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Got pimped for an exam - goodbye summer
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Sorry brah, thats rough....
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That really blows. I'm sorry to hear that. Do you think you could ask the administration to allow you to retake like those that got less than 70? That just doesn't seem fair. I'd try to talk to a dean or something and explain the situation and see what can be done.
Whoa you picked washington st louis over Vandy?
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Why is that weird?
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I talked to them and they said it's not possible. You're right...I don't think it's fair. One other guy got in the same score range that I did. He passed, but barely, and he said it was incredibly difficult for him, too. The guy I know that got a 68% said the retake was pretty simple, especially since he was able to go over his old test and 80% of the questions were duplicated.
I'm going to appeal my grade, but I doubt it'll do any good. I'm hoping I can just get past this point where I'm considering dumping my girlfriend or dropping out or something like that.
I didn't say it was weird.
Just surprised since they're both at the top and I heard vandy is really fun while Wash St. L is intense and not much fun. But med school isn't about fun after all
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I hope that all works out. Sucky situation. Don't get too down about it though. You'll still be a doctor in the end.
Don't believe everything you hear. I don't think I could have more fun anywhere else.
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dude seriously? dumping your gf or dropping out? i hope you're not feeling that low...you gotta stick it out. next block will be better. don't forget all the effort you've put in to bring you to this point in your academic career!
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Buck up man. Medical school is challenging and uncomfortable. I ****ing hate it. But it's a necessary evil to get to the place we both want to arrive at one day. Use this hiccup as an eye-opener. Get your **** together and figure out a way to approach this endeavor with the vigor that's required to get through it.
My approach involves nudity, a bathroom mirror, aggressive music, and repeated fists to my pecs.
Good luck man. Seriously. It's a hard road, but the secret to walking it is self-discipline. You need to get a laser focus to get through this ****.
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After failing my exam today so bad (I got a 63% which took my grade of 94 after two exams to a low B) I can identify with you in some ways. It is scary to perform poorly and it has raised thoughts of doubt in personal ability. Easier said then done, but try not to let the feelings you are feeling now affect the other things in life. Dumping the GF should not be related to medical school (unless of course the cases where SO are not good matches because they actively hinder your education). Dropping out should be because you don't want to be doctor anymore, not because the process of a medical education sucks. JMO.
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WashU was in my top 3 medical schools. I absolutely loved the environment and they took me out two nights in a row. Did not get the intense vibe at all.
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No offense, but no you can't. The OP failed the first exam, failed remediation, failed the block, and now has to remediate the whole thing over the summer. That's not even close to being the same as failing one exam which brings your grade down to a B.
OP, I'd appeal the grade, but more importantly, I'd ask to take the written exam the others got to take. You don't want to wait until the summer and have to learn all that again. It really is a silly policy that those who almost passed have to do the essay/pimping thing while those who flat-out failed get to take a similar exam over again. It should be the other way around.
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I am incredibly sorry to hear that you have had this experience. It sounds like you have taken personal responsibility that you are the one who didn't meet the expectations put forth by your school, which is a great first step in making sure this never happens again. You are far from sunk and it will suck to retake over the summer, but life is far from over...
I do find it unfair that you would have to remediate by writing some papers and basically undergo the Spanish Inquisition to prove that you now have an acceptable understanding of the material. This is a horrible way for the school to handle your situation.
The amount of knowledge one must possess to "defend a thesis" against the subjective opinion of one's professors is completely different than the amount of knowledge to "pass a test" with less-subjective "right and wrong" answers IMO.
If I were personally in your position, I would be beating down the dean's door about the inequity of "being pimped" versus retaking a mostly rehashed first exam. This part of the school's reaction is ridiculous. All students should have to "jump the same hoops," and for you to be put in this situation is beyond belief.
VTC is neither helping your chances of success nor their own for future recruitment and program success by taking such actions.
This reeks of the school being ill-prepared for what to do when people don't meet their standards.
Sometimes it sucks to be the guinea pigs.
Good luck OP and don't let the man get you down!
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Yeah, this is kind of a random comment.
Wash U. is a great school. So is Vandy. Choosing Wash U. over Vandy makes sense to me.
Why would it matter which one she picked anyhow?
😕
lolwut
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what kind of school does this? Essay exams? Oral remediation exams?
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Actually, I believe our handbook states that individual professors can choose to give oral or essay-based remediation exams to those who fail. Many of our profs, however, clearly state in their syllabi that they will give multiple-choice exams for remediation (although some say that those multiple choice exams will be more difficult than those taken by the rest of the student body).
OP, what does your student handbook say on this?
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Yep, it sucks. If I had known this is what would have happened, I would have just done worse on the original test so I could do the retake.
I'm going to be appealing this grade decision throughout the next couple weeks. Hopefully the school will be reasonable about this. It just sucks...I studied the subjects I was supposed to study. My performance in that oral exam in no way reflects my actual knowledge and what my ability to perform on a written test would have been. 🙁
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I agree. Not sure how having a low B in a class even compares to what I'm dealing with. As it stands, not only is my summertime gone but I'm going to have to completely relearn material that by then I'll have forgotten most of. Ughhhh. 😡
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Wouldn't know...haven't been given one.
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Good luck with the appeal!
At the very least, you might be able to help the school learn from their mistake and make sure this doesn't happen to any of your classmates in the future or those in the next class.
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Let me get this straight. You failed an exam. You were given a second chance and failed again. You then decided to ask them to change the rules and give you a third chance. You are now appealing their refusal to give you a third chance. Most people who have replied to this thread agree with your strategy.
Does that about sum up the situation?
It's scary that this is the mentality of medical students today, even at a prestigious institution.
Instead of arguing your grade and asking for exceptions to the rules, why don't you simply accept that you failed an exam and study harder for the next exam? Don't try to beat the system. Just show some character at this moment in your life and it will serve you better than getting a pass on this one exam.
Does that about sum up the situation?
It's scary that this is the mentality of medical students today, even at a prestigious institution.
Instead of arguing your grade and asking for exceptions to the rules, why don't you simply accept that you failed an exam and study harder for the next exam? Don't try to beat the system. Just show some character at this moment in your life and it will serve you better than getting a pass on this one exam.
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Eh, I disagree with you. The poster should accept that he failed, but the way the school handled remediations was ridiculous and unfair. Everyone who failed should have been given the same remediation "exam." The fact that there was a difference in how the remediation exam was administered should be challenged, especially since this is a new medical program and most likely, is still wrinkling out the kinks in the curriculum.
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If I had been told it was an oral exam, I would have prepared for an oral exam. Rather, I was told we were discussing my essays(leading me to believe my grade was BASED on the essays) and the fact that it was an actual exam wasn't mentioned until 5 minutes before I entered the room. I wrote really good essays and was under the impression that that was what my grade was based on. I'm upset because the school's expectations of me were not made clear and I had no way to know to prepare for what actually happened.
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No, I don't think it does.
The OP is taking responsibility for his initial failure.
As someone who taught in K-12 public schools for five years and served as adjunct faculty for a private college for two, I would be among the first to call the OP on "not taking responsibility." I really don't think that is what is going on here.
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What...? There's nothing fair about the OP having to take an ORAL exam while the other students got to take a WRITTEN exam. Everyone should be taking either the oral exam or the written exam. He did accept the fact that he failed the first time and worked hard to pass the remediation. He obviously isn't complaining about the fact that he failed but the fact that the school treated students who failed differently.
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Please tell me you are not one of the inaugural members of the Virginia Tech medical school. This story makes me sick -- this sounds exactly like something VT would do. They are making you re mediate a whole block for failing one exam (barely), the first exam of med school which sounds like it apparently covered everything under the sun, and making you "write a paper" (is this still high school?), and then subsequently treating it like a PhD defense?
Why are they advancing you to the next block if they think you haven't mastered the material, which is what making you re-take it in the summer implies?
This has got VT written all over it -- the same kind of academic hazing that goes on in other parts of the school. I'm sorry for you. Stick it out, get through, and never look back.
edit: the other posts in this thread seem to base their reasoning on fair treatment because of what happened to the other students. That is not the point here. Whether it seems "fair" or not isn't important. What's important is that the administrative decision to make you re-mediate the entire block later (while allowing you to advance now!) is absurd and bone-headed. If I were a competitive applicant, I wouldn't even consider this school based on this story alone. They are screwing up your future without a valid or logical reason. Do they really have doubt you aren't going to pass the boards because you barely "failed" the first exam of medical school? You're paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars for them to haze you like this?
Why are they advancing you to the next block if they think you haven't mastered the material, which is what making you re-take it in the summer implies?
This has got VT written all over it -- the same kind of academic hazing that goes on in other parts of the school. I'm sorry for you. Stick it out, get through, and never look back.
edit: the other posts in this thread seem to base their reasoning on fair treatment because of what happened to the other students. That is not the point here. Whether it seems "fair" or not isn't important. What's important is that the administrative decision to make you re-mediate the entire block later (while allowing you to advance now!) is absurd and bone-headed. If I were a competitive applicant, I wouldn't even consider this school based on this story alone. They are screwing up your future without a valid or logical reason. Do they really have doubt you aren't going to pass the boards because you barely "failed" the first exam of medical school? You're paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars for them to haze you like this?
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I would say that you are correct in that the school is acting *****ic in the first place.
I would also say though that those in charge are far less likely to listen to a medical student's request that they change their educational methodology than a request that all students be treated in a similar fashion.
People capable of enacting such idiotic policies are probably not the self-reflective type. Usually these types of professors tend to be the "well that's how I was taught" variety.
Typical traditional PhD/undergrad professor mentality.
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There is no way an Attending Physician can be this obtuse. Are you trolling this topic?
The discrepancy between methods of remediation for the students is the issue here. Either you have a reading comprehension issue or you're just being a dick for the sake of being a dick. Given your reference to how "medical students today" are, I'm going to go with the latter.
The students who scored worse than the OP on the original exam were given an easy test (80% of the same problems from the first exam) while the OP was given an impromptu Oral Pimp session (in addition to writing some essays about topics he didn't feel 100% on). How can you not see the unfairness of this situation? In the first case, the students knew they were taking an exam and the a majority of said exam was rehashed from the test they had just taken. On the other hand, the OP was given no prior warning he would be pimped about topics unrelated to his essays. And what's worse, an Oral pimp session is practically guaranteed to be harder than a written exam covering previously seen material.
So to answer your question:
No, that doesn't even come remotely close to summing up the situation. The person lacking character in this thread is most certainly not the OP.
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OP, my only advice is that, while you're dealing with your new block and your appeal, make sure to study up to the point where you could (by a wide margin) pass the exam you failed or an oral exam or the same difficulty. I strongly suspect that if your appeal goes through they are going to give you some obscenely small amount of time to prep for the 'fair' retake. Once you know someone is a jackass there's no excuse not to be prepared for it.
Haven't hit your surgery rotation yet, have you?
Haven't hit your surgery rotation yet, have you?
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I get where he was coming from and wouldn't go so far as to say he (or she😕) lacks character.
Just a misunderstanding I think...
"Typical traditional PhD/undergrad professor mentality. "
Exactly. They can get away with this kind of stuff in undergrad when there are 15,000 students and failing a course isn't the end of the world (although, sometimes it is -- I have a few friends who went to the engineering school at VT who got screwed over in the same way and were booted from the program or had to stay an extra year or two).
But when you're a med student paying absurd amounts of money and trying your hardest, the administration has some nerve to allow this kind of ****. If you got into med school, you've already proven that you're smart, capable of passing the boards, and dedicated. The job of the administration is to get you through --> that's what you're paying them for. You are not paying for a chance to prove yourself. You already did that when they let you in. There is absolutely no need for them to try and weed people out (i.e., the job of the admissions department, not the administration). This is not undergrad, this is a professional school. If you can't pass Step I, the school has a legitimate reason to hold you back. Making you jump through hoops that effectively accomplish nothing for BARELY "failing" (a subjective term) an exam is absurd, whether this is due to some PhD on a power trip or administration trying to bump up stepI averages (doubtful, but who knows).
If I were you, I would seriously think about going down the road to VCOM and investigating the possibility of starting there next year. Unlikely they would work with you, but given your story, it's worth a shot.
I've been thinking about this story all night, and it continues to boil my blood because it just reminds me of similar **** that VT has done to friends of mine, including faculty who were fired from the school for essentially being good teachers and using common sense instead of academic hazing and failing people. Literally, everytime I hear something about VT, it's another story like this, or another story of something going wrong there. It doesn't surprise me at all to hear that the same kind of attitudes and policies have been carried over to the new med school. Way to get off on a good foot, guys. Way to engender a healthy academic atmosphere. Wouldn't you love to be a student there knowing that you are just 1 bad exam day away from seriously screwing up your graduation and residency chances?
Exactly. They can get away with this kind of stuff in undergrad when there are 15,000 students and failing a course isn't the end of the world (although, sometimes it is -- I have a few friends who went to the engineering school at VT who got screwed over in the same way and were booted from the program or had to stay an extra year or two).
But when you're a med student paying absurd amounts of money and trying your hardest, the administration has some nerve to allow this kind of ****. If you got into med school, you've already proven that you're smart, capable of passing the boards, and dedicated. The job of the administration is to get you through --> that's what you're paying them for. You are not paying for a chance to prove yourself. You already did that when they let you in. There is absolutely no need for them to try and weed people out (i.e., the job of the admissions department, not the administration). This is not undergrad, this is a professional school. If you can't pass Step I, the school has a legitimate reason to hold you back. Making you jump through hoops that effectively accomplish nothing for BARELY "failing" (a subjective term) an exam is absurd, whether this is due to some PhD on a power trip or administration trying to bump up stepI averages (doubtful, but who knows).
If I were you, I would seriously think about going down the road to VCOM and investigating the possibility of starting there next year. Unlikely they would work with you, but given your story, it's worth a shot.
I've been thinking about this story all night, and it continues to boil my blood because it just reminds me of similar **** that VT has done to friends of mine, including faculty who were fired from the school for essentially being good teachers and using common sense instead of academic hazing and failing people. Literally, everytime I hear something about VT, it's another story like this, or another story of something going wrong there. It doesn't surprise me at all to hear that the same kind of attitudes and policies have been carried over to the new med school. Way to get off on a good foot, guys. Way to engender a healthy academic atmosphere. Wouldn't you love to be a student there knowing that you are just 1 bad exam day away from seriously screwing up your graduation and residency chances?
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whoa whoa whoa! easy there! quit VTC and start at VCOM? are you nuts?
also, as the charter class, the first year of tuition was free, and remediating or failing remediation is not gonna cost the students any extra money. so that's not the issue here either.
just proving you're smart enough to pass is definitely not enough. you need to prove that in the end, you put in the time and effort and actually learned everything. that being said, once you've demonstrated this, the school should let you pass...I know the OP personally, I know he studied really hard, and I KNOW he knows his stuff. they remediated him unfairly, without a doubt.
however, as a brand new school, it has a LOT of kinks to work out, and they won't be worked out overnight, but they will improve with experience. this is the chance you take when you agree to accept the scholarship and attend a new medical school.
that being said, our school has tremendous potential and a passionate staff who are working to see it thrive. isolated incidences, early on, should not be the reason that people shy away from applying or ultimately choosing VTC. every school has made mistakes and done unfair things, and every school has to start somewhere. many early students will have to struggle at some point while the school is learning how to run, but board scores and interviews matter a lot more in the residency match and the students' futures than a couple of preclinical slip-ups. so widespread panic is really not necessary.
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This is a great summary of why the OP is in a great position to help educate the administration. In the end things will only improve if the deans are made aware of issues like this so taht the appropriate policies can be set and changes made.
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Failing a test sucks and in med school it can be a killer. Getting a second chance at passing a test is a dream shot. Complaining about the format of that second chance or how others in your class were given a different second chance is poor form and exhibits immaturity. Face the harsh reality that you failed and take it as a wake up call, not a chance to complain about your self-perceived "unfair" treatment. The professors charged with educating you and ultimately awarding your degree were not satisfied with your fund of knowledge. Whose fault is that?
I'm really sorry for being harsh. Trust and believe that I'm really trying to help you. You'll impress your professors more by accepting the reality they've imposed and working harder the rest of the year. They might even mention the decision you make at this moment as evidence of your character and integrity in a letter of recommendation one day. Everyone fails at some point. It's how you respond that defines you.
I'm really sorry for being harsh. Trust and believe that I'm really trying to help you. You'll impress your professors more by accepting the reality they've imposed and working harder the rest of the year. They might even mention the decision you make at this moment as evidence of your character and integrity in a letter of recommendation one day. Everyone fails at some point. It's how you respond that defines you.
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I'm not seeing how you find no fault with giving some students who failed one test and others another. This whole second chance business is obviously some sort of policy-mandated thing, not the "dream shot" you make it out to be, so there doesn't seem to be much sense in this mix-and-match business.
You have a unique definition of the word "help."
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I agree with the OP. Definitely unfair and I promise the rest of your medical school career will be littered with unfairness. Appeal this one and like someone else said make sure you are super prepared for the remediation exam that you'll have to take.
Good Luck...
I really hope things work out for you.
Good Luck...
I really hope things work out for you.
If what had happened to vtbuc happened to me, and VCOM agreed to admit me, I would take that offer in a second. Having to re-mediate a course takes away any advantage in competitive residencies that an MD degree would offer over a DO.
I did not know about the free tuition, but regardless of the money, this is b.s. You said it yourself, he worked hard and knows his stuff. But medical school is not the place where one proves he has the smarts to be a doctor. That is the whole point of the admissions process in this country. Your classmates should start a petition and rally support for this guy and the injustice that is going on here.
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Like hell it is. In point of fact, it's standard at pretty much any medical school. Furthermore, since the purpose of medical school testing is not an academic pissing contest but rather to ensure a minimum level of competence, there's nothing wrong with allowing multiple retakes.
It is the professors' fault, of course, for applying an entirely different standard to the OP's fund of knowledge than they applied to the rest of the class.
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Why would he go to a DO school when there are many MD schools open to transfer?
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Well that sure is rich. So recognizing and challenging a clear case of inequity is a sign of immaturity? You advocate simply accepting the inequitable results of poor planning by the administration, then? I suppose that when something happens within the department where you work, that shows signs of inadequate foresight and has an unreasonable effect on your working conditions or compensation, you simply allow it to happen? For to challenge it would suggest you were regressing into immaturity, right?
What poppycock. As a self-anointed "mature" attending, I am sure you have no problem challenging policies and actions that are unsupported by reason. Yet a medical student is immature doing the same. Stinking hypocrisy.
4
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If they didn't evaluate the other students in the same fashion, then yes, it's unfair. He had to write essays and undergo an oral defense of his knowledge of the topic, and they basically re-took the same test? They did MORE poorly than him, and they got an easier way out.
His professors will forget about him, and they won't be the ones writing his LORs, since they're probably all basic science PhDs.
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You want to talk about inequity?
- An associate professor in cardiology who works 65 hrs a week makes $160k.
- A nurse anesthetist with a third the education and training of the above, working just 40 hrs a week, makes $240k.
And the nurse is "a patient advocate," while the cardiologist is a "greedy doctor."
Life's not fair.
