<p>You can be cooperative and still work hard. I’ve had classmates email out their typed notes, good websites/resources, give away review books for free, cover for each other on rotations, etc. In college, no one ever did this. Ever. However, this doesn’t mean they’re going to slack off. If it’s necessary to study 10 hours/day for the boards, they’ll do it. If it’s necessary to come in at 5AM to pre-round on patients, they’ll do it. Be prepared to work your @$$ off and still not get the results you want. I scored in the 83rd percentile nationwide on my Obgyn Shelf exam only to have it still be 3% below my school mean on the same test. I’ve had exams where I scored in the bottom 10 people (out of 150+) students. There’s a difference between being in a good learning environment and actually doing well.</p>
<p>We’ve gone astray, but how does AOA (which relies on ranking which relies on grades) work in a P/F grading system? Are the actual grades (or GPA or class ranking) recorded in a magic book? Who sees the book? Do the prof’s who write your rec’s see the book? Does everyone know what’s in the book except the students? Or do the students know, too? Not rhetorical. Really curious. Just like un-ranked high schools where the GC tells the student’s rank to colleges that demand it (Yeah. Sometimes its by decile but still…it’s rank.)</p>
<p>Just seems odd. We don’t have grades but this little bunch is top 10% and this big bunch isn’t. 
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<p>I heard one school does not disclose the grades to students in all years, but the school still keeps track of the grades of each individual student. When the students apply for residency, the school will inform the resident program of his rank.</p>
<p>Another school does not have grades for the first semester and the last year. They give out A/B/C/F grades in all other semesters.</p>
<p>Which school’s grading system is “better” in your opinion?</p>
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<p>Different med schools do it differently. </p>
<p>Even though we can only get a grade of “pass” or “fail” for the first two years, we still get means and Z-scores so we (and school administrators) know exactly how we’re doing in relation to the rest of the class. My school takes more of a holistic approach to AOA: it gives you points based on how you perform (in relation to the rest of the class) in terms of your first, second, and third year grades, your USMLE scores, your research/leadership/EC achievements while in medical school. By AOA rules, only the top 16% of students in your school can be awarded AOA. Other schools use strictly academic measures.</p>
<p>My test scores were in the 70-75th percentile and my USMLE score was 240+ and I was awarded a moderately competitive fellowship in med school but I’m not close to being AOA. There were kids at my school who scored 260+ on practice USMLE 4 months before the actual test (and 3 months before I even started studying). That is the definition of ELITE.</p>
<p>[Alpha</a> Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society](<a href=“http://alphaomegaalpha.org/]Alpha”>http://alphaomegaalpha.org/)</p>
<p>Just looking around at the chapters, I see that HMS, YSM, and Stanford do not have AOA. My kid goes to a school that appears to be Pass now/Pass later.</p>
<p>Yea, I was just about to write that Yale doesn’t have AOA. Stanford is P/F all 4 years so I can see why they don’t have AOA. Harvard is just being Harvard.</p>
<p>Mcat2–re: administrator’s comment to your son:</p>
<p>Perhaps I’ve just fallen hook line and sinker for what that administrator was warning about, but it really just doesn’t seem like the kids at elite schools (the only ones I have experience with are Northwestern and Mayo–if you’d consider those elite) are the same kids that are the obnoxious, competitive, hyper-premed, gunner types that you find in undergrad. You know the ones I’m talking about: the ones who always sit in the front row, who argue every tenth of a point back on some obscure exam, who study for 2 weeks nonstop then complain about a 99% on the final, the ones that refuse to help classmates because it’ll kill the curve (ie, if your grade depends on how well you do relative to others, then you can bet your bottom dollar these kids aren’t going to help others)…the list goes on and on. These are the types of kids I’m just itching to get away from. </p>
<p>I did not find anything to suggest schools like Northwestern and Mayo are actually full of those kids and that their tourguides are really just scheming against the interviewees–selling them a false view of the school so that top students would want to attend. Actually, I found quite the contrary–that the environment seemed really conducive to collaboration and cooperation, and by removing grades (changing to pass/fail), they essentially removed a big part of what students were obsessively competing for (ie, if my grade depends on my score which depends on how well I do relative to others, removing the need to do well relative to others would fix that problem).</p>
<p>But this might be a catch: the 3 schools I’ve interviewed at (and the ones I’m using for reference here)–Missouri, Northwestern, Mayo–are seriously dedicated to creating a curriculum that’s cooperative/collaborative and not competitive. Missouri and Northwestern achieve this by designing the preclinical years in a “problem-based learning” format, and Mayo does this by keeping class size ridiculously small–thus encouraging cooperation because everyone’s friends. Perhaps collaboration isn’t the case at other, larger, more elite schools. If that’s the case, I have no idea.</p>
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Actually, I heard that if a medical school recruits a lot of very top students from public universities, there may be a higher percentage of students who are willing to spend enormous amount of study time in order to make sure they will likely get top grades. I know this may be just a myth.</p>
<p>DS once commented that it appears a very high percentage of competitive premed students at his college (which is arguably an elite one) were originally from top public high schools. One of DS’s premed peers (right now an MS1 at NCG’s school) seemingly never stopped studying orgo when taking that class, in order to make sure he would definitely get a top grade, and he was also from a public high school in his state.</p>
<p>Interesante, mcat2. I wonder what role high school plays on developing those habits? I just met up with some of my high school buddies for happy hour the other day. We all went to an academically prestigious all-girls private school. Right now, my friends are: going to med school (2), going to GW for law school (2), in grad school after graduating early (3), going to dental school, and signing contracts with Goldman Sachs. It was pretty wild to realize that announcing my med school acceptance was basically…no big deal. </p>
<p>Anyway, back to my point. At my high school, rather than being uber competitive with each other, it was really emphasized that we were expected to work together (as a team, group, partnership, class, etc) to succeed in our studies. This could be anything from sharing notes with a classmate that was sick, to constantly switching up science lab partners, to lots of group projects, to debates instead of lectures. While everyone was quite bright, very intelligent, and typically very good at school, it was rarely an issue of “I have to study because I have to do better than so and so!” (obviously, some of us were more competitive about grades than others; I just chose not to associate with those girls). </p>
<p>So you can imagine my surprise when I did not find a similar environment upon enrolling at a big state public university. There were so many strangely competitive kids who were so obsessed with their grades! I was bummed that the students often seemed selfish (and borderline rude, IMHO)–like they weren’t willing to help you if it meant they might not get as good of a grade on a curved exam. I found it kind of perplexing. Perhaps top public high schools have academic environments like my college, and my high school was just an outlier.</p>
<p>I wonder what medical school will be like! Perhaps I was drawn to Missouri, Northwestern, and Mayo because their environments seem closest to the type of environment I work best in (I’m way more of a collaborator than a competitor when it comes to school!). I’m sure the competitive environment works best for others, and I bet that’s part of what attracts them there.</p>
<p>Competitiveness gets a bad rap and the term is broad enough to include both gunners and cooperative learners. </p>
<p>My kid may be at a P/F school but her desire to learn the material to her (very high) satisfaction level hasn’t diminished. She is still social. Still cooperative. Still willing to share but …she’s going to put in the effort to know the material at a very high level. Every time. Graded or not. Anonymous or not. Whether you call it a “qualifier” or Heaven forbid! “a test”. lol. </p>
<p>My gut is that her school selects for exactly that kind of kid because that seems to be 80% of her class from her description (with the other 20% not hermits, or gunners, just maybe missing a bit in the outside of class “social” category). It is why she picked her school, and even though some sdn posters suggested that the laid-back collegial atmosphere was an artifice, she has found it to be as advertised. </p>
<p>But this doesn’t mean high-achievers become slackards. </p>
<p>One example: </p>
<p>My kid was studying most of the day on Christmas Eve (and watching Buffy on breaks). Why? She said “Oh. I could take my last one and pass it easily without doing anymore but I need to know this stuff for later on, so I’m going to put another day or two in before I take it.” Well, babe. Does it really matter if you make an 85% or a 95% raw score? “Well. It matters to me.” </p>
<p>I am still hoping she’ll dial it back another notch or two. Jeebus.</p>
<p>kristin, After reading your post, I just thought of this:</p>
<p>Although the peers at DS’s college are likely of a higher caliber, it appears DS suffered sleep starvation more often when he was in high school! It is not only him. I think most top 10 kids were like that.</p>
<p>The high school ranks students using the grades of five academic cores only each semester. If I remember it correctly, they can not use A/B/C/D (=4/3/2/1) because they can not distinguish the students in such a coarse grade scale. In order to distinguish the students, they need to use a grade such as 4.00/3.99/3.98/etc. Then, the final grade after 4 years needs to be averaged as 4 digits below the decimal point. The difference for the final grades of the top few students may be only 0.0001-0.0002. This “merit system” is just to be point of being ridiculous. It often depends on who your teacher is. (If your teacher never gives out 100 points, but the other teacher does, then you very likely lose. 100=4.00, 99=3.99, etc.) Oh, yes, many teachers use the “curve” already even in high school. But when a student mostly depends on his/her academic merit to get into a “good” college, he or she needs to be “better” than other students by 0.0001 or 0.0002 in his/her final GPA if the goal is to go to a very top college. This is because each top college will likely take 0-2 top students from this public high school each year. (There are about half a dozen of students who got into HYPSM each year. For some reason, P, to an extent M (unless you are a girl), rarely takes any student from this public high school for many years. Maybe the adcoms at P are wise enough to know that all of these “top” students are not well-rounded enough?)</p>
<p>It was not a pleasant scene. But this is what a kid has to go through when this is the school his parents choose for him. For those whose family even can not afford to live in this school’s district, you may say that he has almost zero chance to go to a very top private college – unless he is an elite athlete or has some other great hook. – the latter includes being a winner of a well-known competition OUTSIDE of your high school or school district, usually at least at the state level.</p>
<p>I would love to know the percent of pass/fail schools who end up ranking students when it comes to evaluations for residency matches. This would be extremely disengenouis on their part. Kristen, I love being a doctor but it is a field primarily filled with competitive/type A personalities as acceptance to medical school essentially requires this. Now, the desire to learn and excell often creates competition from other students simply to keep up and often promotes greater master of the material. I am an Otolaryngologist and approximately 80% of Otolaryngologists I associate with were AOA. If you choose a highly desired field in medicine you will have “competition” from others in gaining a spot whether it is via grades/board scores etc. This intensifies more as you seek a fellowship. However, you are correct in your feeling the learning environment is much more cooperative than undergrad but at the same time causes much more competition from within oneself if one desires to pursue a “popular” residency.</p>
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And how do they arrive at that ranking at a P/F school. The secret grade? Who does that benefit? You are still graded on a traditional scale but we just don’t tell you what the grade is. So that is supposed to foster a non-competitive environment? Hmmmm. I just have trouble understanding this from the outside.</p>
<p>curm, You may happen to know this so can I consult with you on this? I heard from DS that BCM does this “secret grade” thing you just mentioned. Is this true as far as you know? I heard some rumor a couple of years ago that one BCM student committed suicide two years in a row, or two students within a short period like in 3 years. It is funny that many students there accused “the other school” which is not that far north of being super intense 
I guess both are intense, just like most other medical schools.</p>
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<p>Virtually every school.</p>
<p>With the exception of 1-2 schools in the country (I think Stanford and UCLA), all of the other medical schools, even if they were P/F the first two years, have grades for the third and fourth years. When you apply for residency, your MSPE (Dean’s Letter) contains coded language that lets residency directors know how well you’re doing in relation to the rest of your classmates. You’re labelled as a “fair” student, a “good” student, an “excellent” student, whatever.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s disingenuous. Anyone who comes to med school not expecting competition should probably drop out right now. The basis for P/F the first year or two years is to help you ease yourself into the routine of med school. But, not everyone can go into ENT or derm. In the end, there has to be some basis for comparing and, yes, ranking medical students.</p>
<p>Is it to some extent true that the grades for MS1 and MS2 (assuming not P/F) are more under each individual’s control (more objective as in premed classes) while the grades for MS3 and MS4 are more out of each individual’s control (i.e., being more subjective, or inter-personal skills, personal charisma in addition to diligence are more important)?</p>
<p>It is often rumored that the humanity majors tend to have an edge in the last two years. I wonder if it is a myth or it contains some truth in it. After all, unlike in huge science classes, there are much more nteractions among professors and peer students in many humanity classes. They talk more, write more, and could possibly polish their “people skills” in the process. (Of course, science majors could polish their people skills in club activities, assuming that they do not stay in the lab by themselves all the time.)</p>
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<p>Absolutely. MS3 and MS4 grades are subjective. No way around that. I would argue that interpersonal skills or even “charisma” are not bad qualities to look for in a doctor. Hence, I don’t mind if they are factored into the grading.</p>
<p>As for humanities majors, I guess that’s the rationale for them scoring higher in the 3rd and 4th years. I haven’t really noticed a difference in people skills b/w majors.</p>