Failure

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silentme

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I have been a lurker for sometime on these boards and I find myself in a situation now where I don't know up from down.

I am a MSI, and I found out today that I failed our biochemistry course. I got the results back for my final test and I didn't make the phenomenal score I needed to pull up my average to passing.

Also, today I found out that I probably will not pass another course. When I look at my averages on these other tests I am pretty sure that I will not be above the passing percentage (which has not been posted by our professors yet).

So I failed two courses. I don't know how to take it. I have done fairly well (middle of the pack) on the other courses and will probably end up honoring another course which I have done very well in (95%). I just don't know how I could have let myself fail two courses.

I guess I just don't know where to go from here.

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At most schools, this means you will have to repeat. This may seem like a huge deal right now, but in 10 yrs you won't even think about it and nobody will care if you took 4 or 5 yrs to finish med school. Just try to figure out where things went wrong and come back strong the next time. You are here now and the schools will do everything they can to get you through.
 
Make an appt to meet with the dean of students and ask him/her what your options are. You seem to have good averages otherwise and it's not like you failed all across the board - see what they say about remediation. At my school that means you retake an exam.

I know several second years who had to retake an exam or two and they're just fine. Medschool is hard, no two ways about it, and hard in ways more than just the overwhelming courseload.

:thumbup:
 
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Some courses have retakes in the summer or at least before M2 year starts. I'm assuming you go to Illinois since biochem is 3/4yr long...and they have makeup exams. So the good news is that you don't have to repeat a year and waste time and money.

BTW, courses and grades don't mean much anyway so long as you do well on step 1 and thereafter. My dean's letter will have 2 sentences at the most about my performance during preclinical years...a whopping 1 sentence/year. :p

Cheer up! several of my classmates failed multiple classes last year...and they are my M2 peers this year. :)
 
That's great that so many of you get to retake things. At TTU, if you fail a course you MAY get to remediate over the summer. Forget about it if you fail two. If you low-pass three, you have to repeat as well. We hold back about 10% a yr. Most come back and do fine the next yr and it all works out.
 
Hang in there silentme. I've been in your shoes. I had to take a make up shelf in Biochem (amongst others). First, find out how this situation is dealt with at your school. The important thing is that you improve from this setback. Yes, it's a pain in the a** having to make up stuff. Believe me, I'm doing MS2 again after taking a leave of absence. It's not easy, but I don't think about it as much as I used to. When all is said and done, 10 years from now it won't matter that I failed some courses or that I had to do MS2 all over again.

Hang in there =)
 
At my school, you have to fail three courses in order to not be able to remediate. They let you remediate the courses you failed by taking an exam (in the summer or after the course ends). But every school is different. They really don't want to kick you out, so don't worry too much about that. Find out what your school's policy is by looking in your student handbook and find out what the story is. Good luck!
 
I went and asked what my options were and I was told that I can remediate in the summer. I will have to pass a make-up exam. I just have to pull it all together and pass all my other courses. If I fail anything else, which I doubt I will, then I will have to take the entire year over again. It is just so hard to think that I did so bad. But I do understand that step 1 more important than grades for these two years...as long as I pass everything. Thank you all for the words of wisdom.
 
The cruel thing about med school is that they take a bunch of straight-A students, bury them in information, and fail the bottom 5-10%. Only a cruel f*ck would think to do this. If you think about it, it is sadist behavior, especially the part about gauranteeing failures (by using standard deviations). Anyway, welcome to this sadist occupation. That's where the 120 hour residencies came from.

Anyway, do what you need to do to survive. You're not alone.
 
Hey at least it's not like med school in some European countries. In places like France they only allow the top 10-15% of the class to advance to the next year. Just think how hard it gets to advance as you move up each year. And imagine how much it would suck to advance for a couple of years and then not make the cut for your last year or so. I won't even get into how hard their exams are compared to ours, especially their specialty exams. In that regard we have it easy. I'm not saying it's easy here but comparitively speaking we do suffer less.
 
gary5 said:
The cruel thing about med school is that they take a bunch of straight-A students, bury them in information, and fail the bottom 5-10%. Only a cruel f*ck would think to do this. If you think about it, it is sadist behavior, especially the part about gauranteeing failures (by using standard deviations). Anyway, welcome to this sadist occupation. That's where the 120 hour residencies came from.

But that's how many of my college classes were. Graded on a bell curve, so by definition, some people have to get below Cs.
 
Blade28 said:
But that's how many of my college classes were. Graded on a bell curve, so by definition, some people have to get below Cs.
Yes but the majority of those people didn't make it to med school either cause they didn't want to or weren't accepted anywhere. I think what Gary was talking about is when your entire field only consists of the top percentage from college.
 
gary5 said:
The cruel thing about med school is that they take a bunch of straight-A students, bury them in information, and fail the bottom 5-10%. Only a cruel f*ck would think to do this. If you think about it, it is sadist behavior, especially the part about gauranteeing failures (by using standard deviations). Anyway, welcome to this sadist occupation. That's where the 120 hour residencies came from.

Anyway, do what you need to do to survive. You're not alone.

I think you have to ask what those "straight A's" were in. A straight A student in the humanities who took the bare minimum of courses to be "pre-med" might very well have trouble during the first two years of med school. A student with an A/B average in the life sciences can probably a have a less rigorous approach to the first two years.

If 5 - 10 % of a medical school class is failing out than that medical school needs to reasses their admissions protocols.
 
Furrball said:
I think you have to ask what those "straight A's" were in. A straight A student in the humanities who took the bare minimum of courses to be "pre-med" might very well have trouble during the first two years of med school. A student with an A/B average in the life sciences can probably a have a less rigorous approach to the first two years.

If 5 - 10 % of a medical school class is failing out than that medical school needs to reasses their admissions protocols.

I actually have 2, yes count them 2, degrees. One in a humanities where I graduated with a 3.8, and an entire other degree in biology where I graduated with a 3.7. Am I part of the "reassessment"? :mad:

Does no-one fail a class at your school? Wait, you must go to Fictional University! Of course how could I forget that at FU everything is peaches and cream!

IMHO, if you put in the work to get this far then you should be able to pass every class. Obviously I had issues with these courses, but I am being given the chance to redeem the mistake.
 
I agree that some of the "humanities" (not very specific) are very hard, and some are not. It just depends, but you do find that if you do have some previous background in science you do tend to be more familiar with it and therefore have an easier time, meaning easier to score highly with the same effort. But, like you see, even biology/chemistry degrees can have a hard time in med school...

Not all schools grade on a curve, they just have P/F or have straight up A,B,C,F scales where if you get below a certain point, usually a 70%, you fail. It is all dependent on the school.

A lot of schools have counselors that specialize in helping you reorganize your time and find new ways to study, at least mine does. Many others have peer tutors etc. Maybe you should look into these resources, because I think it will help you relieve your anxiety.
 
Hey glad you got to just remediate an exam. But let me tell brother! I just came back from our biochem final and even people who had serious molecular experience and degrees were like, what the heck was that?! We were all choking and praying for a big curve. So, issues with biochem, hmmmm ... you might be a good company with that one ... ;)
 
Paws said:
Hey glad you got to just remediate an exam. But let me tell brother! I just came back from our biochem final and even people who had serious molecular experience and degrees were like, what the heck was that?! We were all choking and praying for a big curve. So, issues with biochem, hmmmm ... you might be a good company with that one ... ;)
Check out the threads on the biochem shelf. Everyone leaves it feeling raped. You guys will be fine on that one.... the scoring is all relative.
 
thackl said:
Check out the threads on the biochem shelf. Everyone leaves it feeling raped. You guys will be fine on that one.... the scoring is all relative.


If you fail two at our school, they ask you to repeat the year. If you fail one, but your scores are mediocre, they may suggest to you that you repeat the year.

I am sorry that you failed a class. It is relatively easy to do. I had a lot of problems with my first year (although I didn't fail, I know some people that did).

It is REALLY easy to get high grades in other classes by letting two classes slide. Heck, had I let Biochem slide, or Physio slide, I would have ROCKED in everything else. You need to be able to balance the ENTIRE workload, not just a few classes. Keep that in mind. I am not trying to be harsh, but one of the things you have to learn in med school is time management and making sure you do everything in all of your classes, not just a select few.

Work hard at remediation. You should sail though that if you are willing to put the time in. It is always easier to learn the second time around.

Good luck
 
Dupree said:
Hey at least it's not like med school in some European countries. In places like France they only allow the top 10-15% of the class to advance to the next year. Just think how hard it gets to advance as you move up each year. And imagine how much it would suck to advance for a couple of years and then not make the cut for your last year or so. I won't even get into how hard their exams are compared to ours, especially their specialty exams. In that regard we have it easy. I'm not saying it's easy here but comparitively speaking we do suffer less.

It's kind of nice to see that someone else here knows about French med schools.

However, the selection Dupree refers to, though brutal, is only in the first year. It's called the "concours", i.e. the competition.

I did my undergrad at a well regarded North American university and assumed that since I got A's in all my basic science courses that I'd have no trouble with the concours here (since it's based on basic sciences). However, I'm finding the whole experience humbling. French students seem to take the concours very, very seriously and tests sometimes require skills that I didn't need to develop before.

If I make it through, I'll be very happy but the first year here really is very stressful; and I think excessive stress is an impediment to learning, not a promotor.

There is a silver lining though: once students make it past the first year, the learning environment is supposed to become very good. (It just seems a long way off at the moment.)

And silentme, I'm sorry to hear about your having to take a make-up exam. It sounds like things are working out though. I wish you all the best for the summer.
 
I think about 50% of my class had to repeat at least one class some time during their first 2 yrs of medschool (and we're a pretty decent school too). So don't worry, I'm sure you won't be alone at summer school. And in the end, nobody even remembers (or knows) who failed what.
 
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