<p>How important is it to consider the style of grading in medical schools? Does it really impact the student on an individual basis? Is there more cooperation in pass fail schools? What are pros and cons?</p>
<p>I'm trying to decide how to narrow down the number of school I'll be applying to. To those who have already gone through the process of applying: what did you do to select your schools? Is there a general strategy, algorithm, or online tool that helped you?</p>
<p>1) I wouldn’t worry about grade style until you had two acceptances and were forced to choose.</p>
<p>2) It’s certainly possible that there would be more cooperation, but I went to a school with Honors/High Pass/Pass/Marginal/Fail grading, and never felt like anyone every sabotaged me or refused to help if asked (but then again, I go to a state school in a notoriously nice midwestern state).</p>
<p>3) Pros are lack of class ranks from the first two years, less focus on grades more on learning. Cons might include lack of motivation if you’re someone who needs that type of feedback to get to work.</p>
<p>4) Apply to all your state schools, public and private, then take the MSAR and US News or someother resource that lists average GPA and MCAT. Use that to help you determine how competitive you’ll be at a school. If your index score (GPAx10 + MCAT Score) is more than 5 points away from the schools index, you should probably consider elsewhere. It’s not a perfect measure and I wouldn’t dismiss a school purely based on that, but it’ll give you an idea. </p>
<p>If there are schools that your stats are clearly better than, I think it’s important to consider how many applicants they get a year. Places like Tufts and Drexel have kind of low scores, but also have over 10000 applications per year. I don’t care how awesome you are, you need to consider what the real likelihood you’ll get an acceptance there is and if you’d go there if you were holding another acceptance.</p>
<p>After you have a general organization of the available schools (home state, competitive stats, competitive stats but huge applicant pool, borderline, non-competitive), start filtering further if you need to based on location and all the other variables that might be important to you. Don’t be entirely dismissive of state schools where you think you have no chance, especially if your stats are above their averages…most (excluding schools like Arizona that only admit instate residents), will give consideration to OOS students and occasionally have really high acceptance yields for applicants that interview. I know back in my day, U of Missouri Columbia typically only interviewed about 40-50 OOS applicants a year, but typically accepted about 50%. Being a state school they had a cheap application fee and so it seemed worthwhile for me to try there. I did get an interview invitation though I had already been accepted to my top 2 choices by that point so I didn’t take it…</p>
<p>Lastly, consider application fees and essay requirements. Spending $$$ and time on a place that’s kind of a reach and not somewhere you want to go anyways, probably isn’t the best idea.</p>
<p>Ideally I think you should apply to somewhere between 15-20 schools assuming you have a good mix of public/private, a range of competitiveness and places you want to go. One of the biggest mistakes I see applicants make is putting too many “name schools” on to their lists, especially if they go to a name undergraduate institution or are overly obsessed with “top 10 schools”. Seriously, I think the most overlooked part of the application process is students don’t apply smartly.</p>
<p>There are very very very few true P/F schools. Most of the “P/F” schools still keep an internal ranking for your Dean’s Letter so the residencies you apply to will find out your rank anyway. Plus, virtually every US med school (excluding Harvard Med and a couple others) have AOA for which your academic rank needs to be determined anyway. All P/F does is put more emphasis on your third-year grades (which tend to be more arbitrary than your pre-clinical grades) and your USMLE score. It’s silly to think you won’t be held accountable for your learning in the first two years of med school.</p>
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<p>This is just not true. You have the concept all wrong.</p>
<p>At Yale, most exams are optional, anonymous self evaluations. The aim of the school’s approach (officially known as the Yale System) is to give the students as much responsibility as possible so that they can take charge of their own education. What’s important to them is the research, the thirst for knowledge and to have well rounded mature students rather than the emphasis on the parrot like memorization that is required at most medical schools in the first two years.</p>
<p>The self evaluations are taken to see if one understand the material, not to find out who got a 98 or 91. Some people never get around to take the exams, which means that they have to be sure they have mastered the subject for the USMLEs, however, when you have a top notch and reputable med school like Yale, “slackers” are not the type of students who make up their classes and Yale pass rates on national exams is right up there with its peer schools.</p>
<p>At the end, what you have is an atmosphere of students who are not afraid nor reluctant to collaborate with each other and who can really be more relaxed after all the years of grinding competition to get to med school.</p>
<p>In an ideal world: Brown for undergrad and Yale for Medical School</p>
<p>(big sigh…)</p>
<p>I still fail to see what I’ve said wrong. If your school does not have grades in the first two years (like Yale Med), then your USMLE and 3rd year grades will carry greater weight vs. someone who has 3 years worth of grades because that’s all residency programs have to go on.</p>
<p>Given the choice b/w having my application evaluated based on 1 day of testing (the USMLE) and one year’s worth of very subjective evaluations (3rd year) and the above + 2 years worth of multiple choice tests, I’d rather have the latter. I go to a pass/fail school and I have seen no reduction in stress from the grading. It may or may not foster more cooperation. I interviewed at many P/F and non-P/F schools alike, and they all said the students were cooperative. It is more stressful for me to think that my future career depends on my ability to brown-nose attendings in my 3rd year.</p>
<p>I think you have the concept wrong, the P/F system reason for being. Listen to your self. Interacting with professors because of one’s true interests while learning, especially when that is the way the school is set up, has nothing to do with “brown nosing”. I think that if you see it that way, it has more to do with you not being comfortable with that type of learning experience than with anything else.</p>
<p>In the case of Yale, the school breeds academic physicians. Classes outside lectures are very small and professors are forced to know you (there is no need for brown nosing). Most students get hooked on research because of the availability and the flexibility. Yale does not turn out people to stay in primary care. I think the whole Yale System is responsible for that. There is plenty of time for volunteer opportunities as well which may lack significantly in other schools because of their specific curriculums.</p>
<p>You seem to be concerned about the “subjectivity” of a professor’s evaluation in these cases. However, you fail to see that in these systems (if set right like at Yale’s) the administration and professors are unusually responsive to their students. There is nothing to fear here because they want you to succeed. You also sound like what’s more important to you are the grades. Perhaps your P/F school is one of those disguised P/F schools that really are not set up to make it work.</p>
<p>Like I said, it has to do more with a philosophy of teaching and of learning than with anything else. When the school and the students have the SAME goals, is a win win situation, like at Yale.</p>
<p>I would also add that at the end is also a matter of personal preference. Not everyone functions the same in different environments.</p>
<p>I know that my D , while initially suspicious , has two schools in her top group that are set-up similar to Yale (one very similar ;)). The more she investigates the more comfortable she is with a system that at first seemed very foreign.</p>
<p>curmudgeon</p>
<p>Don’t know if you or your D is aware but UTSW has just changed a great deal of the first two year’s structure effective with the class entering this coming August. Some classes P/F, very different focus on exams i.e. testing how well you have grasped the concepts rather than testing for what minutiae you don’t know etc. A BIG switch from the current very traditional med school curriculum and methodology.</p>
<p>This represents a very big paradigm shift for them and was obviously led by the new president who came in this year from Harvard Med. The current MS-1s are very excited about what next year may hold for them as well.</p>
<p>Very nice!! Thanks, eadad. A bunch. I’ll pass that along. TMDSAS opens in a month and @ 5 days. :eek:</p>
<p>Thanks for all the very helpful responses everyone.</p>
<p>What’s the difference between a “true” P/F and an “untrue” P/F school? Who can give me a school that “really” follows the P/F philosophy. I like the idea in concept.</p>
<p>MyOpinion: do you go to Yale?</p>
<p>List of P/F medical school</p>
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<p>They are probably referring to schools with P/F that still have internal ranking of the students (“untrue”). Then the others that are strictly P/F w/o internal ranking (“true”). </p>
<p>Those “true” that I know of include:</p>
<ol>
<li>Davis</li>
<li>Creighton</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Pritzker</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Case Western</li>
<li>Virginia</li>
<li>CCLCM</li>
</ol>
<p>Then there is the special stuff that they do at Yale.</p>
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<p>…and Stanford</p>
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<p>^^ good summary above.</p>
<p>I would say that a lot of of the schools in the first list have the High Pass/ Pass grading which is just A, B, etc in disguise. To me, this goes against what a P/F system is supposed to promote: learning for the sake of learning and a relaxed academic environment. Clearly, you will not find the same atmosphere as in places like Yale. The “philosophy” has to be well identified by the administration in order for the system to be successful.</p>
<p>I go to a true pass/fail school. We have two grades during the first two years: pass and fail. And I love it! I think it’s great that schools are putting more emphasis on learning and balance rather than the ability to cram every piece of obscure information into one’s head right before an exam. It also creates a very collaborative learning environment. And judging by our match list this year, it didn’t hurt most people.</p>
<p>I’d like to point out that the reason these systems work is because pre-clinical grades don’t matter all that much. They do some, but not really. Obviously some specialties put more importance on class rank than others (ENT’s obsession with AOA being a notable example) in the grand scheme of things that’s not that important either. NCG, while I certainly understand wanting to have a greater number of data points, the fact is the 16 hours spent taking Step 1 and interviewing at a program matter a whole lot more than the entirety of the first two years (in a few fields - particularly ortho - an audition rotation as a 4th year matters way more than anything else so long as you have an acceptable board score). </p>
<p>Now <turns to=“” myopinion=“”>, in terms of third year “grades” be they pass fail or a more standard scale, they’re absolutely subjective, and they matter a lot too. It’s not an issue of professors being “unusually responsive”; it comes down to the fact that there is no objective data out there for rating how good a student is at taking a history, writing a note, presenting their patient, making reasonable treatment plans or interacting with patients/families/support staff/house officers/faculty. And every intern, supervising resident and attending has their own criteria for makes an excellent med student - no matter what a particular departmental evaluation form may suggest. There is always an element of brown nosing that is required during third year clerkships, that’s just the way it is. I mean I’ve had friends get thrown out of the OR because they were scrubbed in before the attending, I’ve personally brought in baked goods at the end of a rotation (“for the nurses as a thank you”) before handing my evaluation form to my attending, students offer to do discharge summaries for their residents (“I need the learning experience”) all the time, so on and so forth, that’s just the way it is. Why do you think some residents believe it’s acceptable to scut the hell out of their students? Because they know they can hold that eval over their heads if they say no. It’s not right but that’s the way it is.</turns></p>
<p>bigredmed,</p>
<p>There are always people who feel the need to brown nose. I have had my share of them… since Pre -K. They are rather annoying and in fact, if they are not subtle in their approach it frequently backfires… big time. I have seen it in the wards frequently as well.</p>