The MCC has a highly rigorous scoring system and a robust quality assurance process in place to ensure that each candidate’s performance is properly assessed. Before final results are released, multiple levels of verification are conducted to ensure they are accurately reported.
Results will be available approximately 8 weeks after the last day of the National Assessment Collaboration (NAC) Examination session.
You will receive a notification by email and a message in your physiciansapply.ca account stating that you can check your NAC Examination final result (e.g., fail, pass) through your account.
Shortly after you receive this message, two documents will be uploaded to your account:
To prevent fraud and to protect confidentiality, your NAC Examination result is never given over the phone or by email.
Note: The MCC conducts a post-exam quality assessment review and adjusts the scoring framework for an exam if and where the MCC determines, in its sole and absolute discretion, it is necessary and/or appropriate to ensure the validity or integrity of the examination. The MCC’s decisions in this regard are final and are not subject to appeal.
There are no time restrictions on the result for the NAC Examination, regardless of when or how long ago the exam was taken. If you took the NAC Examination more than once, the most recent result will be the only valid result. It is up to the candidate if they want to retake the NAC Examination to attempt to improve their score.
Your final NAC Examination result (e.g., pass, fail) is based solely on where your total score falls in relation to the pass score.
Your total NAC Examination score is reported on a scale from 500 to 700 with a pass score of 577.
A total score equal to or greater than the pass score is a pass, and a total score less than the pass score is a fail. All candidates who meet or exceed the pass score will pass the NAC Examination regardless of how well other candidates perform.
The NAC Examination consists of 12 stations, 2 of which are pilot stations that will not count toward your final score. Each station is worth the same as every other station. Your total score is the average of your 10 station scores.
The total score is adjusted via a statistical process called “linking” to reflect the level of difficulty of the stations experienced by candidates on a given exam date.
Stations are scored by physician examiners (PEs). In some situations the examiner may be another medical professional. Examiners observe your interactions with standardized participants (SPs) and score your performance on each station according to a standardized scoring instrument that includes a checklist of tasks, answer key to oral questions, and rating scales that are designed to assess up to 7 competencies.
These competencies include:
Standardized guidelines are used for exam administration, the training of PEs and SPs, and predetermined scoring instruments are used for the NAC Examination.
Your NAC Examination subscores are presented graphically to indicate your relative strengths and weaknesses in each of the domains. To calculate subscores, the seven assessed competencies are grouped into the following three broad domains that reflect a physician’s scope of practice:
Subscores are calculated by converting the items associated with each domain to a percentage score. These items include those found on the checklists, oral questions, and rating scales across the 10 scored stations.
The NAC Examination is a criterion-referenced exam. This means that a candidate’s performance will be compared against the established performance standard, not against the performance of other candidates. Candidates who meet or exceed the standard will pass the exam regardless of how well other candidates perform on it.
In May 2023, the MCC established a new pass score. The pass score was calculated using an overall assessment scale provided by physician examiners during the scoring of the May 2023 NAC Examination. The pass score of 577 was reviewed and approved by the Exam Oversight Committee (EOC) for the NAC Examination starting in May 2023. The EOC is composed of physicians and medical educators from across the country and is responsible for awarding pass/fail results to the NAC Examination candidates.
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