Grading System

[U4iA]

Does grading vary much from one school to the next? Do most schools use a pass/fail system for the two years? Advice from current students would be appreciated.

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[Aaron Earles]

U4iA,

According to the students and faculty at PCSOM, they have a pass/fail system in place. Anything over a 70% is considered passing, anything less than that is failing. The point in this is that it reduces the "competitive nature" in the students and fosters teamwork. It sounds like a good system to me cause it eliminates the tendencies of the "gunners" in each class.

Aaron

 

[Doctortobee]

LECOM has A, B, C, F...69.5% is the lowest C

 

[DrMom]

Originally posted by Doctortobee
LECOM has A, B, C, F...69.5% is the lowest C

We have basically the same thing, but we have a D range from 64.5-69.4

 

[Yosh]

Just an FYI...P/F reduces "gunning"...but then when you go to apply for residencies...it seems that your board scores will be really really heavily looked at...as they will be the only numbers that they have to really look at you...

It might not be all that advantageous to people who want to go into more competitive areas....

Just a thought...

 

[DrMom]

Gunning depends a lot on the personality of the class and the attitude of the school.

My class is a very high performing one...full of what should be gunners. We are competitive, but we still help each other out. I have yet to see any academic backstabbing. I think part of that is due to the fact that the administration told us day one that we competed to get into med school, but now our job is to make sure that all of us complete it successfully.

 

[Yosh]

That is wonderful that your school has such an amazing attitude...I am a little envious...We are graded on STRICT NUMBERS...and it caused alot of craziness and confusion during 1st and 2nd year...

On rotations we have A through F...so its much much much better...with no shelf exams...and alot of freedom to pick quite a few electives

Thank God!!!

Who knew these were things worth looking into back then?

 

[Dr JPH]

PCOM does a straight numbers system.

We have gunners here, but nobody pays much attention to them. We let them have their time to themselves.

Very little competition remains after the first few weeks of school when everyone get rocked on the 1st Anatomy exam.

 

[Doctortobee]

Our class is great about helping each other out. We get daily emails from students who have made review sheets, study guides, or have talked with professors about the exam. It's amazing how much cooperation there is. There's even cooperation between the pathways. Right now we are all taking health care management. LDP, ISP, and PBL send the objectives to everyone so we don't have to each complete them. It's great. I've had a PBL student send me his review sheets for the stuff he has completed and I will do the same with the stuff I have finished. It's great!

 

[wholehealth]

VCOM has a standard numbers grading system, but there is never any class rankings. The only way for the gunners to find out they are on top is to ask everyone else how they did...

 

[OnMyWayThere]

If grades are not standardized, why is there backstabbing? I mean, if the entire class does really well, can't they all get A's? Why the "not helping out" nature and "backstabbing" if normalization is not a factor?

 

[DrMom]

Because class rank is still an issue.

 

[Doctortobee]

One frustrating thing here is that all the pathways are ranked against each other. However, ISP and PBL get their exams curved. We aren't talking 1-2%...It's A LOT. Us in LDP (lecture) are lucky if we get a few questions dropped...

 

[Neeja]

Actually- at LECOM, the ISP pathway doesnt get things curved- its usually 2-3 questions out of 110-150 total on the test, so it doesnt help all that much.

 

[Doctortobee]

Well I've talked with ISP student who have told me their grades were curved quite a bit.