Commercial national board review programs. A case study at the Medical College of Georgia

For a long period, students have been taking national board examination review programs offered by commercial firms. The one question to which faculty and students would like the answer is, "Do the national board review programs offered by these commercial firms do any good?" Events at the Medical College of Georgia have provided an opportunity to gather data toward an answer to this question. In 1976, thirty-three medical students at the Medical College of Georgia enrolled in a commercial national board review program. Performance of these students was compared with the predicted performance of these students had they not taken the national board review program. The results suggest that the commercial review program did not notably help these students.