Do PD's really take third year grades seriously?

[RonSwanson's Gold]

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They can't right? I sent out 17 evals on one rotation, 2 people filled them out. This is 80 percent of our grade. My favorite comment so far: RonSwanson's Gold has excellent bedside manner and communicates clearly and effectively with patients and is always highly professional. That same evaluator, Professionalism 3/5. If our narrative evals are good and we get great letters, will PD's care about the actual pass, high pass, honors grade (particularly for top tier IM) if everything else is up to snuff?

 

[Dr. Doctor MD]

They can't right? I sent out 17 evals on one rotation, 2 people filled them out. This is 80 percent of our grade. My favorite comment so far: RonSwanson's Gold has excellent bedside manner and communicates clearly and effectively with patients and is always highly professional. That same evaluator, Professionalism 3/5. If our narrative evals are good and we get great letters, will PD's care about the actual pass, high pass, honors grade (particularly for top tier IM) if everything else is up to snuff?

Unfortunately they can and they do. No matter how good your comments are, passes look bad if you are applying any competitive specialty or top tier IM.

That being said, one or two passes in the context of mostly honors on other rotations and good comments probably won't hurt you much. Unfortunately 3rd year grades can individually be pretty random and unfair, but the bigger picture of ALL clerkship grades actually tends to paint an accurate picture as to the quality of student.

Try to knock everything out of the park for the rest of your rotations and you'll do fine!

 

[Lawpy]

Unfortunately they can and they do. No matter how good your comments are, passes look bad if you are applying any competitive specialty or top tier IM.

That being said, one or two passes in the context of mostly honors on other rotations and good comments probably won't hurt you much. Unfortunately 3rd year grades can individually be pretty random and unfair, but the bigger picture of ALL clerkship grades actually tends to paint an accurate picture as to the quality of student.

Try to knock everything out of the park for the rest of your rotations and you'll do fine!

You can always count on a 3-bomber to casually sink your chances at competitive programs...

 

[ace_inhibitor111]

Unfortunately they can and they do. No matter how good your comments are, passes look bad if you are applying any competitive specialty or top tier IM.

That being said, one or two passes in the context of mostly honors on other rotations and good comments probably won't hurt you much. Unfortunately 3rd year grades can individually be pretty random and unfair, but the bigger picture of ALL clerkship grades actually tends to paint an accurate picture as to the quality of student.

Try to knock everything out of the park for the rest of your rotations and you'll do fine!

There are way too many confounding variables for 3rd year grades to be anywhere close to accurate. The response rate for eval requests is 25%-40% on a good rotation, which is abysmal. 6-7 core rotations on completely different specialties cannot give a good gestalt on a person. For example, if a person is a rockstar in Neuro, IM and surgery but happen to get stuck with 2 AIs in those rotations, they have no chance of shining. Even if they have an easier time on the rest of the rotations, those rotations would not be ones he/she is good at. If someone manages to get mostly honors, I’m more inclined to view them as being at the top of the luck bell curve as opposed to being some sort of wizard of the wards.

 

[sliceofbread136]

Yup it’s a dumb system.

 

[CharlieBillings]

.

 

[7331poas]

You can always count on a 3-bomber to casually sink your chances at competitive programs...

Based on your experience?

 

[throwaway1000000]

Yes. AOA is huge in IM which in our school is based on 3rd year grades.

 

[Epilepsy365]

Welcome to the real world as in residency and fellowship in which you will be evaluated subjectively instead of by numbers.

 

[Sleepingdoc]

Welcome to the real world as in residency and fellowship in which you will be evaluated subjectively instead of by numbers.

exactly.. you will get subjective evalulation from everyone from now on.. Your shelf grades have less of a weight.

 

[Throwawaycall]

Yeah it does and like almost all of my rotations gave everyone 100 on everything when if you are dumb. We got lucky

 

[MSTP18]

welcome to MS3

 

[Lawpy]

This stuff honestly freaks me out since I failed my first rotation in pediatrics. Honored the shelf, honored all the other assignments and no professionalism violations, but missed the cutoff for evals by 1.5%. My first attending and the resident working with them gave me abysmal evals, and my senior resident in inpatient and nursery gave me mediocre evals. I was hoping to get my eval from the resident I worked with for 3 weeks on patient- Woke up every day at 4:30 AM, did my duties like progress notes, presenting on rounds, following up in the afternoon. We got a long good, and she gave me feedback in person which in sum had no real concerns. At the end of the rotation I never got her eval...I guess she just didn't want to fill it out. Ended up not meeting the cut off and failing as mentioned above.

Got all honors for preclinicals, 263 on Step 1, just finished FM and I think i'll be getting honors in it, and i'm not on IM and things are going smooth so far. The whole thing just sucks and it's constantly lingering on the back of my mind, kind of draining away that passion I had when starting M3 year because i'm constantly worried about matching in a decent IM program ( Mid/Upper tier with good fellowship matching)

Wait, you failed a rotation because you didn't get the eval?

 

[throwaway1000000]

This stuff honestly freaks me out since I failed my first rotation in pediatrics. Honored the shelf, honored all the other assignments and no professionalism violations, but missed the cutoff for evals by 1.5%. My first attending and the resident working with them gave me abysmal evals, and my senior resident in inpatient and nursery gave me mediocre evals. I was hoping to get my eval from the resident I worked with for 3 weeks on patient- Woke up every day at 4:30 AM, did my duties like progress notes, presenting on rounds, following up in the afternoon. We got a long good, and she gave me feedback in person which in sum had no real concerns. At the end of the rotation I never got her eval...I guess she just didn't want to fill it out. Ended up not meeting the cut off and failing as mentioned above.

Got all honors for preclinicals, 263 on Step 1, just finished FM and I think i'll be getting honors in it, and i'm not on IM and things are going smooth so far. The whole thing just sucks and it's constantly lingering on the back of my mind, kind of draining away that passion I had when starting M3 year because i'm constantly worried about matching in a decent IM program ( Mid/Upper tier with good fellowship matching)

That is crazy. Can't say I have ever heard of that. Sorry.

 

[Epilepsy365]

That is crazy. Can't say I have ever heard of that. Sorry.

Seem to be common in Peds. My worst third year grade full of negative feedbacks calling me a danger to patients and unfit to practice medicine was in Peds.

Looking back, I can just laugh about it with my 10+ IIs to solid uni programs in my hands.

 

[Rekt]

Of course. They don't want unlucky residents.

 

[coldcase331]

I didn't fail because I didn't get the eval, but getting that eval would have gave me a little bump to at least get a pass. I mean, anyone with common decency would have filled it out considering I worked with that resident (followed their patients, was essentially tagging a long) for the 3 weeks.That whole rotation was a nightmare because I was working my ass off after that first negative eval, and then once I got the eval from the resident working with the attending who gave me the scathing eval I knew I was in a deep hole. Went to the bathroom and had a breakdown...never knew pediatrics could make a grown man cry in the bathroom lmao. Think Rick Dalton from Once upon a time in hollywood talking to himself in the mirror kind of breakdown.

Same thing happened to me on one of my rotations. All I'll say is do some self-reflection and see if the evals actually warrant a change in conduct. I met with the head of the rotation to discuss "what went wrong". Tried out what they suggested and was getting the cold shoulder from some residents. Went back to doing my usual thing and got all honors for the rest of the year. So in my case I could conclude it was just a batch of bitter residents for that one rotation, maybe it's the same for you.

 

[SimonGuyman133]

Same thing happened to me on one of my rotations. All I'll say is do some self-reflection and see if the evals actually warrant a change in conduct. I met with the head of the rotation to discuss "what went wrong". Tried out what they suggested and was getting the cold shoulder from some residents. Went back to doing my usual thing and got all honors for the rest of the year. So in my case I could conclude it was just a batch of bitter residents for that one rotation, maybe it's the same for you.

By the way, forgot to ask. Are you an M4 or have you already matched?