How many expulsions is normal in a class?

[7331poas]

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These things really heavily depend on how power trippy your admins are. I have seen people called in for "professionalism" because the faculty didn't like attitudes and stuff like that. I haven't seen it progress further than that however.

 

[hmockingbird]

MD school, every year there were about 5ish people who repeated a year for academic reasons. They let a lot of professionalism type things slide. Like a lot of times if you forgot to turn something in they’d just make you do a makeup assignment.

 

[Piskaupf]

power trippy

This seems to be the reason at my school tbh.

 

[Tangerine123]

10 expulsions sounds like a lot.

I started with around 110 too. We graduated 40, being a mix of 20 that graduated on time and 20 that had failed at least 1 year.

The change from 110 to basically 20 was from drop-outs. I think we only had 1 student expelled, due to sexual harassment.

 

[candbgirl]

70 people dropped out of school? 🤔 😳

 

[Piskaupf]

10 expulsions sounds like a lot.

I started with around 110 too. We graduated 40, being a mix of 20 that graduated on time and 20 that had failed at least 1 year.

The change from 110 to basically 20 was from drop-outs. I think we only had 1 student expelled, due to sexual harassment.

Im asking about US med schools

 

[AzBasRad]

10 expulsions sounds like a lot.

I started with around 110 too. We graduated 40, being a mix of 20 that graduated on time and 20 that had failed at least 1 year.

The change from 110 to basically 20 was from drop-outs. I think we only had 1 student expelled, due to sexual harassment.

Caribbean med school?

 

[Tangerine123]

70 people dropped out of school? 🤔 😳

Drop-outs and people that had to repeat something.

Around 30% would fail Physiology. Others wouldn't fail directly because of a course, but they couldn't mantain a high enough GPA to not get suspended.

I know somebody that did 1st, 2nd and 3rd year twice each.

Some would also fall behind because of our final research project. A friend of mine took 2 years to complete it because he had a ton of bureaoucratic issues and then covid started. I took around 1 year (the avarage time, really)

I mean, we did graduate 40. It's just that half of them were not originally from my class.

 

[Tangerine123]

Caribbean med school?

Nope. But an IMG nonetheless

 

[Taddy Mason]

In my class, established US MD, we started out with 75 and finished with 61. 3 dropped out during first year shortly after being placed on academic probation. 5 were dismissed after failing additional blocks after being placed on academic probation first year (1 of those 5 successfully appealed and joined the class below but was ultimately dismissed after multiple failures MS2 and 2-3 Step 1 failures). 1 was dismissed for professionalism issues at the beginning of 3rd year (the student could’ve easily gotten by with just a comment in her/his MSPE but opted to take a rather bold approach during the hearing in front of the academic performance and professionalism committee). 2 dropped out after failing Step 1. 3 took LOAs for family issues or to pursue additional degrees and joined and finished with the class below mine.

The remediation policy for preclinical years had been made much stricter starting my first year (2 exam failures was an automatic dismissal without appeal, unless the school screwed-up procedure, which is how one student was able to successfully appeal dismissal). However administration went back to the old policy when I was a second year due to the number of dismissals and near dismissals in my class (there were ~4-5 students who would’ve been automatically dismissed without a hearing if they just failed 1 more exam).

 

[Momentum70]

LLU? LUCOM? That's a ludicrous punishment for simply drinking alcohol. I feel terrible for anyone who has to repeat a year of medical school because they threw a house party. And it's insulting to AA and the real addicts who rely on AA that a kid who had a few drinks at a house party is required to attend meetings. UFB.

was LLU, they make you sign alcohol and tobacco pledge. Gotta take the good with the bad, dont want to play by the no alcohol rules, then choose a different school. Also they didnt go out looking for you but law gets involved and the hand is forced. The main point of my post was it seems like they bent over backwards to ensure everyone that wanted to graduate, did actually graduate. None of this 2 strikes and your out stuff the OP is talking about at their school

 

[IlDestriero]

That’s crazy. We had 2 get expelled for cheating and one do poorly and had to repeat the first year. She graduated. 10 people leaving is really high. There actually was one more that started but left after the first week.

 

[Redpancreas]

In one medical school of about 110, 10 students being expelled for a mix of academic/professional issues as M2s out of place or excessive?

If such a statistic exists, I would not put any stock into it. This is not a failed exam or illness a student developed which is a matter or when not if. Each expulsion is highly atypical and something the school specifically tried to select against. Conclusions should be drawn on a case-by-case basis. As for what LCME looks at when reviewing school accreditation, I am not sure but I would imagine they look into the circumstances behind each decision before taking a tally rather than having a % cut off.

I share @Med Ed 's inclination as to what the cause was in the case you've described.

 

[Redpancreas]

Different events. Some for not failing exams, some for unprofessional behavior.

unprofessional behavior includes anything such as being tardy, missing a mandatory class. Obviously, many students and faculty are guilty of this but when administrators want to have certain students removed, they can come up with whatever excuse they need. School is 4 years after all and a student is bound to slip up once at least some time.

When everything's laid out and investigated, if there were truly 10 isolated events, that would reflect poorly on the school's disciplinary policy regardless of class size. That's a big if.

 

[Redpancreas]

The remediation policy for preclinical years had been made much stricter starting my first year (2 exam failures was an automatic dismissal without appeal, unless the school screwed-up procedure, which is how one student was able to successfully appeal dismissal).

Are we talking block exams? If so, that is absurd. Imagine the pressure you put on a student if they fail an exam early in medical school. Each of the remaining 720ish days they're studying knowing if they fail another exam their medical career is effectively over? We then wonder why mental health is a factor...I don't believe this was an actual thing.

At my school, action was never taken for failing a single unit exam. Approx. 50% students failed at least one unit exam from my vantage point on student leadership. If you failed a course (aggregate of multiple unit exams), you met with the course director/vice dean of undergrad med ed. and outlined a remediation plan which likely included repeating material over the summer. You also had the option of continuing but taking a mulligan for the year and starting fresh with the next class where you'd be getting a second pass of all the material. An alternative if you felt it was an issue with the volume of material was simply splitting year 1 into two years. If you failed a second course in M1, they made you choose one of those two options. If you failed the course again the next year or if you failed a separate course when you got to M2, they still offered you a final shot for remediation that summer, pushing you to a 6 year graduation.

 

[Taddy Mason]

Are we talking block exams? If so, that is absurd. Imagine the pressure you put on a student if they fail an exam early in medical school. Each of the remaining 720ish days they're studying knowing if they fail another exam their medical career is effectively over? We then wonder why mental health is a factor...I don't believe this was an actual thing.

I should've been more clear, 2 failed blocks first year was an automatic dismissal. Block grades consisted solely of a 300 question MCQ test, 6 hour essay test split into 2 three hour blocks, and a clinical skills exam all during the last week of the block. If you failed 2 of the 3 exams or failed 1 exam and remediation it counted as a block failure and you had to repeat the block over the summer between first and second year. If you failed it again over the summer it was an automatic dismissal without appeal. You could only remediate if you failed 1 of the 3 exams and remediation occurred the week following exam week. Failure on the MCQ portion was <75%. If you scored between 70% - 74.4% remediation consisted of an oral exam with three faculty members in the 3 areas of your poorest performance. If you scored <70% you had to take a 150 question MCQ exam and failing was <80%. Failure of the essay exam, regardless of how badly you failed was an oral exam. Also, you could automatically fail the clinical skills exam if you didn't wash your hands at the beginning or end of the exam, but otherwise did fine. 1 of the people who dropped out got a 74% on the MCQ exam and forgot to wash his/her hands during the clinical skills exam, which consisted solely of an interview and no physical exam - so automatic block failure. She/he got really bad anxiety over possibly failing another block and being dismissed, so opted to dropped out over feeling so overwhelmed.

Needless to say, this policy did not work out well and began and ended with my class. When I was a 2nd year they went back to the old policy which is more akin to what you described at your school, but still much stricter in a number of ways with a thin margin of error for less than ideal academic performance.

 

[NicMouse64]

I should've been more clear, 2 failed blocks first year was an automatic dismissal. Block grades consisted solely of a 300 question MCQ test, 6 hour essay test split into 2 three hour blocks, and a clinical skills exam all during the last week of the block. If you failed 2 of the 3 exams or failed 1 exam and remediation it counted as a block failure and you had to repeat the block over the summer between first and second year. If you failed it again over the summer it was an automatic dismissal without appeal. You could only remediate if you failed 1 of the 3 exams and remediation occurred the week following exam week. Failure on the MCQ portion was <75%. If you scored between 70% - 74.4% remediation consisted of an oral exam with three faculty members in the 3 areas of your poorest performance. If you scored <70% you had to take a 150 question MCQ exam and failing was <80%. Failure of the essay exam, regardless of how badly you failed was an oral exam. Also, you could automatically fail the clinical skills exam if you didn't wash your hands at the beginning or end of the exam, but otherwise did fine. 1 of the people who dropped out got a 74% on the MCQ exam and forgot to wash his/her hands during the clinical skills exam, which consisted solely of an interview and no physical exam - so automatic block failure. She/he got really bad anxiety over possibly failing another block and being dismissed, so opted to dropped out over feeling so overwhelmed.

Needless to say, this policy did not work out well and began and ended with my class. When I was a 2nd year they went back to the old policy which is more akin to what you described at your school, but still much stricter in a number of ways with a thin margin of error for less than ideal academic performance.

jesus this sounds like hell.

 

[Redpancreas]

I should've been more clear, 2 failed blocks first year was an automatic dismissal. Block grades consisted solely of a 300 question MCQ test, 6 hour essay test split into 2 three hour blocks, and a clinical skills exam all during the last week of the block. If you failed 2 of the 3 exams or failed 1 exam and remediation it counted as a block failure and you had to repeat the block over the summer between first and second year. If you failed it again over the summer it was an automatic dismissal without appeal. You could only remediate if you failed 1 of the 3 exams and remediation occurred the week following exam week. Failure on the MCQ portion was <75%. If you scored between 70% - 74.4% remediation consisted of an oral exam with three faculty members in the 3 areas of your poorest performance. If you scored <70% you had to take a 150 question MCQ exam and failing was <80%. Failure of the essay exam, regardless of how badly you failed was an oral exam. Also, you could automatically fail the clinical skills exam if you didn't wash your hands at the beginning or end of the exam, but otherwise did fine. 1 of the people who dropped out got a 74% on the MCQ exam and forgot to wash his/her hands during the clinical skills exam, which consisted solely of an interview and no physical exam - so automatic block failure. She/he got really bad anxiety over possibly failing another block and being dismissed, so opted to dropped out over feeling so overwhelmed.

Needless to say, this policy did not work out well and began and ended with my class. When I was a 2nd year they went back to the old policy which is more akin to what you described at your school, but still much stricter in a number of ways with a thin margin of error for less than ideal academic performance.

Still running a tight ship there with glitches like the failure with that student, but definitely more reasonable than what I initially thought.

I feel like as hellish the quoted sounds, I appreciate the variety of assessments used especially the clinical skills exam. LCME has a term for this that's slipping my mind. It allows for earlier integration of clinical training instead having students learn biochem/anatomy with no clue how to assess a patient until their third year of medical school. The stress of having 300 MCQs, a 6 hr cumulative essay exam, and an OSCE is kind of a lot though. I would think a 80 MCQ + 2 hr essay exam q 2-3 weeks with a cumulative OSCE would be better.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Still running a tight ship there with glitches like the failure with that student, but definitely more reasonable than what I initially thought.

I feel like as hellish the quoted sounds, I appreciate the variety of assessments used especially the clinical skills exam. LCME has a term for this that's slipping my mind. It allows for earlier integration of clinical training instead having students learn biochem/anatomy with no clue how to assess a patient until their third year of medical school. The stress of having 300 MCQs, a 6 hr cumulative essay exam, and an OSCE is kind of a lot though. I would think a 80 MCQ + 2 hr essay exam q 2-3 weeks with a cumulative OSCE would be better.

Wtf do they need an essay exam at all for? We had an essay exam for only one of our preclinical blocks and it was so annoying. It ends up just being a “guess what I’m thinking” test and takes forever to get graded.

 

[Lawpy]

Wtf do they need an essay exam at all for? We had an essay exam for only one of our preclinical blocks and it was so annoying. It ends up just being a “guess what I’m thinking” test and takes forever to get graded.

A few schools have essay only exams to stimulate "active" thinking but imo not worth it much less expelling someone over it which is too far

 

[Lawpy]

In my class, established US MD, we started out with 75 and finished with 61. 3 dropped out during first year shortly after being placed on academic probation. 5 were dismissed after failing additional blocks after being placed on academic probation first year (1 of those 5 successfully appealed and joined the class below but was ultimately dismissed after multiple failures MS2 and 2-3 Step 1 failures). 1 was dismissed for professionalism issues at the beginning of 3rd year (the student could’ve easily gotten by with just a comment in her/his MSPE but opted to take a rather bold approach during the hearing in front of the academic performance and professionalism committee). 2 dropped out after failing Step 1. 3 took LOAs for family issues or to pursue additional degrees and joined and finished with the class below mine.

The remediation policy for preclinical years had been made much stricter starting my first year (2 exam failures was an automatic dismissal without appeal, unless the school screwed-up procedure, which is how one student was able to successfully appeal dismissal). However administration went back to the old policy when I was a second year due to the number of dismissals and near dismissals in my class (there were ~4-5 students who would’ve been automatically dismissed without a hearing if they just failed 1 more exam).

Also thanks, i hate your school's preclinicals and am scared to see what your school's clinicals are like.

 

[Goro]

Wtf do they need an essay exam at all for? We had an essay exam for only one of our preclinical blocks and it was so annoying. It ends up just being a “guess what I’m thinking” test and takes forever to get graded.

Believe It or Not, essay exams are better assessments than multichoice exams, because the latter can be at times exercises in pattern recognition.

I feel that they're better at pinning down what you know versus what you don't know. It's hard to BS your way through a question that asks you to "explain the muscle movements involved in throwing a baseball".

The reason we don't like essay exams is just that we're lazy, and it takes time to have to read through 100 + essays

 

[Taddy Mason]

Wtf do they need an essay exam at all for? We had an essay exam for only one of our preclinical blocks and it was so annoying. It ends up just being a “guess what I’m thinking” test and takes forever to get graded.

Lol - that was basically the case with our exams. Case and point, the curriculum was set-up to cover normal anatomy, physiology, etc. first year with a smattering of pathophys here and there to illustrate concepts of normal physiology while pathology as a whole was second year. A disproportionate amount (~50%) of one of the essay exams first year focused on the pathophys and management of pre-eclampsia, so if you wrote off the one lecture we had on pre-eclampsia that block (out of ~80 total) because of how much it strayed from the rest of the curriculum and/or were in a weaker PBL/TBL group that block you were screwed. It also sucked that were done with all 3 exams by Wed of exam week and the MCQ and clinical skills exams were graded immediately after we finished, but had to wait until Friday afternoon or evening to get our block grade because it took forever for the essay exam to be graded.

Believe It or Not, essay exams are better assessments than multichoice exams, because the latter can be at times exercises in pattern recognition.

I feel that they're better at pinning down what you know versus what you don't know. It's hard to BS your way through a question that asks you to "explain the muscle movements involved in throwing a baseball".

The reason we don't like essay exams is just that we're lazy, and it takes time to have to read through 100 + essays

I generally agree, but there can be a wide variety in the quality of essay questions. I remember some that were basically asking you to regurgitate a list or looking for specific buzzwords, so that even if you could explain the concept of what was being asked not providing those buzzwords resulted in loosing credit. Which also brings up the issue of greater subjectivity in grading with essay tests. So, while they have the potential to be better assessment tools I think there’s a much wider spectrum of quality and greater potential for them becoming less than ideal means of assessment.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Lol - that was basically the case with our exams. Case and point, the curriculum was set-up to cover normal anatomy, physiology, etc. first year with a smattering of pathophys here and there to illustrate concepts of normal physiology while pathology as a whole was second year. A disproportionate amount (~50%) of one of the essay exams first year focused on the pathophys of pre-eclampsia, so if you wrote off the one lecture we had on pre-eclampsia that block because of how much it strayed from the rest of the curriculum and/or were in a weaker PBL/TBL group that block you were screwed. It also sucked that were done with all 3 exams by Wed of exam week and the MCQ and clinical skills exams were graded immediately after we finished, but had to wait until Friday afternoon or evening to get our block grade because it took forever for the essay exam to be graded.

Uh wow. That’s ridiculous. But yeah, our nbme and faculty multiple choice exams for that block were graded the same day. It took 5 weeks for us to get our essay and block grades.

 

[Taddy Mason]

Also thanks, i hate your school's preclinicals and am scared to see what your school's clinicals are like.

Third year was much better because grades were based solely on shelf scores and preceptor evals. There had previously been a faculty written exam for FM, but thankfully they abandoned that for the NBME either my year or the year prior. My only beef with third year grades was that our grading scheme was H/P/F, no HP, and the shelf cutoff for honors was much higher than at many (most) other schools. By and large, attendings were fairly transparent with what they thought of you, and if anything, were maybe overly generous with their evals at times. Preceptor evals tended to only be an issue for students lacking common sense or social skills, and even if red flags were raised administration was receptive to personality conflicts and would look into what was said and not just take a bad eval as gospel.

 

[Smolpuppo21]

Still running a tight ship there with glitches like the failure with that student, but definitely more reasonable than what I initially thought.

I feel like as hellish the quoted sounds, I appreciate the variety of assessments used especially the clinical skills exam. LCME has a term for this that's slipping my mind. It allows for earlier integration of clinical training instead having students learn biochem/anatomy with no clue how to assess a patient until their third year of medical school. The stress of having 300 MCQs, a 6 hr cumulative essay exam, and an OSCE is kind of a lot though. I would think a 80 MCQ + 2 hr essay exam q 2-3 weeks with a cumulative OSCE would be better.

Our school also has a large exam week each block. We have a 6 hour essay-based clinical reasoning exam where we get 3 cases with a history, physical, labs, imaging, and have to DDx each patient’s condition with support for our hypotheses. We also have an OSCE each block, alongside a 5 hour patient-centered exam. Finally, we end our week with an 8 hour clinical vignette MCQ exam over the entire block’s knowledge focusing on our PBL/TBL cases (self-taught with no supplemental material from faculty), lectures, anatomy, histology, embryo, pharm, micro, etc.

All to say that some schools have wild curriculums to push their students to truly learn the material. It blows tbh, as I’d rather have an NBME based exam for each block. But, if you fail an exam you usually have to repeat that block. I believe that could push students to drop out or fail out tbh.

 

[bGMx]

Our school also has a large exam week each block. We have a 6 hour essay-based clinical reasoning exam where we get 3 cases with a history, physical, labs, imaging, and have to DDx each patient’s condition with support for our hypotheses. We also have an OSCE each block, alongside a 5 hour patient-centered exam. Finally, we end our week with an 8 hour clinical vignette MCQ exam over the entire block’s knowledge focusing on our PBL/TBL cases (self-taught with no supplemental material from faculty), lectures, anatomy, histology, embryo, pharm, micro, etc.

All to say that some schools have wild curriculums to push their students to truly learn the material. It blows tbh, as I’d rather have an NBME based exam for each block. But, if you fail an exam you usually have to repeat that block. I believe that could push students to drop out or fail out tbh.

Sounds like someone lives in Cleveland 😉

 

[Smolpuppo21]

Sounds like someone lives in Cleveland 😉

Little off there, my friend! Can't be found within Ohio

 

[Mass Effect]

If there were 10 rapid fire dismissals my money is on a clandestine cheating ring.

^^^^this. The year before I started med school, there were something like 6 or 7 people expelled over the course of a few months at a different school. The story eventually came out that there was an Adderall-selling ring on campus. One or two people had scripts and would sell to classmates. I don't know how many people were involved but >5 and <10 were outright expelled. Supposedly, many more were involved in buying but they weren't expelled. This is all according to two friends who attended that school.

 

[Lawpy]

^^^^this. The year before I started med school, there were something like 6 or 7 people expelled over the course of a few months at a different school. The story eventually came out that there was an Adderall-selling ring on campus. One or two people had scripts and would sell to classmates. I don't know how many people were involved but >5 and <10 were outright expelled. Supposedly, many more were involved in buying but they weren't expelled. This is all according to two friends who attended that school.

Geez. @Goro nailed it once again that there are two sides to every story and the truth about those who got expelled/fired is a lot harsher than initially presented

 

[Goro]

Geez. @Goro nailed it once again that there are two sides to every story and the truth about those who got expelled/fired is a lot harsher than initially presented

Reading posts in the resident's forum taught me that!

 

[mwsapphire]

Can confirm. Some time ago we had a student caught red handed with a cheat sheet. He was suspended, and went into therapy. He graduated a year behind his classmates and is now a PC doc in a western state.

How come cheating as a pre med is a huge red flag that will take years to overcome, but a med student gets away with it?

I'm not judging, and tbh I would hope they're not too harsh because there are times where someone can be falsely accused of academic dishonesty, but it's just so weird that to pre meds we say it's a big no-no but to med students it's somehow fine?

 

[Goro]

How come cheating as a pre med is a huge red flag that will take years to overcome, but a med student gets away with it?

I'm not judging, and tbh I would hope they're not too harsh because there are times where someone can be falsely accused of academic dishonesty, but it's just so weird that to pre meds we say it's a big no-no but to med students it's somehow fine?

Great question! I should use this in interviews.

First off, I wanted that student expelled, but I was not listened to.

I suppose that it's a combo of having a seller's market and reducing risk, and also wanting to salvage our own students. After all, we know them personally, as opposed to an applicant.

 

[mwsapphire]

Great question! I should use this in interviews.

First off, I wanted that student expelled, but I was not listened to.

I suppose that it's a combo of having a seller's market and reducing risk, and also wanting to salvage our own students. After all, we know them personally, as opposed to an applicant.

🙂

But then why not grant that same benefit of the doubt to applican- never mind.

That's crazy. Actually kind of makes me mad.

 

[calivianya]

Believe It or Not, essay exams are better assessments than multichoice exams, because the latter can be at times exercises in pattern recognition.

I feel that they're better at pinning down what you know versus what you don't know. It's hard to BS your way through a question that asks you to "explain the muscle movements involved in throwing a baseball".

The reason we don't like essay exams is just that we're lazy, and it takes time to have to read through 100 + essays

I couldn’t agree with this more strongly. And also couldn’t be more glad that it’s not a thing.

I can tell you from talking to them that a metric ton of the students in the bottom half of my class know the material way better than I do. I’d 100% be in the bottom quarter of the class if I had to straight up regurgitate knowledge onto a piece of paper. A lot of the time I recognize a buzzword/classic presentation, but I couldn’t have told you what disease it’s for without the options being laid out right in front of me. I can sure as heck pick it out of a list, though... well enough to be in the top 1/4 of my class and do well on board exams.

I’d also have a crappy step 1/level 1 score if I had to write things out, for sure.

 

[mwsapphire]

Believe It or Not, essay exams are better assessments than multichoice exams, because the latter can be at times exercises in pattern recognition.

I feel that they're better at pinning down what you know versus what you don't know. It's hard to BS your way through a question that asks you to "explain the muscle movements involved in throwing a baseball".

The reason we don't like essay exams is just that we're lazy, and it takes time to have to read through 100 + essays

Oh God the thought of essay exams in med school makes me wanna throw up I hated essay tests in college. The blanks sheet of paper just gives me anxiety. In college there was less material and studying it thoroughly enough so you could be ready for essay exams was more doable.

Also, I feel like w the study methods you have to use to succeed in med school ( like, less note taking by hand so that you can get through all the material) essay exams would be especially awful. Boards are normally multiple choice, aren't they? ( With the exception of COMLEX lvl 3, and even then I believe it's a mix. ) One thing I like about med school exams is that they're multiple choice.

 

[Taddy Mason]

Oh God the thought of essay exams in med school makes me wanna throw up I hated essay tests in college. The blanks sheet of paper just gives me anxiety. In college there was less material and studying it thoroughly enough so you could be ready for essay exams was more doable.

Also, I feel like w the study methods you have to use to succeed in med school ( like, less note taking by hand so that you can get through all the material) essay exams would be especially awful. Boards are normally multiple choice, aren't they? ( With the exception of COMLEX lvl 3, and even then I believe it's a mix. ) One thing I like about med school exams is that they're multiple choice.

It could always be worse...one of the philosophy professors at my undergrad who taught Advanced Logic only used 250 question T/F tests. That was an absolute mind ****.

 

[Captain_Falcon]

It could always be worse...one of the philosophy professors at my undergrad who taught Advanced Logic only used 250 question T/F tests. That was an absolute mind ****.

Is this statement true or false though?

 

[Taddy Mason]

Is this statement true or false though?

Good question.

 

[Goro]

Is this statement true or false though?

don't answer the question and you'll get 100%

 

[7331poas]

It could always be worse...one of the philosophy professors at my undergrad who taught Advanced Logic only used 250 question T/F tests. That was an absolute mind ****.

Had a computer algorithms professor that offered the option to submit "I don't know" as your answer for 25% credit.

Pretty sure the class average in that course was in the 40s.

 

[mvenus929]

I generally agree, but there can be a wide variety in the quality of essay questions. I remember some that were basically asking you to regurgitate a list or looking for specific buzzwords, so that even if you could explain the concept of what was being asked not providing those buzzwords resulted in loosing credit. Which also brings up the issue of greater subjectivity in grading with essay tests. So, while they have the potential to be better assessment tools I think there’s a much wider spectrum of quality and greater potential for them becoming less than ideal means of assessment.

The same can technically be true of MCQs. Trying to distill a disease process to a single question is a remarkably difficult task, so either the question writer make it easier on themselves which allow students to better guess at the correct answer even if they don't know the material, or the question writer develops a good question, but the distractors could also be correct answers, which leads to student challenges. It takes a lot of work to write a very good question in which neither of those is the case. And then you're still only testing one teaching point, which may not represent the student's overall level of knowledge of that subject.

There's no perfect means of assessment, and to get a good complete idea of a student's learning, you need multiple ways of assessing them.

For any assessment, you also need to define passing criteria, which depends on the stakes of the exam (higher stakes you want to be sure that the student has actually learned the material, so should have a higher standard for passing). If 50% of the students aren't passing by the criteria you set, then either you didn't teach it well to begin with, or your assessment doesn't really reflect what you expected them to learn.

 

[mwsapphire]

The same can technically be true of MCQs. Trying to distill a disease process to a single question is a remarkably difficult task, so either the question writer make it easier on themselves which allow students to better guess at the correct answer even if they don't know the material, or the question writer develops a good question, but the distractors could also be correct answers, which leads to student challenges. It takes a lot of work to write a very good question in which neither of those is the case. And then you're still only testing one teaching point, which may not represent the student's overall level of knowledge of that subject.

There's no perfect means of assessment, and to get a good complete idea of a student's learning, you need multiple ways of assessing them.

For any assessment, you also need to define passing criteria, which depends on the stakes of the exam (higher stakes you want to be sure that the student has actually learned the material, so should have a higher standard for passing). If 50% of the students aren't passing by the criteria you set, then either you didn't teach it well to begin with, or your assessment doesn't really reflect what you expected them to learn.

This is why I"m for multiple choice questions- the ones we have aren't easy, there are "trap" answers, but it makes it easier to determine who actually got the correct answer ( so better than essay questions) but def. not something you can just " guess algorithms" on. I've always been good at MCQ questions, but the ones in med school really do test understanding. If boards are mostly MCQ, ( referring to lvl 1 and Step 1) , why shouldn't pre clinical exams be MCQs?

How many people here actually had exams that are not solely MCQ's in med school ? ( With the exception of the ID portion of anatomy exams).

 

[Goro]

This is why I"m for multiple choice questions- the ones we have aren't easy, there are "trap" answers, but it makes it easier to determine who actually got the correct answer ( so better than essay questions) but def. not something you can just " guess algorithms" on. I've always been good at MCQ questions, but the ones in med school really do test understanding. If boards are mostly MCQ, ( referring to lvl 1 and Step 1) , why shouldn't pre clinical exams be MCQs?

How many people here actually had exams that are not solely MCQ's in med school ? ( With the exception of the ID portion of anatomy exams).

UIW uses essay questions, I beleive.

 

[Phloston]

In one medical school of about 110, 10 students being expelled for a mix of academic/professional issues as M2s out of place or excessive?

Maybe they all conspired an insurrectionist rebellion.

 

[mvenus929]

This is why I"m for multiple choice questions- the ones we have aren't easy, there are "trap" answers, but it makes it easier to determine who actually got the correct answer ( so better than essay questions) but def. not something you can just " guess algorithms" on. I've always been good at MCQ questions, but the ones in med school really do test understanding. If boards are mostly MCQ, ( referring to lvl 1 and Step 1) , why shouldn't pre clinical exams be MCQs?

How many people here actually had exams that are not solely MCQ's in med school ? ( With the exception of the ID portion of anatomy exams).

Depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to learn the style for boards, then MCQs are great. If your goal is to actually promote learning, then MCQs aren't ideal because you can't get a comprehensive assessment of someone's knowledge about a disease process.

Plus, you know, patients don't present like MCQs. If you do well on an MCQ exam, it doesn't mean you actually understand the material well enough to take care of a patient in front of you (not saying you automatically don't understand it well, just that it doesn't assess the same thing). That's the whole reason clinical skills tests, and the Part B of Step 3 that runs like a simulation exist.