Hardest Rotation to Get Honors

[DocLan]

So there are a lot of threads about the hardest rotation for factors like taking call, personalities, ect. (ex. OB/GYN), but which ones are the hardest to actually do well in and get honors? I imagine it would be IM or Surg since everyone is trying to do well in those.

For your school, what seems to be the usual deciding factor in whether or not you get honors? Here people tell me the faculty eval grades are usually pretty close, but its the shelfs that separates students when given its slightly greater weight.

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[Law2Doc]

So there are a lot of threads about the hardest rotation for factors like taking call, personalities, ect. (ex. OB/GYN), but which ones are the hardest to actually do well in and get honors? I imagine it would be IM or Surg since everyone is trying to do well in those.

For your school, what seems to be the usual deciding factor in whether or not you get honors? Here people tell me the faculty eval grades are usually pretty close, but its the shelfs that separates students

Well, from what I have seen, getting honors has more to do with how you relate to the specific attendings you have and less to do with the hours or tasks or call involved. Evals can have a huge range from attending to attending, and when that accounts for 70+% of your grade, that decides your grade. The shelf can help you or sink you but rarely drives this train in my experience. (FWIW, it's more frequently the shelf scores that are pretty close in a pack, while the evaluations per attending tend to assume more of a bell distribution).

 

[Ypo.]

Evals are going to vary from school to school. However, we can talk about which shelf is the hardest.

I would have to say family? Although I've heard psych is a beast, too.

 

[joe6102]

Which rotation is hardest to honor? The first one.
Shelf scores get higher on average as you pass through 3rd year, but none of the rotations at my school take that into account.

 

[Ashers]

Grading this year is so frustrating.

At my school, a lot is dependent on where you rotate. Some places are known for giving out more honors and others people tend to get high pass. OB/gyn is notorious for people getting better grades at the school's main hospital, and those at community hospital don't get as high clinical grades.

Preconceived notions by attendings also play a part. On my surgery rotation, my chief told me that I was going to do well because one of the attendings thought that only people who didn't want to do surgery did their surgery rotation in Jan/Feb, and this attending remembered my name and discussed ortho with me in every case (apparently she rarely remembered students' names).

Not all of our clerkships have shelf exams, and the weight of the shelf exam/clerkship exam is different for each. So if a person is a great test-taker and some residents hated him/her (like me on OB/gyn -- the chief has a reputation for picking people she liked or didn't like).

If you really want to try for honors, work hard and well with everyone (even if someone hates your existence -- try your best, it may or may not work). Find out general rumors about where people tend to do well. It'll be hard to figure out residents' schedules to avoid nasty ones, but I guess it can be done, and the preconceived ideas by attendings -- I'd never would've guessed to think that.

 

[jocg27]

Which rotation is hardest to honor? The first one.
Shelf scores get higher on average as you pass through 3rd year, but none of the rotations at my school take that into account.

Disagree that the first rotation is hardest to honor. I understand what you're saying about the shelfs...On the other hand, evaluations are probably a little more forgiving earlier in the year; showing up early and with a smile every day goes further during your first rotation than your last, when you're expected to know at least a little bit about what's going on.

Not to mention that if you're talking about rotations that interested people tend to gun hard to honor in, such as surgery, having it as first rotation means you're probably not up against entire teams of future surgeons.

I had surgery first and honored...Although I've done fine and am perfectly happy with everything else, I definitely had both my best shelf and best evals of the year for this rotation. I'm honestly not sure I would have done as well taking it later in the year,when I was more burnt out and everyone wanting to do surgery was taking it.

I do agree with the idea of what you're saying, that the hardest rotation to honor depends on when in the year you have it, and what you've had before, rather than 1 particular rotation being absolutely hardest to honor.

 

[vtucci]

Evals are going to vary from school to school. However, we can talk about which shelf is the hardest.

I would have to say family? Although I've heard psych is a beast, too.

I thought the family shelf was the easiest so far and medicine the worst. I have not taken neuro or psych yet so this may be revised in a couple of months.

 

[akpete]

Of the shelf exams I've taken, I'd rank them hardest to least hard as:

1. Medicine
2. Psych
3. Peds
4. Ob/gyn

As far as overall grades though, I say it is completely random. I feel that I have worked about equally hard on all my rotations and my grades vary by ~15% from lowest to highest.

 

[lord_jeebus]

Besides institutional factors, I think it just depends on your personal style.

My school gives out a set percentage (15%) of Honors to each group in each clerkship, with few exceptions.

Personally, I found that it was only possible to Honor clerkships where I got assigned to a small number of attendings and residents. When I got assigned to a bunch, my evaluations would be too short to justify honors, no matter what the shelf score. Even worse was a clerkship where the attendings were barely around and I didn't get any evaluation at all (neurosurgery)!

 

[joe6102]

Disagree that the first rotation is hardest to honor. I understand what you're saying about the shelfs...On the other hand, evaluations are probably a little more forgiving earlier in the year; showing up early and with a smile every day goes further during your first rotation than your last, when you're expected to know at least a little bit about what's going on.

Not to mention that if you're talking about rotations that interested people tend to gun hard to honor in, such as surgery, having it as first rotation means you're probably not up against entire teams of future surgeons.

I had surgery first and honored...Although I've done fine and am perfectly happy with everything else, I definitely had both my best shelf and best evals of the year for this rotation. I'm honestly not sure I would have done as well taking it later in the year,when I was more burnt out and everyone wanting to do surgery was taking it.

I do agree with the idea of what you're saying, that the hardest rotation to honor depends on when in the year you have it, and what you've had before, rather than 1 particular rotation being absolutely hardest to honor.

That's one way to look at it. On the other hand, the attendings have just seen MS3's on their last 3rd-year rotation, and then the newbies walk in and don't even have computer logons yet, so in that sense it's easy to look really bad early on your first rotation. I'm glad you were able to honor it but it did not work out that way for me and most of my friends.

I guess like all evaluations it just depends on the attending and his/her attitude. But when you need a 90 raw on the shelf to get honors, that IM or family med shelf will be much easier at the end of the year.

 

[velo]

As other people said I imagine which specific rotation is hardest to honor varies from school to school. So much depends on the individual clerkship directors and how stingy they want to be with the 'H' grades. However, if you want to find out which clerkship, at your school, is most difficult to get honors on it would be as easy as contacting some upper-level students who have received their Dean's Letters. The Dean's Letter usually reports the relative percentage of the class that got H, HP, or P to give context to the student's grades, so any of those 4th years could tell you, their year, which rotation had the fewest honors. For my year Surgery was the hardest (with Peds a close 2nd) and OB/GYN was the easiest. You probably can't generalize that to other schools--although my gut feeling is that surgery is one of the harder ones at most schools.

 

[abefromann]

dude, it all depends on the attendings and residents that you have. the shelves tend to be a level playing field, and the departmental evaluations are usually easy. for instance: i honored derm at home as my first ever derm rotation when I didn't know much but knew how to sycophantize. Third derm rotation was at a major national hospital where I was sniping left and right after reading for weeks and weeks. They gave me a pass.

 

[DingleBerry]

dude, it all depends on the attendings and residents that you have. the shelves tend to be a level playing field, and the departmental evaluations are usually easy. for instance: i honored derm at home as my first ever derm rotation when I didn't know much but knew how to sycophantize. Third derm rotation was at a major national hospital where I was sniping left and right after reading for weeks and weeks. They gave me a pass.

very true- especially in rotations where there is no shelf. We have one rotation where the director "[doesn't] believe medical students can have enough knowledge to honor" and as far as I know has never given anything more than a high pass.

 

[docjolly]

at my school, that award goes to pediatrics.

I have never (and I truly mean never) heard of anyone in the past three years getting an "A " in peds. Apparently, the course coordinator of pediatrics also sits on the curriculum committee, and she has changed both the in house exam and shelf exam score requirements/standards necessary to earn an A.

 

[Mayhem]

Here Surgery is the hardest to Honour. It's a paradox though because more people fail IM. I think it's because the surgeons would rather not see us again, while Medicine is very happy to have us repeat. In fact, there is running gag where instead of saying you got a Pass, you say you got Surgical Honours.