Do grades really matter in med school?

[Infected]

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Do grades really matter in med school? If they do what effect would bad grades have on you?

This is also my first post so I hope this is the right place. 🙂

 

[coffeesnob]

Here is for your reference:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/medical-school-grades.505378/

Personally I care about my grades because I go to a pseudo P/F school with class rank. But I think it all depends on your goal.

 

[Trogghunter]

Someone in the usmle forum posted a study at Einstein which found that the biggest correlator for step 1 scores is grades...which makes sense. Gun in, gun through, gun out.

 

[mdeast]

It'll depend on your school and the environment.

I go to a P/F school without class rank or AOA. So generally...no, I don't really care about grades in the sense of competition. Though....I will say...once you get towards the end of medical school, your motivation for doing well shifts from any sense of trying to doing well in comparison to your peers...more towards a "gosh, I'm going to be an intern in 6 months and I want to be good at what I do...or, at the very least, I want to not kill someone next year".

 

[Porfirio]

Depends on what you want to do, and where you go. For me, I do not want to do anything competitive (EM Residency), and I go to a H/P/F school with no class rank.

So, Pre-clinical grades do not matter, Step 1 score matters, Clinical Grades matter, and Letters of Recommendation matter.

The best thing you can do is get more of an idea of what you want to do then work as hard as you need to achieve that goal.

 

[JJMrK]

Do grades really matter in med school? If they do what effect would bad grades have on you?

This is also my first post so I hope this is the right place. 🙂

Good grades will help you get AOA, or improve your class rank (which will be mentioned in your MSPE). Usually third year grades are the most important for these.

There's not really such thing as a bad grade, unless you fail. In that case, it's a red flag on your residency application.

 

[Dires]

I've been studying hard so that next year I'll have a better foundation to go off of.

From looking at past data they haven't mattered too much. They are a pretty good predictor of USLME score though which is very important.

With the future residency crunch it will be interesting to see if grades become more important. I speculate that they will, but that is just IMO.

 

[dwills]

I go to an A/B/C/F school and i would think it looks somewhat bad to get straight C's.

Although if you go to an H/HP/P/F school for some reason I don't think it looks as bad to get straight P's even though its the same thing.

I know this doesn't answer the question, but its just something that annoys me.

 

[SciencePlus]

I go to an A/B/C/F school and i would think it looks somewhat bad to get straight C's.

Although if you go to an H/HP/P/F school for some reason I don't think it looks as bad to get straight P's even though its the same thing.

I know this doesn't answer the question, but its just something that annoys me.

It's because C's and P's aren't the same thing. The honor's cut-off at my school is movable serving to limit the amount of people receiving an 'H', so we've had courses where a 93 was a 'P'. Typically 90-91 is the cut-off, with all scores below being a 'P'. Course means in the low 80s for reference.