frustrated

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lakersbaby

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hey guys,
what is everyone's take on grades? people around here seem to give mixed feeling about it. a bunch of people say grades dont mean much as long as you do well on boards other say that grades do matter. im pretty frustrated because in two classes i was like 2 point away from an Honors grade and ended up with a high pass. do you think that the honors vs a high pass is a big deal?

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im pretty frustrated because in two classes i was like 2 point away from an Honors grade and ended up with a high pass. do you think that the honors vs a high pass is a big deal?

Yup - been there. It's really frustrating, but it's not that big of a deal. Use the experience at motivation; I missed two courses by fractions of a point my first term and haven't let it happen again since.
 
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Preclinical grades don't matter unless you're going for AOA.
Clinical grades do matter much more than preclinical grades, but probably not as much as Step I scores.
I cannot recall how many times on the interview trail, they mentioned my clinical honors grades, but didn't pay any attention to my basic science grades.
 
hey guys,
what is everyone's take on grades? people around here seem to give mixed feeling about it. a bunch of people say grades dont mean much as long as you do well on boards other say that grades do matter. im pretty frustrated because in two classes i was like 2 point away from an Honors grade and ended up with a high pass. do you think that the honors vs a high pass is a big deal?

The ultimate importance of grades is somewhat school dependent. At my school, the preclinical grades were the basis of our rankings. At the end of second year, we all knew who were the top ten in the class and that didn't change. If your school uses pre-clinicals for rankings then high pass versus honors is not as much of a deal as the actual numbers which may determine how you are ranked. All of us in the top ten had all honors pre-clinical but those numbers were different and that was the ranking.

If you are at a school that determines rank by other means, then the grades don't mean so much other than when that residency program director is scanning your transcript and sees the Honors, High Pass etc. In that case, honors looks better than high pass but either is better than a failure. I know that they do get "juiced up" over honors but some schools only award Pass or Fail for pre-clinicals.

Grades like boards are important and AOA selection is school chapter dependent. If you are interested in AOA, you need to have the grades. In that case, grades may carry more importance for you personally but either you are going to make AOA or you don't.

In the end, your grades are what they are and only you can affect the ones you have yet to earn. You can be obsessed about them or you can do your best making sure that you at least pass everything and have some sanity. In the end, would the outcome been any different if you had missed Honors by one point or by ten points? It is what it is.
 
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