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They generally go hand-in-hand since those schools are usually the ones that like to innovate in their curricula. But if I had to choose, I would do true pass/fail. The stress of grades is just unnecessary in the pre-clinical years. Mandatory lecture just means I have to be there. They can't force me to listen. If they were still recorded, I'd just plug in headphones and watch the lecture from yesterday in lecture on 2x. If lectures aren't recorded, I'd pay attention but still multitask because 1x is just too damn slow.
 
I would prefer optional lecture. If the grade you receive is pass as long as you pass, that eliminates most of the anxiety and unhealthy competition with respect to grading, regardless of whether you're ranked. Your pre-clinical performance affecting your eventual class ranking seems to be too abstract and removed from your day-to-day life to stress you out much. Letter grades are stressful because we've been conditioned from pre-med to believe that receiving less than an A- is bad and will jeopardize our desired future as physicians. But in a med school, only a minority of a class with mostly historically A students will receive As, if the classes are graded on a letter system. Optional lectures, however, greatly reduce stress and increase enjoyment of medical school. Being able to sleep-in and study at one's own pace significantly improves quality of life. I remember in undergrad forcing myself to go to lecture way too early in the morning, retaining very little and eagerly awaiting the lecture's conclusion, because attendance affected my grade and/or testable material was only covered in class and not posted online. I would have liked those classes more, and likely would have done better, if I could have watched the lectures online when I was ready and alert, with the ability to pause and rewind.
 
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I would rather have the non-mandatory lecture. I probably wouldn’t mind as much if school was later in the day, but I’m a night person. Getting up early ruins me for the whole day.

At our school we have some mandatory classes and labs, but most aren’t. Tomorrow we have mandatory class at 10am and it’s 4:30am now 🙁
 
fa21212 said:
How would you rank the benefit of a true pass / fail system vs. having non-mandatory lectures and being able to watch videos from home? Which feature improves your life more and if you could only have one, which one would you have?
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These are excellent questions!
From my students' standpoint, having non-mandatory lectures treats them like the adult learners that they are, and allows them to best decide what and when to learn.

P/F is a stress reducer, and has been far lower on my kids' radar and something to ask for. Personally I'd like us to have H/P/F and nothing else.

Mandatory labs and TBLs are different animals from lectures.
 
Non mandatory lectures is more important.

Pass / fail is probably nice (we didn't have it) but you need to learn the stuff on your class exams anyway. Plus people respond to incentives. Having a grade makes most people study harder.

Goro said:
Personally I'd like us to have H/P/F and nothing else.
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This is what we have, but it doesn't make sense that the person with an 89 and a person with a 70 get the same P. If you're going to have grades and class rank I think you might as well do A, B, C or H, HP, P.
 
Pass fail is so so much more important. its not even close.

What I love most about P/F is that I can ignore the bull**** that the school is teaching and instead focus on board relevant material. Doing so will always lead to a "pass", whereas in schools with grading you have to fight to get into the top 10th percentile to get honors.
 
I'd take P/F as long as preclinical had no internal ranking for AOA or your MSPE Deans Letter. I feel like medical school would be way more stressful if I were evaluated against my peers in the preclinical years. Not saying I love mandatory lecture, but it's easy to be productive with other things while in lecture.

Disclosure: My school is P/F preclinical with no AOA.
 
It would be the P/F system for me. I hate mandatory lectures, but the few mandatory things my school does have allow me to see my classmates more, which I don't mind. I would just be doing other stuff during lectures anyways. But if we had rankings for grades, that would really be the bane of my existence. I want to learn board-relevant material at my own pace without worrying that I'm screwing myself over for AOA or something.
 
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I vote pass/fail as more important. You can always sit in the back of lecture and not pay attention.

I feel like I wouldn't be able to help having a different mindset if I was directly competing against classmates in a zero-sum game. In a true pass/fail environment, it makes logical sense to help your classmates as much as possible because if everyone does well it only helps your brand. "Gunning" is literally counterproductive and just doesn't exist as far as I can tell, at least in the pre-clinical years at my school.
 
I’d definitely take being forced to go to lecture over having grades any day. P/F is so nice

My school has H/HP/P/F for clinical years and the pressure to perform well of the shelf exams is more than I’d prefer.

And now that I am an MS3, having anything but P/F in the pre-clinical years would make me feel pretty poorly about myself right about now.
 
Pass/fail all the way!

Do you remember worrying over the difference between B+ vs. A- as a premed? If that didn't give you cancer as a premed then being graded against your med student peers during preclinicals surely will.
 
sunshinefl said:
I don’t get how anyone is voting for pass/fail over non-mandatory lecture. Must be the 10% of my class that goes to lecture.
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The reverse is true for me. I cannot fathom why anyone would want to go back to grade-grubbing for ranks. Not only are you more stressed, but your classmates become more competitive with you. Going to lecture isn't the end of the world because sitting is easy.
 
Aerus said:
The reverse is true for me. I cannot fathom why anyone would want to go back to grade-grubbing for ranks. Not only are you more stressed, but your classmates become more competitive with you. Going to lecture isn't the end of the world because sitting is easy.
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But waking up early isn’t, and time is a valuable resource that I could spend doing something more productive.

And I would probably have the most to gain because we don’t even have letter grades, let alone pass/fail. We get our actual grade down to the percent on our official transcripts.
 
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