Do radiology PDs actually read the MSPE?

[Radiologyreviews2015]

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Let's assume you meet the program's step 1 cut-off.

I haven't found specific info on this forum about evaluation of clinical performance (outside of the generic "get honors" advice)

1) The definition of honors/high pass/etc is extremely variable school to school.
2) Specific shelf scores may be reported on the MSPE but will they care about that or only care about the "honors" label or whatever?
3) The comments themselves may be actually be useful. In the PD's mind, is there a difference between a generic "Jane was good at histories and physicals" vs "Jane was extraordinarily proficient at ABC and XYZ, managing patient treatment plans, and functioned on the level of an intern, etc" (LOR type comments).
4) After reading the FAQ in the sticky threads about class rank, is it really that bad to be about 50th percentile (or even slightly lower) in clinical performance at your medical school? Assuming no red flags.

Basically, I'm asking for the type of applicant aiming for programs ranked in the 25-50ish range (NOT top 25). I assume the top 25 are filled with applicants who all have high step, good grades, and research.

The MSPE and clinical grades are so subjective that I'm totally confused how a PD evaluates them.

 

[Radiologyreviews2015]

I understand how you feel about grades in clinical rotations. They are entirely subjective and getting honors/high pass/pass at different schools may mean very different things.

Unfortunately, I highly doubt that PD's read the detailed comments on MSPE's. My MSPE is probably about 15 pages long and I could not even read it more than once. I cannot imagine there would be enough man power to read the MSPE's and retain any of it for 100+ applicants that a typical residency program interviews, let alone all of the 500+ applications they get.

There is just no fair way to grade someone's performance on the clinics, much the same way as doctors' ratings on "rate my doctor" websites are meaningless.

 

[patel1283]

I spoke to a PD today and she informed me she reads every word in the MSPE.

 

[Shifty B]

I've participated in residency candidate interviews for several years, and yes, people read the MSPE. Yes, it's also extremely difficult to make sense of it. It's most helpful when the grades are high and when there are specific comments from core clerkships that speak to your abilities as a student and how you were well liked.

 

[gwooooooooooooooooooood]

Every program has different methods. Some programs will even state on their website what their most important factors are for ranking (e.g. MPSE, step 1, clerkship grades).

From what I've gathered, someone in the process will be reading your MPSE. Many interviews have blind interviews, where the interviewer simply meets you without seeing your application, or the PD will read the MPSE and not interview applicants. Among a sea of applicants with scores and grades above average, they definitely do put an effort to read the subjective comments, as they will be working intimately with you for the next 4 years (remember, radiology is a field with a incredible amount of resident-attending contact).

 

[Radiologyreviews2015]

"I was occasionally asked on interviews to recite my third and fourth year grades. At one program, I was asked to explain any non-honors grades I received during my clinical years. While that experience was certainly not typical, it speaks to the importance that clinical grades hold in resident selection."

This is a quote from the UCSD guide about applying to radiology written in 2009. Is there any truth to this? If a program scrutinized my clerkship grades to this extent after inviting me to interview, I wouldn't want to go there.

 

[Radiologyreviews2015]

"I was occasionally asked on interviews to recite my third and fourth year grades. At one program, I was asked to explain any non-honors grades I received during my clinical years. While that experience was certainly not typical, it speaks to the importance that clinical grades hold in resident selection."

This is a quote from the UCSD guide about applying to radiology written in 2009. Is there any truth to this? If a program scrutinized my clerkship grades to this extent after inviting me to interview, I wouldn't want to go there.

Didn't happen to me. If a program couldn't handle my 'non-honors' grades and made me explain each they would go to the bottom of my lists.

There are too many good programs and radiology is too much of a buyers market to put up with that BS.

 

[InternationlDoc]

Yes, most do.

Authority? : I was on the selection committee as chief resident.

 

[Radiologyreviews2015]

Yes, most do.

Authority? : I was on the selection committee as chief resident.

Yes most read the MSPE or yes most demand explanations for third year grades?

 

[Radiologyreviews2015]

Didn't happen to me. If a program couldn't handle my 'non-honors' grades and made me explain each they would go to the bottom of my lists.

There are too many good programs and radiology is too much of a buyers market to put up with that BS.

There was one person that asked me whether I was disappointed with my Step 2CK score (264) as it was lower than Step 1 (265)...

 

[InternationlDoc]

Yes most read the MSPE or yes most demand explanations for third year grades?

Yes to MSPE. The latter is really F'ing weird. Who does that?

I nominate that PD as the republican candidate. Him vs Trump. Lets go.

MSPE is used to get an overall read. Programs differ a little bit in the "type" of resident they want. It is sort of like recruiting in college FB - "hey man we short on stud LBs - quick pay some HS athletes to come down to play this position"

Ok not really but if we wanted hard workers we got that feeling through body language and confidence on the day of interview + their communication and persona so we overlooked grades / MSPE a bit.

 

[Radiologyreviews2015]

Yes to MSPE. The latter is really F'ing weird. Who does that?

I nominate that PD as the republican candidate. Him vs Trump. Lets go.

MSPE is used to get an overall read. Programs differ a little bit in the "type" of resident they want. It is sort of like recruiting in college FB - "hey man we short on stud LBs - quick pay some HS athletes to come down to play this position"

Ok not really but if we wanted hard workers we got that feeling through body language and confidence on the day of interview + their communication and persona so we overlooked grades / MSPE a bit.

That's awesome! Glad to hear that at least some programs will actually read it rather than just make ridiculous conclusions from the honors label. If honors were that important than wouldn't every school just give the majority of their students honors? The whole system pisses me off. Although about half the people who get honors at our school will make outstanding physicians and deserve their grade, the other half are backstabbing jerks that consistently cheat their way through and will be a disgrace at whatever institution unfortunately takes those people thinking they're going to be great but then watches them back stab their future co residents

 

[chronicidal]

That's awesome! Glad to hear that at least some programs will actually read it rather than just make ridiculous conclusions from the honors label. If honors were that important than wouldn't every school just give the majority of their students honors? The whole system pisses me off. Although about half the people who get honors at our school will make outstanding physicians and deserve their grade, the other half are backstabbing jerks that consistently cheat their way through and will be a disgrace at whatever institution unfortunately takes those people thinking they're going to be great but then watches them back stab their future co residents

Jeez loueez. Jelly?

Ok not really but if we wanted hard workers we got that feeling through body language and confidence on the day of interview + their communication and persona so we overlooked grades / MSPE a bit.

In simulated job interviews, "Chronic self-promoters (i.e., European-heritage narcissists) were given the most positive evaluations." http://bit.ly/1orUKpp

 

[Cognovi]

Radiology PDs do consider the MSPE relatively important, so I would assume they read it.
NRMP PD survey 2014:
For selecting applicants to interview: 91% of programs cite the MSPE as a factor, with mean importance 4.5 out of 5.
For ranking applicants: 78% cite the MSPE as a factor, with mean importance of 4.3 out of 5.

 

[Radiologyreviews2015]

Radiology PDs do consider the MSPE relatively important, so I would assume they read it.
NRMP PD survey 2014:
For selecting applicants to interview: 91% of programs cite the MSPE as a factor, with mean importance 4.5 out of 5.
For ranking applicants: 78% cite the MSPE as a factor, with mean importance of 4.3 out of 5.

It's actually rated higher than both "grades in required clerkships" and "honors in required clerkships", especially for ranking.

SDN is obsessed about honors it's insane. PDs know that schools are different. They probably glance at the MSPE to see what the performance is behind the grade. If there are great comments and a good shelf score then it probably doesn't matter. Of course, there is probably a correlation between shelf scores and honors.

 

[Radiologyreviews2015]

Every thread delves into how unfair everything is, or how unfair everyone has it.

DO bias.
Honors distributed unevenly at schools.

It's all already said and done, get over it.

 

[Radiologyreviews2015]

Every thread delves into how unfair everything is, or how unfair everyone has it.

DO bias.
Honors distributed unevenly at schools.

It's all already said and done, get over it.

well said. everyone just has to remember that we're going to be doctors in the USA

we still have it better than probably 99% of humans on Earth. Many of those don't have the opportunity that we have because of life circumstances. Think about that next time you want to complain about honors or whether you're going to get into a top 10 program vs a top 25 or god forbid not even in the top 50 (unfathomable by SDN standards!)

have a beer and sleep soundly.

 

[Radiologyreviews2015]

A PD told me that if the step 1 was high, it was very likely that person is going to get an interview regardless of the remainder of the application. He only glances over the rest of it to make sure there are no red flags. Not having honors will not hurt you unless you are gung-ho on top programs. According to the PD 2014 survey, there are step 1 score thresholds that some PDs will definitely grant an interview to an applicant

 

[Radiologyreviews2015]

This is so confusing. I understand PDs may or may not read the MSPE because it takes way too long but do they at least glance at the medicine and surgery sections to check out your shelf exam grade? I feel that this would be a more fair way to do it after meeting the step 1 cut off. Some people score really well and get good evaluation comments but still get passes whereas a similar performance at a different medical school gives high passes or honors for about the same performance.

 

[Radiologyreviews2015]

One of the problems with using shelf scores as a metric for comparing applicants is that schools have widely varying structures for clerkship rotations. I took all my shelf exams in 1 week at the end of the M3 in a longitudinal curriculum, and they were treated mainly as a "pass to let the school know we're academically competent" kind of deal. Obviously, the same argument could then be made about how different schools teach toward preparing students for Step 1, but shelf exams, from what I've heard, are still not considered as much of a standard as step 1 for comparison.

 

[Radiologyreviews2015]

My school doesn't even include shelf scores on the mspe

 

[Radiologyreviews2015]

One of the problems with using shelf scores as a metric for comparing applicants is that schools have widely varying structures for clerkship rotations. I took all my shelf exams in 1 week at the end of the M3 in a longitudinal curriculum, and they were treated mainly as a "pass to let the school know we're academically competent" kind of deal. Obviously, the same argument could then be made about how different schools teach toward preparing students for Step 1, but shelf exams, from what I've heard, are still not considered as much of a standard as step 1 for comparison.

That's fair I understand your point. But "widely varying structures for clerkship rotations" also applies to every other portion of 3rd year grading especially evaluations. Why would they arbitrarily choose to make the final grade so important when it's also not standardized?

 

[InternationlDoc]

Guys guys guys -- PDs have their own metric and judge it by the school. So its intraschool MSPE that is a bit of a gauge. Some schools with grade inflation vs pass/fail etc. It is not taken in vaccum. 3 people coming from one school will have MSPE comparison for that school.

 

[Radiologyreviews2015]

Guys guys guys -- PDs have their own metric and judge it by the school. So its intraschool MSPE that is a bit of a gauge. Some schools with grade inflation vs pass/fail etc. It is not taken in vaccum. 3 people coming from one school will have MSPE comparison for that school.

Interesting. Thanks for the insight. To what detail would they analyze this? I know at my school we are graded in small groups of 10-15 students where a couple get honors, a couple get high pass, everyone else pass. We are with the same group the entire year. In this situation, student X could be averaging a 90% in clerkships throughout the year but gets straight passes because of the strength of the small group. Student Y could be averaging 86-88% in clerkships and get high passes and honors as a result of being in a weaker group. Although I have not been personally adversely affected, I know a couple of friends who've been royally screwed by a stacked group.

The problem is that figuring all that out would take too much time for a PD trying to differentiate student X and Y from the same school. In reality, they'll probably just glance at the final grades quickly and assume student Y is a much better candidate than student X.

 

[Radiologyreviews2015]

hey don't mean to hijack your post OP but I was wondering if PDs ever look at the shelf exam scores if they're in the MSPE when they narrow the applicant pool and make final decisions on who to invite for interview. It seems it'd be easy for the program coordinator to put those shelf exam scores in a spreadsheet especially medicine and surgery. It could make a difference for those with borderline step 1 or grades for that particular program. I understand the administration of the shelf exams differs immensely from school to school so it's not standardized

 

[InternationlDoc]

Sigh

People thinking too deep here. PDs don't just take face value numbers of your school has wierd shelf thing going on PDs will know. Do the best and let it play out.

On borderline candidates I can tell you I looked at interview feel and what "aura" that person gave during interview. Not their shelf scores.

 

[Radiologyreviews2015]

Sigh

People thinking too deep here. PDs don't just take face value numbers of your school has wierd shelf thing going on PDs will know. Do the best and let it play out.

On borderline candidates I can tell you I looked at interview feel and what "aura" that person gave during interview. Not their shelf scores.

I meant for figuring out who to invite for interview after meeting step 1 cutoff. I meant it as an extension of OP's original question. Sorry if I wasn't clear before.

I understand we're over analyzing this to some extent but it's an interesting discussion nonetheless.