Written by Dr. Roupen Odabashian MD, FRCPC, FASC
Hematologist-Oncologist | Founder, MeDucation AI | Updated August 2026
Your In-Training Exam percentile is the best single predictor you have of whether you will pass your boards. It is better than your program director's assessment of your medical knowledge, and that is a published finding rather than an opinion.[1] At the same time, both heme/onc in-training exams are designed as low stakes and neither is pass/fail.[3][4] So the correct response to a bad score is neither panic nor dismissal. It is to treat the score report as a diagnostic map, act on it in the ways the evidence actually supports, and re-test yourself often enough that you stop guessing about your own knowledge.
What predicts your board score, ranked by strength of evidence?
The ranking below comes from the one study of hematology and medical oncology fellows, co-authored by staff at ABIM, the NBME, ASH and ASCO. Betas are standardized regression coefficients; higher means a stronger association with certification score.[1]
Rank | Predictor | Outcome | Beta | Odds of passing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Oncology ITE score | Medical Oncology Certification Exam | 0.45 | OR 1.013 per scaled score point (95% CI 1.011 to 1.016) |
2 | Hematology ISE score | Hematology Certification Exam | 0.41 | OR 1.012 per scaled score point (95% CI 1.008 to 1.015) |
3 | Program director rating of medical knowledge | Medical Oncology Certification Exam | 0.07, weakest in the model | Not reported |
4 | Program director rating of medical knowledge | Hematology Certification Exam | Not significantly predictive | Not reported |
Two cautions. Those odds ratios are per single scaled score point, so they look trivially small; converting 1.013 into "1.3% better odds" would misrepresent them. And the abstract reports no sample size, study years or variance explained, so I cannot tell you how many fellows this covers and will not invent a number.
The practical meaning is narrow. If your program director tells you not to worry about a 20th percentile because you present well on rounds, that is generous and it is not evidence. The instrument validated against the outcome you care about is the one you already took. The reverse holds: if your percentile is strong and someone calls you not board-ready, that impression is also weakly grounded.
Which exams are we actually talking about?
Two exams, two societies, different dates and prices, and dual-boarding fellows take both. Names matter, because program directors notice: ASCO runs an In-Training Examination (ITE), ASH runs an In-Service Exam (ISE). "ASH ITE" is wrong.
ASCO MedOnc In-Training Examination | ASH Hematology In-Service Exam | |
|---|---|---|
Built with | NBME; first administered February 2008[2] | NBME; used by programs since 2009[4] |
Format and length | Case-based, single best answer, 200 questions, about 6 hours[3] | Six hours, starts 9:00 a.m. local time, completed the day it is started. ASH publishes no question count[4] |
Stakes | "Not pass/fail in nature, but a low-stakes exam intended for self-evaluation and program improvement"[3] | "A low-stakes exam intended to be used as a medical knowledge competency assessment tool"[4] |
Registration | Through your program[3] | Programs only. "Individual registration is not available." You cannot self-register or retake it independently[4] |
Dates | February 24 and 25, 2026; deadline February 1, 2026; make-up March 5, 2026[3] | 2027 cycle: registration November 2, 2026 to February 5, 2027; exam March 23 and 24, 2027; back-up March 30; scores May 2027[4] |
Price | $280 per trainee for ASCO members, $400 non-members, $50 per program director or faculty member, $25 to $75 for eligible lower income countries. Posted on the page still showing the 2025 cycle; the 2026 page shows no pricing. Treat as 2025 prices[3] | $275 ASH members, $325 non-members, $60 for one key faculty member. No-show refunds issued minus the $25 registration fee[4] |
Scope | Medical oncology[3] | Adult only; ASH strongly advises pediatric fellows not register[4] |
As of August 2026, ASCO's two domains are out of sync (asco.org shows 2026, society.asco.org still shows 2025 and is the only page carrying prices) and ASH's page mixes 2026 and 2027 between its key dates table and its FAQs. Confirm your cycle with your coordinator. ASCO built the ITE with the NBME in response to the ACGME Outcome Project and first administered it in February 2008.[2] It was a feedback instrument from day one, not a gate.
So what is a good ITE score?
There is no fixed number. The exams are norm-referenced, the bar rises each training year, and no society publishes a heme/onc threshold.
Norm-referenced versus criterion-referenced
Both in-training exams rank you against peers at your level. ASH reports scores by fellowship class and says the critical part of roster verification is placing fellows in the correct cohort, "as scores are reported for each class of fellows."[4] ASCO gives a scaled score plus a percentile rank by fellowship year.[5] ABIM works the opposite way. It is criterion-referenced: "the minimum passing score reflects an absolute standard that is independent of the performance of any group of candidates," set by the Angoff method, with unanswered questions scored as incorrect. Overall performance is reported on a 200 to 800 scale with a mean of 500, and content subscores are in standard deviation units on a scale that cannot be compared with it.[9] So your ITE percentile is relative and the board is absolute. A strong incoming cohort can pull your percentile down in a year when your knowledge went up. Do not read a five point move as a fact about your brain. And the "you need a 366 to pass" figure on the forums comes from an ABIM sample report for a Spring 2015 Internal Medicine Maintenance of Certification exam. It is not the heme or onc passing score; ABIM publishes none for either subspecialty.[9]
What is on the score report?
The most detailed public description of the ASCO report is from 2014, by Steven J. Cohen, MD, then a heme/onc program director and Chair-Elect of ASCO's Test Materials Development Committee, so the format may have changed.[5] Four elements: a scaled score; a percentile rank by fellowship year; percent correct in each topic against test takers in the same year; and educational objectives tied to the questions you missed. ASCO's current description matches that and adds a standardized mean and standard deviation allowing comparison of trainees.[3] The questions are withheld, because the item bank is reused.[5] ASH ISE scores post in the NBME portal about two months out and are not sent to individual programs.[4] ASH publishes no sample report and does not use the words "percentile" or "scaled score," so I will not claim the ISE report shows one; what is documented is reporting by class, which is what norm-referenced means.
Cohen's framing is the most useful sentence available on how to read yours: "A fellow's 'score' on the ITE is actually the least important aspect of the test. How one can identify areas for improvement and focus on self-study is critical." And, for program directors: "the results should not be punitive. They should not be used to determine promotion or successful program completion."[5]
Is there a published cutoff for heme/onc fellows?
No. Every threshold you will hear quoted is internal medicine residency data, and I am extrapolating when I use it.
Finding | Population and year | Caveat |
|---|---|---|
35th percentile on the PGY-2 IM-ITE: positive predictive value 89% for passing, negative predictive value 83% for failing. R² with certification score 0.593 at PGY-2, 0.677 at PGY-3 | 109 IM residents, 6 programs, 1992[10] | 34-year-old data, different exam, residency not fellowship |
At or above the 35th percentile: "pass" predictive value 88.2%, "fail" predictive value only 53.5% | 223 IM residents, 8 hospitals, 1994[10] | Verified only through a 2024 review's evidence table, not the primary abstract |
A 2024 review summarizes the field as below the 35th percentile signals risk, above the 70th predicts passing | IM literature, 2024[10] | The review mis-attributes some of its own figures, and the above-70th claim traces to no primary abstract. Unverified |
IM-ITE had the strongest association with passing, ahead of all USMLE Step scores, milestones, age, gender and school location. "Residents must score higher on the IM-ITE with each subsequent administration to maintain the same estimated probability of passing" | 9,676 PGY-1, 11,424 PGY-2 and 10,239 PGY-3 IM residents, 2020[10] | Largest cohort available. Internal medicine, not oncology |
Take two things from that. First, the asymmetry: a high ITE predicts passing far more reliably than a low ITE predicts failing (53.5%, barely better than a coin flip). A bad score does not say you will fail; it says your probability estimate worsened and you now have information. Second, there is no fixed good number, because the bar rises. Cohen wanted his own fellows' numbers to climb across three years, while noting gains from second to third year may be small for those already high; that is expert opinion, not data.[5] Trajectory does have data behind it in a sibling specialty: among 1,918 third-year cardiology fellows, ITE score was the strongest predictor of certification performance, and in a secondary analysis of the 511 who sat the exam in both their first and third years, the change in score was itself a strong predictor (p < 0.001).[13]
What does the ABIM blueprint say you should be studying?
Study the blueprint, not whatever syllabus you have. Both are dated January 2026. I give top-level categories only: sub-topic weights carry more uncertainty, and the medical oncology document tags subtopics HIGH, MEDIUM or LOW relevance, with LOW meaning the topic will not appear at all.
Medical Oncology content category, January 2026[7] | Target % |
|---|---|
Breast Cancer | 13.5% |
Gastrointestinal Cancer | 13.5% |
Hematologic Neoplasms | 13% |
Genitourinary Cancer | 12% |
Thoracic Cancer | 11.5% |
Palliative Care, Survivorship, and Communication | 11% |
Skin Cancer, Sarcomas, and Unknown Primary Site | 7% |
Clinical Research Methodology and Ethics | 6.5% |
Head, Neck, Thyroid, and Central Nervous System Malignancies | 6.5% |
Gynecologic Cancer | 5.5% |
Total | 100% |
Direct link: ABIM Medical Oncology Certification blueprint (PDF). One oddity, so you do not think you are misreading it: ABIM names that second category two ways in the same document. Page 1 says "Palliative Care, Survivorship, and Communication"; the page 2 outline heads the same 11% category "Palliative Care, Survivorship, and Oncologic Complications." The weight is 11% either way. Health equity runs as a cross-content category spanning multiple areas, including health literacy and language barriers, food insecurity, and cost constraints. This blueprint states no question count and no duration.[7]
Medical Oncology task dimension[7] | Target % |
|---|---|
Treatment / Care Decisions | 60% |
Diagnosis / Testing | 25% |
Risk Assessment / Prognosis / Epidemiology | 10% |
Pathophysiology / Basic Science | 5% |
That second axis should change how you study. Sixty percent of the medical oncology exam is treatment and care decisions; 5% is pathophysiology and basic science.[7] Prepare by re-reading mechanism-of-action tables and you are optimizing for one twentieth of the exam. The high-yield version is: given this stage, this molecular profile, this performance status and this prior line, what do you do next. That is what the case-based ASCO ITE tests too.[3]
Hematology content category, January 2026[7] | % of exam |
|---|---|
Hematologic Neoplastic Disorders | 35% |
Coagulation | 27% |
Hematopoietic System | 25% |
Cellular Therapy | 8% |
Transfusion Medicine | 5% |
Total | 100% |
Direct link: ABIM Hematology Certification blueprint (PDF). Two verbatim details fellows miss. Format: "The exam is composed of up to 240 single-best-answer multiple-choice questions, of which approximately 40 are new questions that do not count in the examinee's score." Only the hematology blueprint gives a count; it does not apply to medical oncology. And questions in any category may address pregnancy and contraception topics important to hematology practice, approximately 4% of the exam.[7] The large sub-weights are B-cell neoplasms 13%, disorders of red blood cells or iron 21% within the Hematopoietic System, thrombosis 10%, and acute leukemias and myelodysplasia 8%. Turning weights into a calendar is the exercise in this six month ABIM heme and onc study plan.
How likely are you to pass in the end?
Very likely, and the most reassuring figure available is one almost nobody knows exists. ABIM reports a 98% ultimate pass rate across initial certification for 2008 to 2025, footnoted as including at least three subsequent exam years.[6] That figure is a single aggregate printed above the whole table. ABIM does publish specialty-specific ultimate pass rates elsewhere: its 2026 Hematology and Medical Oncology Diplomate Reports each state a 98% ultimate pass rate for the cohort whose board eligibility expired in 2025.[6]
First-time pass rate[6] | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Medical Oncology | 630 takers / 91% | 678 / 92% | 702 / 92% | 720 / 90% | 749 / 90% |
Hematology | 531 takers / 90% | 522 / 94% | 592 / 92% | 562 / 94% | 627 / 93% |
Internal Medicine (context) | 9,506 / 88% | 9,868 / 87% | 10,003 / 87% | 10,533 / 87% | 10,743 / 86% |
ABIM's own caution, verbatim: "Because the performance of small numbers of examinees can have a significant effect on results, pass rates for examinations with less than 200 takers should be interpreted cautiously."[6] Hematology moved 90, 94, 92, 94, 93 across five years on cohorts of roughly 520 to 630. Most of that is noise.
What actually works when the score is low, and what is folklore?
Decide first which problem you have. The most useful framing comes from a 2024 narrative review of the internal medicine evidence: "Question banks remain an essential foundation; clinical reasoning curricula may also play a valuable role in learning augmentation, especially for learners who struggle with cognitive bias and error in clinical reasoning, rather than knowledge deficits."[10] Your topic-level report tells you which you are. Scattered misses across every domain looks like reasoning or timing. Two domains at the floor with the rest intact looks like a knowledge gap.
Intervention | Evidence | Population | How much to trust it |
|---|---|---|---|
Repeated testing instead of repeated study | Randomized: 13 percentage points higher at more than 6 months (39% vs 26%), p < 0.001, d = 0.91 | 40 pediatric and emergency medicine residents[12] | Highest. Cleanest randomized design here, though small |
Spaced repetition | Randomized: learning at quarter 6, 58.03% vs 43.20%, d = 0.62; knowledge transfer at quarter 10, 58.33% vs 52.39%, d = 0.26; double spacing beat single for learning, 62.24% vs 51.83%, d = 0.43 | 26,258 randomized family physicians and residents, 2020 to 2023[12] | High. Best powered study available. Transfer effects are much smaller than learning effects |
Spaced repetition by email | Null. No benefit in residents overall (RR 1.01, 95% CI 0.83 to 1.22, p = 0.95); benefit only in interns (RR 0.83, 95% CI 0.70 to 0.99, p = 0.04), attributed to engagement | Medical residents, randomized self-matched[12] | High, and the reason I include it. Spacing is not magic; delivery and engagement decide |
Required question-bank volume in weak domains | Residents below the 25th percentile in any of 12 content areas completed a set share of a question bank in that domain. Mean ITE percentile across all 12 rose, p < 0.001 | 164 internal medicine residents, single institution[11] | Moderate. Uncontrolled quality improvement, several changes at once |
That program's board pass rate | Three-year rolling first-time pass rate 78% (SD 7) to 97% (SD 3), but p = 0.12, not statistically significant | Same IM cohort[10][11] | Low. This number circulates without its p-value. It should not |
More clinic in the weak subject | No correlation between subspecialty rotations and performance on that exam section. "Clinical time alone is inadequate preparation" | 131 first-time IM certification takers[10] | Moderate, via the review not the primary paper. It contradicts the intuitive fix |
Standard conference attendance | Standard contents (conferences) do not correlate with certification passage, while targeted clinical reasoning and remediation plans do | IM literature synthesis[10] | Moderate. A synthesis, not a trial |
None of that was studied in heme/onc fellows, and our own literature is thin. A 2025 ASCO abstract describes a board review series built on the ABIM medical oncology blueprint that raised curriculum participation from 10% to over 50% and monthly test participation from 3% to 53%; those are participation metrics, and the abstract says the effect on ITE and board scores "will be assessed," future tense. No score outcomes exist yet.[11] A UNC chemotherapy curriculum improved self-reported comfort, including comfort taking the ASCO ITE (p = 0.002), in 11 fellows without a control group; its ITE claim does not survive inspection, because the program's raw pharmacology subscore fell from 64% to 61% while the national average fell further, 68% to 60%.[11] Give the counterweight equal weight, too: the same review that endorses question banks warns that "enrolling 'at-risk' individuals in remediation programs may be associated with stigma and may not be grounded in strong evidence for board exam preparation."[10] If you are a program director, the best-supported move is targeted question-bank volume in weak domains, not a formal remediation designation.
Which study resources are worth buying?
My conflict of interest is live here, so I will be concrete about who wins where. In a single-program pre-survey of 22 heme/onc fellows reported in a 2025 ASCO abstract, ASCO-SEP and ASH-SAP were the primary study resources for 88%.[11] For good reason: they are the society-authored, blueprint-aligned reference texts, and if you want one source of truth per discipline, that is what they are. I would not tell a fellow to skip them. MeDucation, which I founded, is a heme/onc question bank written and reviewed by practicing board-certified hematologist-oncologists rather than generated by AI, with explanations covering why each distractor is wrong, PubMed links, and FSRS spaced-repetition flashcards. It is the wrong choice if you want an authoritative text to read cover to cover; I compared the options in this heme/onc question bank comparison. The instruction the evidence supports is vendor-neutral and boring: answer questions under timed conditions, space the review of what you missed, and do it in the domains your report flagged.
What should you do, by percentile band?
This is my synthesis, not a published algorithm. The bands come from internal medicine residency data extrapolated to heme/onc fellowship, which nobody has validated. Triage tool, not prophecy.
Band | What it predicts | Next 30 days | Next 6 months | Involve your PD? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
70th and above | In IM data, high scores predict passing reliably | Read the topic-level report anyway and note your two weakest domains. Strong overall scores routinely hide one domain at the floor | Low-volume retrieval practice to hold position. Flat is a relative decline, because the bar rises each administration | Routine semi-annual review only |
50th to 69th | Nothing alarming and nothing to coast on. No heme/onc threshold is published at all | Rank domains by percent correct, take the bottom three, start timed blocks in those only | Follow blueprint weights, not your interests. Breast, GI, hematologic neoplasms, GU and thoracic are roughly 63.5% of the medical oncology exam | Mention your plan at your semi-annual evaluation |
35th to 49th | Below the range IM studies treat as reassuring. A signal, not a verdict | Diagnose the pattern before touching content: scattered misses (reasoning or timing) versus two floors (knowledge). The fix differs | Question-bank volume in flagged domains, spaced review of misses, and a full-length timed re-test at 3 months | Raise it yourself before the report reaches them. Ask for protected study time, not a label |
Below 35th | In 1992 IM data the negative predictive value here was 83%; in 1994 IM data the "fail" predictive value was only 53.5%. Both are residency data over 30 years old. Elevated risk, not a sentence | Rule out mechanics first: unfinished sections, test anxiety (a significant negative predictor of exam performance in the medical student literature), and a method built on re-reading | Retrieval-first with spaced review in the weak domains. Full-length timed blocks at least every 8 weeks. More clinic in the weak subject will not fix it alone | Yes, proactively. Your program must develop plans for fellows failing to progress, and you would rather co-write that plan than receive it[8] |
Any band, declining year over year | Trajectory independently predicted certification performance in cardiology fellows, and a flat percentile means falling behind, since IM residents had to score higher each administration to hold the same probability of passing[13] | Compare topic-level reports side by side across years, not just the headline percentile | Treat a two-year decline as a low band, whatever the absolute number | Yes. This is the pattern everyone misses, including you |
What is your program accountable for, and what are you?
You are not accountable to ACGME for your ITE score. Your program is accountable for eventual board pass rates, which is why it cares about yours.
A full-text search of the current ACGME Program Requirements for Graduate Medical Education in Hematology and Medical Oncology (interim revision September 3, 2025, effective the same day) returns no requirement that fellows sit an in-training or in-service exam at all.[8] Participation is a program decision, as one fellowship director put it in 2013: fellows may be required at their institution to take the ITE "not only for their own edification but also to help program directors understand their program's own needs for improvement and development."[5]
What ACGME does require, under the Common Program Requirements for fellowships, is that a program's aggregate first-time pass rate over the preceding three years exceed the bottom fifth percentile of programs in that subspecialty, with a safe harbor: any program whose graduates reach an 80 percent pass rate meets the requirement regardless of rank. The rationale is that a single fixed standard is not supportable given the heterogeneity of exam psychometrics, so the percentile approach identifies the lowest five percent of programs and sets them "on a path to curricular and test preparation reform."[8] ACGME never mentions the ITE, but grades programs on a board outcome arriving years later, and the ITE is the only early warning instrument a program has. That is the entire explanation for institutional anxiety about your score.
Three requirements are worth knowing by number in a difficult conversation. 5.1.c: the program director or designee, with input from the Clinical Competency Committee, must review each fellow's documented semi-annual evaluation with them, including progress along the subspecialty Milestones. 5.1.e: the program must develop plans for fellows failing to progress. 2.5.h: the program director must ensure compliance with institutional policies on grievances and due process, including when action is taken to suspend or dismiss, not to promote, or not to renew a fellow's appointment.[8] (ACGME renumbered in the 2025 reformatted edition; 5.1.e previously sat in the Roman numeral V.A. series.) The Hematology and Medical Oncology Milestones, Version 2, Second Revision, August 2019, are explicitly formative, and the ITE is not named in them as a data source.[8] A program converting your percentile into a Milestone level is following local practice, not ACGME.
Why is a bad score this year actually an advantage?
Because it is information you received years before it counts, which is the entire reason the exam exists. The MedOnc ITE was built for self-evaluation and program improvement, the ASH ISE for knowledge assessment and curricular feedback.[3][4] Neither certifies anything, and neither should decide promotion or program completion.[5] A fellow at the 22nd percentile in February of PGY-4 has roughly two and a half years of runway and a domain-by-domain map of the gaps. A fellow who never takes it learns the same thing on results day for an exam that comes once a year.
The failure mode is not the low score. It is treating it as a verdict, going quiet, and arriving at the boards having changed nothing. Reportedly about 90% of residents do change study habits after an ITE, though I could not verify that to a primary source.[10] Be in that group, and be specific about what you changed. For how the ITE and the boards fit together across a fellowship, see this ITE and ABIM strategy guide.
Frequently asked questions
Is the heme/onc In-Training Exam pass or fail?
No. ASCO states that the Medical Oncology In-Training Examination is "not pass/fail in nature, but a low-stakes exam intended for self-evaluation and program improvement," and ASH describes its Hematology In-Service Exam as "a low-stakes exam intended to be used as a medical knowledge competency assessment tool." Neither certifies anything, and a fellowship program director writing in ASCO Connection has stated that results should not be punitive and should not be used to determine promotion or successful program completion.
What percentile do I need on the heme/onc ITE to pass my boards?
Nobody publishes a threshold for hematology or medical oncology fellows. The cutoffs you will hear quoted come from internal medicine residency studies published in 1992 and 1994, and the claim that above the 70th percentile predicts passing could not be traced to a primary source. In the 1994 internal medicine data, as reported in a 2024 narrative review's evidence table, a low score predicted failing with only 53.5% accuracy, while a score at or above the 35th percentile predicted passing with 88.2% accuracy. A high score is far more informative than a low one.
Does the ITE really predict board performance better than my program director's assessment?
Yes, in the one study that examined hematology and medical oncology fellows specifically. Hematology In-Service Exam scores were the strongest predictor of Hematology Certification Examination scores, at a standardized beta of 0.41, and oncology In-Training Examination scores were the strongest predictor of Medical Oncology Certification Examination scores, at a beta of 0.45. Program director ratings of medical knowledge were the weakest predictor for medical oncology, at a beta of 0.07, and were not significantly predictive of hematology certification scores at all. The study was co-authored by staff from ABIM, the NBME, ASH and ASCO.
What happens if I fail my hematology or medical oncology boards?
Most people who fail eventually pass. ABIM reports a 98% ultimate pass rate across initial certification for 2008 to 2025, defined as including at least three subsequent exam years. ABIM also publishes a 98% ultimate pass rate specifically for Hematology and for Medical Oncology in its 2026 Diplomate Reports, for the cohort whose board eligibility expired in 2025. First-time pass rates in 2025 were 90% in medical oncology and 93% in hematology.
Is taking the ITE required by ACGME?
No. A full-text search of the current ACGME Program Requirements for Graduate Medical Education in Hematology and Medical Oncology, revised September 3, 2025, returns no requirement that fellows participate in an in-training or in-service examination. Participation is set at the program level. What ACGME does require is that a program's aggregate first-time board pass rate over the preceding three years exceeds the bottom fifth percentile of programs in the subspecialty, with any program reaching an 80 percent pass rate meeting the requirement regardless of rank.
References
Collichio FA, Hess BJ, Muchmore EA, et al. Medical Knowledge Assessment by Hematology and Medical Oncology In-Training Examinations Are Better Than Program Director Assessments at Predicting Subspecialty Certification Examination Performance. J Cancer Educ. 2017;32(3):647-654. PubMed
Collichio FA, et al. Developing an in-training examination for fellows: the experience of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. J Clin Oncol. 2009;27(10):1706-11. PubMed
ASCO. Medical Oncology In-Training Examination: 2026 cycle page; 2025 cycle page with pricing.
American Society of Hematology. Hematology In-Service Exam; NBME score access instructions (PDF).
Cohen SJ. ASCO In-Training Exam Score Reports: What You Do with It Matters Most!ASCO Connection, April 22, 2014; Masters GA, Mehan PT. ASCO's Medical Oncology Training Exam: Two Perspectives. ASCO Connection, April 17, 2013.
ABIM. Initial Certification Pass Rates and Ultimate Pass Rates, 2008 to 2025 (PDF); Hematology Diplomate Report 2026 (PDF); Medical Oncology Diplomate Report 2026 (PDF)
ABIM Certification Examination Blueprints, January 2026: Medical Oncology (PDF); Hematology (PDF); blueprint index.
ACGME. Program Requirements for GME in Hematology and Medical Oncology (PDF), revised September 3, 2025; Common Program Requirements, Fellowship (PDF), effective July 1, 2026; Hematology and Medical Oncology Milestones Version 2 (PDF), August 2019.
ABIM. Score Report Information; Hematology scoring and results; sample score report (PDF, Spring 2015 Internal Medicine MOC exemplar).
Internal medicine ITE prediction literature: Smith DT, Matelski AT, Kirkconnell Hall MA, et al. J Gen Intern Med. 2025;40(4):879. PMC; Grossman RS, et al. J Gen Intern Med. 1992;7(1):63-7. PubMed; Waxman H, et al. J Gen Intern Med. 1994;9(12):692-4. PubMed; IM-ITE and certification cohort study, Acad Med. 2020;95(9). PubMed.
Remediation and curricular interventions: Dokmak A, et al. Med Educ Online. 2020;25(1):1686950. PubMed; Shah M, et al. J Clin Oncol. 2025;43(16_suppl):e21011. Abstract; Sorah JD, Clark-Garvey S, Collichio FA. J Cancer Educ.PMC.
Retrieval practice and spaced repetition: Larsen DP, Butler AC, Roediger HL 3rd. Med Educ. 2009;43(12):1174-81. PubMed; Price DW, Wang T, O'Neill TR, et al. Acad Med. 2025;100(1):94-102. PubMed; Matos J, Petri CR, Mukamal KJ, Vanka A. PLoS One. 2017;12(7):e0181418. PubMed; Deng F, Gluckstein JA, Larsen DP. Perspect Med Educ. 2015;4(6):308-313. PubMed.
Indik JH, Duhigg LM, McDonald FS, Lipner RS, Rubright JD, Haist SA, Botkin NF, Kuvin JT. "Performance on the Cardiovascular In-Training Examination in Relation to the ABIM Cardiovascular Disease Certification Examination." J Am Coll Cardiol. 2017;69(23):2862-2868. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2017.04.020
