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Started by smh343
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but at the same time it doesn't adequately stratify. My school does that and you're really telling me 3 questions is a good enough metric to stratify quartiles on a given exam? I mean cmon that could literally be guessing. Our median GPA by the end of second year was almost a 3.6. There is no real difference between the middle 40% in that scenario. Classmates and I did some math....if someone got a total of like 10 more questions right, then could move from lower third quartile to mid second. I mean cmon
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Yeah, med schools like that suck because the grades are worth nothing. The only ones who come off impressive are those in the top quartile, but if someone has a 3.7 GPA and they're in the second quartile, it's incredibly obvious to any PD that there's major grade inflation at that school.
CidHighwind
Full Member
Class rank is like racing, if you ain’t first (AOA or top quartile) you’re last. Just don’t fail anything and get good comments and you’ll be fine
Or, they're ALL really bright students?
CidHighwind
Full Member
Ask to see if you are interpreting it correctly. Step 1 and Clinical Grades are king.
There are SURGICAL FELLOWSHIPS with Step 1 cut-offs.
I wouldn't beat yourself up OP.
Knock Step 1 out of the park and look forward to Match Day when all your 1st quartile peers, who rested on their laurels, go to inferior programs.
I wouldn't beat yourself up OP.
Knock Step 1 out of the park and look forward to Match Day when all your 1st quartile peers, who rested on their laurels, go to inferior programs.
Yes but because clinical grades are sooo variable per site, per preceptor, per school, it can’t be just the grade itself. It would be have to be a combo of not failing with comments. Just logically, I have no data, but even just basing on here comparing someone from a school who gives everyone honors vs somewhere that it’s hard to even high pass. My site is like this where it’s hard to get Any 5s on evals. even though other people in my class At different sites get all 5s on evals for no reason :/
Do you know the class median as well as the average? We're given our class average + a histogram, and very frequently the median is actually higher than the average, since there's often a left skew to the distribution. so it's possible to be scoring at/above average and still be below the median
This is why I’m glad my school is P/F preclinical. No need for this stress. OP crush your boards and clerkships and no one will give a crap. Rank only matters if you’re AOA or lowest quartile.
They're in med school so obviously they're really bright. But a med school in which everyone in one class is getting an A suggests one of two things:
Either they suck at writing tests
Or
There's rampant grade inflation
They might as well just make the tests pass/fail because it's pretty telling when someone graduates number 133 out of 135 with a 3.8 GPA.
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This is why Pass/Fail preclinical caught on like wildfire and is still spreading. Grading this stuff makes your typical type-A neurotic med student freak out over useless, inflated numbers that PDs don't care about anyways. Smh.
OP if you kill Step 1 and get solid clinical grades, nobody is going to rank you any differently just because you got a B in one preclinical class.
OP if you kill Step 1 and get solid clinical grades, nobody is going to rank you any differently just because you got a B in one preclinical class.
Other DDx for you:
The professors in the courses are really good at what they do.
The OP doesn't have access to all the grading schema
There are other assessments that the OP is doing poorly in.
I agree that there should be, ideally, a bell-shaped curve to the grades, but perhaps the students and profs aren't reading the medical education journals?
Also agree that the Faculty are NOT doing the students any favors if everything is so easy. @smh343 has grade inflation been a problem noted by your fellow students?
An exam that doesn't stratify students is a poor exam. I'd say the same if all the students failed their exams.
True that
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Careful now, we told the USMLE orgs the same thing about Step 2 CS and all they did was start failing more of us.
Pass/fail exams is different. Even with a bell curve, the majority pass.
I was trying to cheer Op up.
Yes clinical grades can be variable and sometimes you can get a though attending. But you should have roughly 3-5 other evals per rotation that balance it out.if everyone is getting fives from every eval at a different site you should have applied for that site, and your school is responsible for making sure there are no drastic grading differences per site. Our schools actually provides us with analysis and grade distributions per site. There is a reason mspe are supposed to have grade distribution charts, this is mostly to show comparative performance.
Not all P/F are made equal. Some are true P/F and some are just faking p/f for lip service.
This is the most cut-throat thing I’ve read in a long time. Medicine is freaking dog-eat-dog. My friend today was trying to complain to me about how competitive it is to get into PA school and how it’s only gonna get harder for her after that... Truly nothing compares to the grind we’re in now.
My man its about to get way worse for us before it gets any better
You forget I go to a DO school. I’d much rather keep my site at a larger hospital with several residency programs than do a rotatio where I don’t learn jack and the dude doesn’t care and just smashes the 5 button. I’m okay with getting actually evaluated...our school doesn’t provide us with grade breakdowns but I get good enough comments I’m feeling okay overall. My school doesn’t rank the last two years anyway
I will say our rotations evals have been fair IMO, the people who have been busting their behind have been doing well. These are the same people who busted their behind in step prep tho.
It shouldnt come as a surprise, Some competitive IM fellowships also use Step 1 cut-offs.
What’s your honors cutoff? We need to average a 4.6 on evals and do pretty well on the shelf to even get high pass. But in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter for me haha I’m not trying to anything crazy competitive
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Just to give some counterpoint, my rotations have been a total crapshoot where the ones I try hardest I've gotten slammed with a 3-bomb by a brand new evaluator (guess they didn't know we have a 4.5/5 average) and meanwhile rotations I was a lot less interested in and completely phoned in were near perfect 5s. Ive also had the wonderful experience of evaluators clearly not remembering who I even was (comment box: "good work", submitted an hour before eval deadline). As far as I see, the fact that PDs use this as a major determinant in candidate selection is absurd in a very scary way.
C'est la vie, no wonder even something as bad as the Step 1 metagame took hold.
C'est la vie, no wonder even something as bad as the Step 1 metagame took hold.
Yup, I have had the exact same experience
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