How many folks go through 3rd year and DON'T honor at all?

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RynoTheGuy

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Just curious? Anyone know or have an educated guess/assumption?
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Probably most, considering that honors is, what, top 10%? top 20% depending on school?
 
I'd guess the situation where people honor a rotation or two and high pass/pass the rest is the most common unless you're just striking out in every rotation. It can also be a lot more liberal at some schools...some of the rotations at my school like half the class gets "honors".
 
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Totally depends on the school and it's grading policy. Probably common when it's restricted to 10 or 15 percent of the class, and uncommon when half or more honor each rotation.
 
My school does not have a cut off of how many people can honor a rotation, but I have been told by numerous faculty members that about 15-20% of the class honor a given rotation. My school does not have high pass, it is just honors/pass/fail. Also, in order to honor a rotation you have to have scored above the 75th percentile on the shelf exam and get clinical honors. However, for the most part if you honor the exam you honor the rotation unless you were really awful clinically. I only know of one person who scored very high and did not get honors because the clerkship director did not think he showed enough enthusiasm for that specialty. That being said, I know quite a few people who have yet to honor anything and we are on 5 out of 6 rotations now. Many people in my class have given up because honoring the shelf can be a beast in many rotations due to lack of time available to study and poor resources. So I guess the point I am trying to make is that it varies per school and I have to imagine that there are quite a good chunk of students who do not honor anything. I am sure residency programs know that the road to honoring varies per schools and are very familiar with gauging an applicant's knowledge and skills via other venues on the application.

Also, SDN does not do the average medical student justice, so do not freak out 😉
 
My medical school had a limit of 10% that could get honors (rather than this ridiculous 25-40% honoring garbage that happens at a lot of schools). So, most people didn't honor anything.
 
what is the answer to the inverse question: how many people receive ALL honors from every clerkship they do?
 
crimsonkid85 said:
what is the answer to the inverse question: how many people receive ALL honors from every clerkship they do?
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I know at my school AOA is based on third year clerkship grades and only people who honor most of their shelves get AOA. From what I have heard you can not honor one rotation and still get AOA. We induct 19 students every year into AOA, so I would say at most 19 students per my 120 student class honor every rotation. Of course there could be a few students who do honor everything and do not get into AOA because of professionalism issues or because they never showed leadership or whatever and faculty did not like them. However, I find that to be rare. I would think it is extremely difficult to honor every rotation.
 
As a MS3, I honored 1 rotation, high passed 3 of them (probably would've honored 2 of them had I destroyed the shelf), and passed 2 of them (would've high-passed one of the two if I had done one percentile better on the shelf).

I don't know if anyone honored everything in 3rd year (or didn't) b/c I don't really discuss grades (at least not clinical ones) with my friends.
 
evilbooyaa said:
I don't know if anyone honored everything in 3rd year (or didn't) b/c I don't really discuss grades (at least not clinical ones) with my friends.
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I know, neither do I (or any one I know). Thus, it's always a mystery. :/
 
GuyWhoDoesStuff said:
My medical school had a limit of 10% that could get honors (rather than this ridiculous 25-40% honoring garbage that happens at a lot of schools). So, most people didn't honor anything.
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similar at my school. I think there should be a standard for all schools.

When one schools does 10% and another does 40% - it's hard to know what honors means.
 
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IamPsychiatrist said:
similar at my school. I think there should be a standard for all schools.

When one schools does 10% and another does 40% - it's hard to know what honors means.
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That sucks. We don't have a set % that can get honors - you just need honors on the shelf and a HP clinically or vice versa. I'd guess around 40% get honors.
 
Wordead said:
That sucks. We don't have a set % that can get honors - you just need honors on the shelf and a HP clinically or vice versa. I'd guess around 40% get honors.
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That's really generous. At my school it's the subjective evals that really determine honors, not the shelf grade, and I was under the understanding that was standard. If it was done this way a totally different group of people would have been AOA.
 
GuyWhoDoesStuff said:
That is absurd.
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I actually strongly disagree with this opinion. 40% of students getting honors is no less arbitrary that 10%, and IMO leads to a happier student body. The school's grading policy's effect on match outcomes is also impossible to really know. Is your qualm that these inflationary grading policy's are unfair to students at schools with more 'strict' grading?

I think there is also an argument to be made that the 'tier' of the med school could/should justify a different approach to grading. Just some thoughts 😉
 
Megatron2016 said:
I actually strongly disagree with this opinion. 40% of students getting honors is no less arbitrary that 10%, and IMO leads to a happier student body. The school's grading policy's effect on match outcomes is also impossible to really know. Is your qualm that these inflationary grading policy's are unfair to students at schools with more 'strict' grading?

I think there is also an argument to be made that the 'tier' of the med school could/should justify a different approach to grading. Just some thoughts 😉
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I think what's more absurd is not the percent that get honors but that at some schools the shelf can be the primary determinant of grades while at some schools it's the subjective evals. Also, at some schools the shelf cutoff is clearly way lower than at my school, though I guess if everyone had the same shelf cutoffs then the schools with better standardized testtakers would have a lot more people getting honors. Too bad I didn't go somewhere where the shelf score was what really made the difference.
 
At my school (and perhaps there are others that do this), the clinical evals are what gives you honors. The shelf cannot give you honors, as it counts for only 15-25% of the final grade, but mediocre or poor performance can prevent you from getting honors (I think for IM you need >80 on the shelf to get honors, regardless of how you did clinically).
 
Megatron2016 said:
I actually strongly disagree with this opinion. 40% of students getting honors is no less arbitrary that 10%, and IMO leads to a happier student body. The school's grading policy's effect on match outcomes is also impossible to really know. Is your qualm that these inflationary grading policy's are unfair to students at schools with more 'strict' grading?

I think there is also an argument to be made that the 'tier' of the med school could/should justify a different approach to grading. Just some thoughts 😉
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I think it would be better for student body if 40% honored. I support that.
 
GuyWhoDoesStuff said:
That is absurd.
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I don't disagree with you, but frankly I don't care and am grateful that I don't have to kiss too much ass as my shelf makes up for any clinical evals that aren't honors. I would be extremely stressed if I had to be top 10% every rotation. Instead I can kinda coast and still probably get honors in the rotations I don't care about - FM, peds, psych. And focus the rest of my time on getting research done and reading for my sub-Is.
 
Wordead said:
I don't disagree with you, but frankly I don't care and am grateful that I don't have to kiss too much ass as my shelf makes up for any clinical evals that aren't honors. I would be extremely stressed if I had to be top 10% every rotation. Instead I can kinda coast and still probably get honors in the rotations I don't care about - FM, peds, psych. And focus the rest of my time on getting research done and reading for my sub-Is.
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Truth.
 
I didn't honor anything in third year and got interviews at top tier programs in rads. Depends on what field you're going into, I think.

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My school has changed the standards this year so even less people honor (10-15%), apparently too many people were honoring last year. I've heard of lots of my classmates (including myself), not honoring anything so far. Some rotations, the evals are the majority of the grade, sometimes the shelf is worth as high as 45% of the grade (or you must meet a specific percentile to get honors), it depends on the rotation.

It's incredibly frustrating, I've come close, but haven't honored anything so far. We are H/P/F, so no High Pass either, it's not very motivating....
 
tco said:
I didn't honor anything in third year and got interviews at top tier programs in rads. Depends on what field you're going into, I think.

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Yes, but what tier was your medical school?
 
Bza said:
My school has changed the standards this year so even less people honor (10-15%), apparently too many people were honoring last year. I've heard of lots of my classmates (including myself), not honoring anything so far. Some rotations, the evals are the majority of the grade, sometimes the shelf is worth as high as 45% of the grade (or you must meet a specific percentile to get honors), it depends on the rotation.

It's incredibly frustrating, I've come close, but haven't honored anything so far. We are H/P/F, so no High Pass either, it's not very motivating....
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I feel like a lot of people underestimate the effort required to study for the shelfs. You need to study every single day, do all the practice questions, and ideally do them more than once.
 
scarletgirl777 said:
I feel like a lot of people underestimate the effort required to study for the shelfs. You need to study every single day, do all the practice questions, and ideally do them more than once.
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preach on sister; apparently at my school our class averages ~1 std deviation above the national mean. thus, we have shelf score cutoffs of something like 88% for honors in some clerkships. coupled with the fact that our medicine and surgery clerkships are only 8 weeks in length = constant clusterfk in terms of trying to study. i remember during down times on the medicine service, i would excuse myself go to the bathroom, and do 5 questions so i wouldn't be caught 'looking on my phone' by others. ughhhhhh
 
crimsonkid85 said:
preach on sister; apparently at my school our class averages ~1 std deviation above the national mean. thus, we have shelf score cutoffs of something like 88% for honors in some clerkships. coupled with the fact that our medicine and surgery clerkships are only 8 weeks in length = constant clusterfk in terms of trying to study. i remember during down times on the medicine service, i would excuse myself go to the bathroom, and do 5 questions so i wouldn't be caught 'looking on my phone' by others. ughhhhhh
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We have the same issue, we only have 8 weeks of surgery and IM. I hear most schools have 12 weeks of those rotations? We don't get time off before the shelf to study or anything either. And our school wonders why we don't do better on the shelves...
 
Bza said:
We have the same issue, we only have 8 weeks of surgery and IM. I hear most schools have 12 weeks of those rotations? We don't get time off before the shelf to study or anything either. And our school wonders why we don't do better on the shelves...
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Are there really places where people get time off? Well, in my opinion it doesn't matter. In my n=1 experience, in order to crush a shelf you need to start studying from day 1, so an extra day or 2 off before the exam wouldn't really make a difference.
 
At my school you have to both score > 90th percentile on the shelf exam and receive honors from > 50% your clinical preceptors, so very few people get honors in any given rotation
 
Just curious, how do they calculate your percentile score based on your scale score? At my school, the later you take a rotation, the less your scaled score is worth. For example: Let's say you take internal and get a scaled score of 80. If you took that exam as your first rotation you would get in the 70th percentile range versus if you took it second to last that same scaled score of 80 would put you in the 50th percentile range. Do other schools do this? I think this is kinda BS, the argument is that you are supposed to be gaining knowledge as you go... but how does doing psychiatry and surgery help you on pediatrics later and vice versa? Basically, as the year progresses it gets harder to honor at my school. We have to be above the 75th percentile in order to honor. I wish it would be based on the scaled score, not some conversion that is based on people who took the exam at the same time last year...
 
change77 said:
Just curious, how do they calculate your percentile score based on your scale score? At my school, the later you take a rotation, the less your scaled score is worth. For example: Let's say you take internal and get a scaled score of 80. If you took that exam as your first rotation you would get in the 70th percentile range versus if you took it second to last that same scaled score of 80 would put you in the 50th percentile range. Do other schools do this? I think this is kinda BS, the argument is that you are supposed to be gaining knowledge as you go... but how does doing psychiatry and surgery help you on pediatrics later and vice versa? Basically, as the year progresses it gets harder to honor at my school. We have to be above the 75th percentile in order to honor. I wish it would be based on the scaled score, not some conversion that is based on people who took the exam at the same time last year...
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There is actually a paper published that shows that having completed your IM rotation predicts for higher shelf scores i.e. people who already rotated on medicine score higher on their psych shelf than peers who did not do IM yet but have done some other rotation instead. I am too lazy to look for it now but it is definitely in pubmed, saw it in the past few months. It also makes intuitive sense that getting used to the format of the shelf exam makes it easier to do well on the shelf exam, IMHO, but I don't know if that's something that can be quantified and scaled appropriately. Plus the MD/PhD students who come back to clinic at odd times and are off schedule would not be well accounted for in the system you're describing.
 
Well, I have medicine second to last so I guess this does not help me much... but good to know there is at least some research behind it.
 
the only thing MD/PhD students would do is lower the class average lol, since we don't remember ANYTHING when we come back and are effectively ******s
 
crimsonkid85 said:
the only thing MD/PhD students would do is lower the class average lol, since we don't remember ANYTHING when we come back and are effectively ******s
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But at some point you could be on your 3rd rotation when everyone else is on their 1st...people with short PhDs <3 years wouldn't be so far removed from med school that the advantage would be erased. Obviously if you are doing a 10 year MD-PhD you are screwed (on so many levels lol).
 
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scarletgirl777 said:
But at some point you could be on your 3rd rotation when everyone else is on their 1st...people with short PhDs <3 years wouldn't be so far removed from med school that the advantage would be erased. Obviously if you are doing a 10 year MD-PhD you are screwed (on so many levels lol).
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Do you have any experience with this or are you just speaking with assumptions? I took a year off for research and found it very difficult to return. It took me 2 rotations to feel acclimated to taking histories and doing exams. Add to that the studying nightly that everyone has to adjust to, and it's easy to see why it's difficult to return. I can only imagine what it's like to do 3-5 years for a PhD. One of the residents I worked with said, "When I left to do my PhD, beta blockers were contraindicated in CHF."

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tco said:
Do you have any experience with this or are you just speaking with assumptions? I took a year off for research and found it very difficult to return. It took me 2 rotations to feel acclimated to taking histories and doing exams. Add to that the studying nightly that everyone has to adjust to, and it's easy to see why it's difficult to return. I can only imagine what it's like to do 3-5 years for a PhD. One of the residents I worked with said, "When I left to do my PhD, beta blockers were contraindicated in CHF."

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I took a year off for research and did a rotation in a specialty/patient population that I hadn't worked with in 3 years. Yeah, it was hard to readjust for that rotation and I thought "oh no I lost so much knowledge!" But then I looked at the brand new med students. There are some things that are just ingrained in you. For me at least, it was not hard to reacclimate myself to taking histories and doing exams. Yeah there was some really specific anatomy that I'd forgotten, but the basics are right there and a lot of things are more easily relearned than initially learned.
 
scarletgirl777 said:
I took a year off for research and did a rotation in a specialty/patient population that I hadn't worked with in 3 years. Yeah, it was hard to readjust for that rotation and I thought "oh no I lost so much knowledge!" But then I looked at the brand new med students. There are some things that are just ingrained in you. For me at least, it was not hard to reacclimate myself to taking histories and doing exams. Yeah there was some really specific anatomy that I'd forgotten, but the basics are right there and a lot of things are more easily relearned than initially learned.
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Fair enough, and good assessment. I was just making sure you were basing it on personal experience and not what "should" be true.

I don't agree with your conclusion that it wouldn't be tough to come back after 3 years, though. I know how hard it was for me to come back after one year.
 
tco said:
I don't agree with your conclusion that it wouldn't be tough to come back after 3 years, though. I know how hard it was for me to come back after one year.
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It could be tough, but I think my point is that I personally don't think it is as tough as starting out on your first rotation, and in that sense it could possibly maybe be an edge over your co-rotators. On the flip side, you could come back at a point in a cycle where everyone's already done a couple rotations and has hit their stride while you're still learning the new EMR.
 
Bza said:
My school has changed the standards this year so even less people honor (10-15%), apparently too many people were honoring last year. I've heard of lots of my classmates (including myself), not honoring anything so far. Some rotations, the evals are the majority of the grade, sometimes the shelf is worth as high as 45% of the grade (or you must meet a specific percentile to get honors), it depends on the rotation.

It's incredibly frustrating, I've come close, but haven't honored anything so far. We are H/P/F, so no High Pass either, it's not very motivating....
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Wow, with only H/P/F as options that is a demotivator. Maybe you go to a top tier school, where it's expected?
 
DermViser said:
Wow, with only H/P/F as options that is a demotivator. Maybe you go to a top tier school, where it's expected?
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That's what my school does as well. Definitely not a top tier school from my end.

I also feel like it hurt my application... A few places asked me why I didn't even high pass my clinical rotations. This really needs to be standardized better.

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tco said:
That's what my school does as well. Definitely not a top tier school from my end.

I also feel like it hurt my application... A few places asked me why I didn't even high pass my clinical rotations. This really needs to be standardized better.

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Well, in that case, the grading scale helps you bc you can always explain clearly that the grade of High Pass is not available at your school only, Honors/Pass/Fail.
 
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