I just cant see how one medical school will be "more difficult" than another...unless they cram 2 preclinical years into 1.5/1 year.
Maybe one medical school will be more of a pain in the ass than another...in terms of dumb side bullshit they make you do. Such as waste of time activities like diversity workshops/patient perspectives, ethics mini courses, etc.
why couldn't one be harder than another? there is a measure of difficulty in terms of volume and complexity at each school, and there is no rule saying that every school has the same volume and complexity to their curriculum. a theoretical school that has a low board pass rate either has the same curriculum as a high passing school with a lower quality student, or the same quality student with a curriculum that did not prepare them appropriately (i.e. easier)... and various mixtures of those two scenarios.... this is why I said you cannot separate the variables - IMO they can be thought of as two slider scales and moving each back and forth has an effect on the outcome (score) but it is impossible to tell simply given a score which is the predominant variable).
y=mx+nz where x and z are ability and difficulty. Given a point "y", you cannot solve for either variable but we know they still play a role.
to be less abstract - a school could present the same information and only test on 1st order concepts. Here is a thing. is it a)bicep b)tricep c)head d)florida. or here is a bicep, is it innervated by a)median n. b)musculocutaneous c)radial d)florida.
A more difficult school would test on 3rd order concepts.
A patient comes into the clinic with a stab wound to the anterior aspect of the brachium and has difficulty flexing the elbow. you are concerned that this difficulty is not simply secondary to injured muscle tissue and that underlying structures may be damaged. Which will most appropriately test your suspicion?
a)check the ability of the patient to adduct and abduct his fingers
b)check for sensation on anterior (ventral) base of the thumb
c)ask the patient to adduct his thumb.
d)florida
There is no information in the 2nd question that was not covered in the 1st question, but the application, level of integration, and difficulty are quite different.
Many of the things we get in medical school we have heard before in undergrad courses (often to a lower depth) but the integration is off the scales. There is no rule dictating sole use of or specific quantity of 3rd order questions by school. Therefore it is possible for one school to go easier on the students even with the same information. That said, it is also possible for one school to give more information than another.
I cannot point any schools out, i am just saying there are plenty of ways for schools to be different, and we cannot assume they do all the same things in all the same ways or that their differences do not impact difficulty level.