How much of your grade is your COMAT?

[runthiscity]

Fellow DO students,

The administration at our school recently made some changes to how third and fourth year would be graded. Previously, COMAT scores made up 10% of your grade for a rotation, with the other 90% coming from your preceptor evaluation. Now, these are split 50%/50% and the world is apparently coming to an end. There is a similar thread in the allopathic side, but I was curious: what percentage of your clinical grades is made up of by COMAT?

Further elaboration for anyone who is interested: they created a range based on the mean and SD of COMAT scores, with +2 SD getting 100%, +1 SD getting 90%, mean getting 85, -1 SD getting 75%, and greater than -2 SD getting a 0%, etc.. I believe the freak-out is stemming from the grades going from a 60% to 0% (the difference between 80 and 79 points on the COMAT, respectively.)

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[GUH]

We have a weird system where the preceptor grade just sets a ceiling for your overall grade, then your actual grade is determined based on a combination of COMAT quantiles + standardized patient encounters.

They don't even tell us the score or standard deviation cutoffs for H/HP/P/LP/F on the COMATs so we have no way of knowing whether or not a mistake was made. They say it's based on some secret numbers kept by the NBOME that only they have access to which indicate score distributions at different times of the year (which nobody believes). And the use of standardized patient encounters as a major determinant of rotation grades pretty much eliminates a lot of people from getting honors for rotations where they were stellar at the hospital and rocked their COMATs.

In other words, they don't tell us how they actually determine our overall grades but the ceilings are set by preceptor grades.

 

[runthiscity]

We have a weird system where the preceptor grade just sets a ceiling for your overall grade, then your actual grade is determined based on a combination of COMAT quantiles + standardized patient encounters.

They don't even tell us the score or standard deviation cutoffs for H/HP/P/LP/F on the COMATs so we have no way of knowing whether or not a mistake was made. They say it's based on some secret numbers kept by the NBOME that only they have access to which indicate score distributions at different times of the year (which nobody believes). And the use of standardized patient encounters as a major determinant of rotation grades pretty much eliminates a lot of people from getting honors for rotations where they were stellar at the hospital and rocked their COMATs.

In other words, they don't tell us how they actually determine our overall grades but the ceilings are set by preceptor grades.

This is a super interesting way of doing things... I don't understand the drive for DO schools to keep everything so hush-hush. Our school won't tell us historical averages of COMAT scores, so we're just operating under the assumption that we are exactly equal to the overall national average for all administrations. Certainly there are some COMATs that are harder than others and therefore have a lower average than others. Doesn't make sense to me.

 

[abolt18]

Kirksville,
eval =50%
COMAT = 40%
Logs = 10%

 

[ortnakas]

LECOM - eval 60%, shelf (NBME) 30%, online curriculum 10%

 

[Ddrumem]

OUHCOM
COMAT pass/fail
Eval 100%


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[Skynnyrd]

OUHCOM
COMAT pass/fail
Eval 100%


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Same at OSU-COM

 

[acapnial]

RVU

NBME
80-100th percentile H
50-80th percentile HP
5-50th percentile P


Eval Average (out of 5)
4.8-5 H
4-4.8 HP
2.5-4 P

If you get two different grades (H and HP) then your overall grade is whatever the lower one is, unless it's H and P, then averages to HP.

 

[prexies]

OUHCOM
COMAT pass/fail
Eval 100%


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This is actually no longer the case, I think starting with the class of 2017, but definitely for 2018.

This is how our clinical grades for required rotations are determined, with the number of 5s on a 1-5 scale determining the honors for the evaluation by faculty seen in the top row of the above chart. For elective rotations, it's all based on the faculty evaluation, and there is no high pass, only honors, pass, marginal, fail. You need at least 9 rankings of 5 with no rankings less than 3 in order to honor.

 

[hallowmann]

This is actually no longer the case, I think starting with the class of 2017, but definitely for 2018.
View attachment 208522

This is how our clinical grades for required rotations are determined, with the number of 5s on a 1-5 scale determining the honors for the evaluation by faculty seen in the top row of the above chart. For elective rotations, it's all based on the faculty evaluation, and there is no high pass, only honors, pass, marginal, fail. You need at least 9 rankings of 5 with no rankings less than 3 in order to honor.

Wow that's a big and sudden change, rough.

Ortnakes already did my school. I think our shelfs are graded similarly to the OP's system and then averaged with the rest.