Changing grade

[Medstudentquest]

Has anyone ever been successful in getting a clinical grade changed? If so, how did you go about it?

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[ralhtar]

One of my classmates got her surgery grade changed...she said that the SITE director barely met with them and that all her evaluators had given her high evals and yet the site director went ahead and gave ehr a 7/10 on all clinical grounds...thereby bringing her grade down to a C instead of a B.

She brought all this to the clerkship director's attention and got her grade changed.

so if you have something valid like that then its worth a shot. The only thing you can't contest is your shelf score obviously.
g'luck

 

[Syranope2]

My situation was a little different but I still managed to get a grade change so I thought I'd post it.

My month of family medicine was included in my medicine grade. My preceptor adored me, took me out to dinner, showed me her dollhouse collection, etc. But I got my grade back from her and it was a high pass. I was pissed, because it lowered my grade in medicine from H to HP.

First I just thought she was one of those people who reserved honors for the absolute best student she'd ever seen, and just got pissed at the absurdity of it all (medicine was my first rotation - I hadn't learned yet that third year grades have basically no correlation to your performance.) Regardless, I hemmed and hawed for a bit, talked to my course director who said, "Well, she gave you what she gave you. You can talk to her about it if you want. Maybe you should have done better on your shelf, hint hint." Which pissed me off more because it was true.

But I called her at home and we got around to talking about my grade and it turns out she thought high pass was the best you could get. So she called my course director and had him change the grade and I got my honors.

So it can be done. Like I said, though, this was sort of a different situation.

 

[ChildNeuro]

. . . My preceptor adored me, took me out to dinner, showed me her dollhouse collection, etc. But I called her at home and we got around to talking about my grade and it turns out she thought high pass was the best you could get. So she called my course director and had him change the grade and I got my honors. . . .

Wow. I would be worried about it looking like your trying to date your preceptor?!? Was she single, similar age? Unless she is recent transfer from the Mars University School of Medicine, where the top grade is high-pass, I seriously doubt that she doesn't know about honors grades especially if she grades students all the time! Nice excuse though!

 

[Syranope2]

Wow. I would be worried about it looking like your trying to date your preceptor?!? Was she single, similar age? Unless she is recent transfer from the Mars University School of Medicine, where the top grade is high-pass, I seriously doubt that she doesn't know about honors grades especially if she grades students all the time! Nice excuse though!

Haha. Sorry, just a funny idea.

I'm a 25 year old woman. My preceptor is a 67 year old married woman who hadn't had a student following her for a couple of years. I promise you there was no hanky panky going on I thought it was bizarre that she didn't know honors was better, but whatever.

 

[Tired]

Has anyone ever been successful in getting a clinical grade changed? If so, how did you go about it?

Is this a hypothetical question, or do you have a specific situation you are asking about?

I did successfully get a clinical grade changed. However, in my case the grade resulted from a majority of my residents and attendings failing to turn in written evaluations of my work. I did approach the clerkship director about this, and politely expressed my belief that if these evaluations had come in, I would have received a better clinical, and therefore overall, grade. Once the coordinator pushed for, and finally got, those evaluations, my grade was adjusted accordingly.

I have heard anecdotal stories of others with a similar situation getting a grade bumped up.

However, if this is just a matter of disagreeing with your clinical evaluations, you should probably forget about it and move on.

 

[loveumms]

Never got a grade changed but, did get some of the comments changed. They are sometimes more important then the grade itself.

 

[chocomorsel]

I got a couple of crappy evals in IM and ended up failing the rotation because of them. I went to the dean, who chewed me out pretty bad but in the end was able to change my F to an incomplete till I retake one month instead of 3 of internal medicine. Reason being was that I was given no warning tha I was on the verge of failing until 4-6 weeks after the rotation even though the dean and student are supposed to be notified, and I receved bad comments, but actually a passing grade (1-4) with 3 being passing. I got 2 out of 3 passes from my three attendings. Anyway, although my dean chewed me a new one, repeating one month sure beats 3 and an F on my gradesheet. Good luck.
Some of this crap in third year is soo darn subjective and you never know what's gonna happen. I can't stand that part of 3rd year.

 

[ChildNeuro]

That is nice that your dean was able to change it to one month only. It is very suspicious that they didn't tell you anything at all during the clerkship, from what I know about evaluations now the attending could be have a bad day, week, month, or year, whatever, and based on that decide to write a stab-in-the-back evaluation and you'll never be told face to face that you need to repeat the clerkship. Personally, I would look over my back during the rest of the rotations. I have heard of this happening to students, they haul the student before the dean and use threats and intimidation to make the student feel that they did something very wrong on the rotation, if the student does then problem solved, i.e. the student feels that they really did mess up and won't complain unfair treatment/late evaluation.

The real matter might be that the dean really does know that the evaluation was bizarre/unfair and will act you to prevent you from protesting or drawing attention to the licensing committee for medical schools that this was done unfairly and was an abuse of this attendings power. . . Being yelled at unfairly by a dean is a big red flagg that the school is angry about the situation and wants it to go away . . . usually that means by trying to intimidate the student from filing a complaint . . . tread carefully and make notes of everything they do, they really won't try to change the system, and would rather get back to the banquets and alumni meetings .. . .