Can any current students speak to the student body at GU? Pretty competitive or laid back? Also how are you all graded? I know that can be a pretty big determining factor. Thanks!
Overall, people are pretty relaxed. Fair amount of people are quite social too. I think really any person would fit in at Georgetown. As others have said, there are a fair amount of athletic people from Catholic schools (my guess is because Ortho is pretty popular).
The grading is H/HP/P/LP/F. As waterpolo said, if you get LP, it doesn't show up on your transcript that way (it shows up as P). It's just an internal marker for the bottom 10% of the class, and if you get too many, the dean's office may call you in and find out what's up and help you out. We are graded against each other and usually looks like this:
2 standard deviations above the mean or top 10%=honors
1 SD above the mean or top 25%= high pass
Middle 50% or so= Pass
1 SD below the mean or about bottom 10%= low pass
2 SD below the mean= fail
However, everyone can pass (and the majority of the class gets a P); it's not like they have to fail a certain number of people. We were told that the only ways to leave school are in a body bag or if you cheat, so don't worry about grades and failing out.
Despite the grading system, I would say that our class is pretty relaxed, and I have not sensed a great amount of competition. Sure, there are people who are aiming for honors (and you can tell), but I really haven't run into the "gunner" who would tear you down. In fact, one of the more intense students actually sent out all their study guides to the class. People share stuff all the time, and we even have googledocs that pass documents among the class and googledocs that are passed down from classes above us. Competition is not really an issue.
Yes, it is difficult if you want to get honors, and you do have to put in a ton of work to do so (usually top 10% of class get honors). Still, it is a pretty good way to distinguish yourself if you are really looking at competitive residencies. But even then, preclinical grades are so far down the list of things on a residency app that getting all P's first and second year isn't going to close any doors if you get a good step 1 score.
I'm not going to lie and say that I love the grading system. I would probably prefer a P/F, but it really isn't that big of a deal. Bottom line, it DOES NOT breed insane competition like people fear. I have never really understood why grading is such a big factor for people. There are so many other more important things to worry about that I think I Georgetown has (curriculum, good clinical training, awesome location, etc). There are so many reasons to choose the school, and the grading system, while not perfect, should be far from a deciding factor.
