school that does not
participate in the AMCAS program, you must log in to the Testing Services Score Reporting System, where you will choose among the available options to release your scores. Once you request that your scores be released to institutions through the Testing Services Score Reporting System, all scores in your score report will be released to the authorized institutions as they become available.
Additionally, any new exams that you have scored within one calendar year after you release your score report will be automatically released to the authorized institution as the scores become available. If you receive new PREview scores more than a year after your request, you will need to submit a new request to have your new scores released to the authorized institutions other than those in the AMCAS program. For more information on how to release your scores, please visit our website.
Additional Score Reporting Information
Once you select to release your PREview score to an application service or specific school through one of the methods above, you may not retract your decision. The AAMC is not responsible for any claims for damages resulting from the delayed release of AAMC PREview scores for any reason.
Future AMCAS Application Cycle Score Reporting
The AAMC will retain your PREview score report indefinitely. If you reenter the medical school application process in a future application year, the AAMC will upload your PREview scores to your AMCAS application. If you apply to a participating program with its own application or that uses another application service, the AAMC will release all scores available at the time of release.
Score Cancellation
The PREview exam is a standardized test, which requires that certain aspects of the test remain constant across the entire testing population, including, but not limited to, the number of items, the competencies covered, the difficulty of the test overall, and the conditions under which the test is proctored.
In the event an irregularity occurs that results in one of the standardized aspects of your test being altered to the extent that you may have been unfairly impaired or advantaged, the AAMC may, at its sole discretion, cancel your score. In such a case, the score will not be disclosed to you, medical schools, or any other interested parties. There is no appeal process. If your score is canceled due to no fault of your own, the AAMC will make every effort to reschedule you into a new test date within the same testing year at no additional cost.