bottom quartile?

[Deleted member 261799]

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my school does not have letter grades or a Honors, high pass, pass system. It is pass/fail but they give u a raw score for each class and whether ur top 25 percent, middle 50 percent, or bottom 25 percent. I am in my first year and in the middle 50 percent overall but have a few bottom 25 percent classes. Is this a huge deal? is bottom 25 percentile equivalent to 'pass' on the "honors, high pass, pass" scale or is it worse? I want to do a competitive specialty and am hoping this won't hurt me too much since its only first year.

 

[TMP-SMX]

Step 1 is many orders of magnitude more important than preclinical grades. Figure out what isn't working for you and improve next year. I assume that you passed everything, so obviously it is in the pass category. They don't really care as long as you pass. Obviously it is best to have honors, but the only thing it helps for is to get AOA which is unattainable for most people anyway. I'd recommend you don't worry about it. I did pretty poorly in anatomy and biochem but I did well above average in the rest of the courses in first year. This year, I got some honors and well above the average in all of the tests except for one where I was just below the mean. I just decided to get the big picture and use board review books/first aid along with the classes and I think it has helped.

Honors>85th percentile (One standard deviation above the mean)
High Pass>varies
Pass>varies but I'd assume it's about the 10th percentile or below

 

[MilkmanAl]

Minor nit: 85th percentile is really only about 1 SD above the mean. Other than that, everything is spot on, as far as I'm aware. Also, I take the same "big picture" approach and routinely dominate the NBME's despite being somewhere in the middle/below average where classwork is concerned.

 

[Jolie South]

not all schools with grades have a curve. my school has set grading points and if everyone scores in the honors range, then everyone gets honors regardless.

on average, a quarter of the class honors though it does vary by exam/block.

 

[TMP-SMX]

Minor nit: 85th percentile is really only about 1 SD above the mean. Other than that, everything is spot on, as far as I'm aware. Also, I take the same "big picture" approach and routinely dominate the NBME's despite being somewhere in the middle/below average where classwork is concerned.

Lol. I don't know why I said 2 SD.

 

[tdittyx2x3]

If the grades don't matter that much, than why not effectively study straight to the boards for two years? Is that what my real goal should be for the next two years? Keep the grades passing but focus on crushing Step I?

I'm an upcoming M-1. Do you guys recommend I hit the ground running and do board prep alongside all the basic sciences classes? Is that overdoing it? Maybe wait til second year?

 

[WellWornLad]

If the grades don't matter that much, than why not effectively study straight to the boards for two years?

The first 2 years of medical school IS studying straight to the boards.

I'm an upcoming M-1. Do you guys recommend I hit the ground running and do board prep alongside all the basic sciences classes? Is that overdoing it? Maybe wait til second year?

Your basic science classes ARE board prep. So yeah, knock yourself out.

 

[TMP-SMX]

If the grades don't matter that much, than why not effectively study straight to the boards for two years? Is that what my real goal should be for the next two years? Keep the grades passing but focus on crushing Step I?

I'm an upcoming M-1. Do you guys recommend I hit the ground running and do board prep alongside all the basic sciences classes? Is that overdoing it? Maybe wait til second year?

Buy BRS or high yield or whatever you think is the best for each subject and buy the 2009 edition of First Aid. Read them the week of your exam and do all the questions in the chapters of BRS. It will help you do well on your exams, to get the big picture, and you can annotate the books as you go so that when you do hardcore studying for Step 1 you will be ready to go and you will have seen all of the texts already. I started with BRS for every subject starting in my second year. I wish I did it in my first year. My grades are a lot better now.

 

[87138]

not all schools with grades have a curve. my school has set grading points and if everyone scores in the honors range, then everyone gets honors regardless.

on average, a quarter of the class honors though it does vary by exam/block.

Same with us, except Honors is still given to the top 10% (the two criteria for Honors are "grade of A" and "also in the top 10%" . . . so theoretically everyone could get an A on the exam, but only 15 or 16 people are getting honors either way.

 

[CremasterFlash]

Minor nit: 85th percentile is really only about 1 SD above the mean. Other than that, everything is spot on, as far as I'm aware. Also, I take the same "big picture" approach and routinely dominate the NBME's despite being somewhere in the middle/below average where classwork is concerned.

Minor nit: assumes normal distribution.

 

[anon3]

If the grades don't matter that much, than why not effectively study straight to the boards for two years? Is that what my real goal should be for the next two years?

Class rank (which shows up on most dean's letters) and AOA. The basic science classes are prep for Step I. Alot of people use board review books to study for their classes. Also I would say its very rare for a person to do badly in class, do well on the boards. Maybe they don't get honors but they're not at the bottom of the class either.

I would say its a good idea not to stress over grades though. At least at my school, grades tend to be a top heavy bell-curve with the class average around 85-90% so it stresses minimizing stupid errors and fully understanding the question over critical thinking.

 

[Dedikated2liftn]

Like others have said, while you're still passing courses, you need to look at the macroscopic picture. If you're in the bottom quartile (and still passing), I'm guessing that probably correlates to a board score between 185-205. Depending on what you want to specialize in that may or may not be a problem; however, if you're undecided or want to go after somethin' more competitive, you should find a way to bring your grades up. Some things that've worked for me are 1) using a review book like First Aid to give yourself a general broader picture of the subject area prior to jumping into the more detailed lecture material 2) if you've got a note service at your school, take advantage of it 3) Repetition, Repetition, Repetition....prior to your class exams, try to go over the lecture material at least twice to ensure that it sticks.

Anyway hope that helps a little. Best of luck.