Oh they are definitely a two-edged sword. However, as one of the professors described it at my state-school interview, "Dental school is like the top of the food pyramid. This place is filled with nothing but the best, nothing but apex predators".
This isn't to say that you can specialize at a P/F school without putting in the work. However I think it is very understandable that students would rather not enter a hunger games of sorts where in theory you can actually be a very brilliant student, but be punished because the rest of your class also happens to be that .01% more brilliant than you.
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