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.
For the April 9 to May 21, 2025 session, results will be available approximately 12 weeks after the session’s last day due to a standard-setting exercise to establish the new MCCQE Part I pass score.
For the August and October 2025 sessions, results will be available 4 weeks after the session’s last day.
You will receive a notification by email and a message in your physiciansapply.ca account stating that you can check your final MCCQE Part I result (for example, pass, fail) 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 MCCQE Part I results are only available in physiciansapply.ca and 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.
Your final MCCQE Part I result (e.g., pass, fail) is based solely on where your total score falls in relation to the pass score. 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. This means that you will pass if you meet or exceed the pass score regardless of how well other candidates perform.
The Exam Oversight Committee (EOC), composed of physicians and medical educators from across the country, is responsible for awarding pass/fail results to MCCQE Part I candidates.
A new pass score for the MCCQE Part I will be established through a rigorous standard-setting exercise that will take place in July 2025. During this exercise, a panel of physicians from across Canada will be guided through best practice methods to recommend a pass score that will be presented to the EOC for review and approval. The new pass score and new score scale approved by the EOC will be applied to the 2025 exam sessions. These new values will be shared as soon as they become available.
For all MCQs, each correct answer is scored 1 point and each incorrect answer is scored 0 (raw scores). While raw scores are necessary, they are insufficient to establish a candidate’s ability level. Simply adding up item scores does not accurately reflect a candidate’s ability since this does not consider the difficulty level of the items encountered in any test form. The total score is calculated using both the questions’ individual scores and their level of difficulty. More information on the MCCQE Part I scoring can be found in the MCCQE Part I Annual Technical Reports.
The MCCQE Part I assesses your performance with exam questions classified across two broad categories, each category with four domains:
MCCQE Part I subscores are presented graphically to indicate your relative strengths and weaknesses in each of the domains.
The MCCQE Part I is a criterion-referenced exam for which the pass/fail result is determined by comparing an individual candidate’s score to a standard (as reflected by the pass score), regardless of how others perform.
Passing means that the candidate has demonstrated the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes, as part of a requirement for medical licensure in Canada to enter supervised clinical practice.
Your total score is reported as a scaled score ranging from 100 to 400 with a mean of 250 and a standard deviation of 30. The mean and standard deviation were set using the results from the April 2018 session. Results from the April 2018 and subsequent sessions will be reported using this scale, allowing you to compare candidate performance across sessions beginning with the April 2018 session.
On this new scale, the pass score that was recommended and approved is 226. This pass score will remain in place until the next standard-setting exercise.
Prior to 2018, there was a different blueprint for the MCCQE Part I. The scale ranged from 50 to 950 with a mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100. The mean and standard deviation were set using the results from the spring 2015 session.
Because the exams are different and based on different blueprints, you cannot directly compare scores from before 2018 to those in 2018 (and beyond).
Every few years, the MCC brings together a panel of Canadian physicians to define an acceptable level of performance and establish the pass score for the MCCQE Part I through a standard-setting exercise.
In June 2018, the MCC completed a rigorous standard-setting exercise based on expert judgments from a panel of 22 physicians from across the country that represented various faculties of medicine, specialties and years of experience supervising students and residents.
The panel recommended a pass score of 226 on a reporting scale of 100 to 400 that was approved by the Central Examination Committee (CEC). The CEC was composed of physicians and medical educators from across the country and responsible for awarding results to MCCQE Part I candidates. In August 2021, the CEC was replaced by the Exam Oversight Committee (EOC), a committee now responsible for oversight of all MCC examinations. For more information on the MCCQE Part I standard-setting exercise, see the Technical Reports on this topic.
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