Changing From P/F to Letter Grades

[Sram.jpg]

---

Members don't see this ad.

Hello all, I'm looking for insight, as well as to see if anyone can relate, regarding upcoming changes at my institution.

I'm an M1 at Morehouse School of Medicine, and as the title says, we'll be changing to letter grades starting this Fall. And for greater context, the initial system when I first arrived was P/F during pre-clerkship, and then letter grades for clerkship. Therefore, it'll now be letter grades for all four years.

Suffice to say, this change isn't exactly popular with my class, or most programs really.

Among the explanations we've gotten, the only one I think has much weight relates to competitiveness. As it's been explained to me, the more years on a student's transcript that are P/F, the less residency programs will have to work with when ranking you. In other words, A's look more impressive than P's.

Everything else has just felt non-sensical. For example, we've heard the switch might also encourage us to "work harder", as if most of the class doesn't already live in the library.

I think my primary gripe with the change is they've made little to no changes to the curriculum as of yet. Multiple cohorts here have complained about the dissonance between in-house material versus Step/NBMEs, a point that's especially notable for us as we're REQUIRED to take multiple NBMEs throughout our time here, even during Year 1. And then there's a very likely switch to mandatory class attendance, but that's a different topic entirely.

Our Dean has mentioned that other schools are also making the switch back to letter grades, so feel free to let me know if your school is. Plus, any thoughts to better help me see the silver lining would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Nontrad_FL_LGBT]

This is so stupid and I'm sorry. My school is full P/F all 4 years, I think they allow you to Honor your required sub-Is and that's it. We match way above our "ranking" weight every year without fail.

 

[Hollow Knight]

You should probably get rid of this post, or at least make sure your SDN is not identifiable. There can’t be that many students at your school.

But honestly, medical school administrators at most institutions (from the Ivy League to “low tier” DO schools) tend to be compassionate and out of touch at best or both unethical and incompetent at worst. At least that has been the experience of most of my friends and I. I can’t speak to whether this idea is good or bad, but I certainly don’t think it’s going to improve your career chances.

Your job is to plaster on a smile and tell your superiors how wonderful they are while doing the opposite of what they say. Go grind for step 1 and 2 and publish as much as possible. That’s all you can control. It has been this way for years now (so the younger attendings tell me anyway)

 

[Goro]

So sorry to hear of those, OP. It's so 20th Century of them.

 

[Sram.jpg]

You should probably get rid of this post, or at least make sure your SDN is not identifiable. There can’t be that many students at your school.

But honestly, medical school administrators at most institutions (from the Ivy League to “low tier” DO schools) tend to be compassionate and out of touch at best or both unethical and incompetent at worst. At least that has been the experience of most of my friends and I. I can’t speak to whether this idea is good or bad, but I certainly don’t think it’s going to improve your career chances.

Your job is to plaster on a smile and tell your superiors how wonderful they are while doing the opposite of what they say. Go grind for step 1 and 2 and publish as much as possible. That’s all you can control. It has been this way for years now (so the younger attendings tell me anyway)

Believe me, I changed my username right before I posted. Of the two you presented, I think our admin is definitely more compassionate yet out of touch, at least the Dean has been anyway. And yeah, I've resigned myself to the change, as there's no much we can realistically do. It is what it is.

 

[slowthai]

Stupid is as stupid does. Admin does stuff like this in attempts justify their worthless existence. Same goes for the mandatory attendance nonsense.

With that said, p/f preclinical has purely psychological benefits, cos when you're applying, no one gives a crap about your preclinical grades; just don't fail anything.

 

[Robin-jay]

I lived with the grading system. You'll survive.

In residency, people care about regular decent human being things. Grades and all that jazz are meaningless when you are working with great or terrible residents.

It's phenomenal how being a decent human is the strongest attribute to residency and career success.

 

[14_karat]

I’m a recently matched M4 but I remember when I was accepted to Morehouse for their class of 2025, their preclinicals were actually still letter grade. It was a big reason why I didn’t go so it’s interesting to hear that they ended up switching to P/F somewhere down the line. It’s sounding like they got enough data from the few years that it was P/F to get the impression that it wasn’t helping their students.