Importance of MSPE in Psych

[mm2021]

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Hello -
My MSPE was sent to me by my school and in addition to the expected grades and comments, they have a little “summary” section at the end with your class rank (top 25%, top 50%, etc) and a little chart showing how you compare to the class average in terms of certain subjective criteria (interpersonal skills, teamwork, professionalism, etc).
I’m pretty disappointed because I most of my rankings in this section were below the class average. I wasn’t expecting that since I had previously been told my grades put me in the top 25% of the class (including clerkships)...but taking these other factors into account, I’m not ranked that way. I’m a little confused because I don’t know how these criteria were determined, but I imagine it won’t look great to residency programs (esp in psych) to see an applicant lags behind their classmates in interpersonal skills, for example. I was planning to apply to some pretty competitive residencies based on my grades and scores but now I am rethinking that. Does anyone know how important the MSPE (and the information I specified in particular) is for interview invites and ranking in psych?

 

[calvinhobbes]

Ask to speak to someone to review it with you, if possible. I imagine the actual comments from 3rd year rotations would matter much much. MSPE can really help, especially if there are positive highlights and statements. Either way, your interview is most important, so don’t stress too much. No one is sitting there reading every single MSPE, they may just look at it the day of the interview, but of course, every program is different, and some PDs actually do want to read what others say about you, including LORs, since the field is very much about personality and communication.

 

[Stagg737]

Cannot speak for all programs, especially not programs since I interviewed at mostly mid to low tier. However, I was repeatedly told my MSPE (which I thought was pretty mediocre) and LORs were what got me my interviews. Interested to hear what PDs and faculty on here have to say.

 

[ace_inhibitor111]

Uh what? That’s complete BS from your school if you got honors in clinical grades and then the admins decided to tack on arbitrary “professionalism” and “interpersonal skill” grades at the end with no documentation on how it’s calculated. Sounds like an unethical way to pick favorites

 

[FlowRate]

FWIW the MSPE was the thing I was least likely to read aside from looking at clinical grades and comparison to peers. But I'm not a PD, just did interviewing and selection committee during residency.

 

[NickNaylor]

Every institution will approach this differently - I'm sure PDs and other program staff have their own opinions about how important various aspects of your application package are.

At my institution, we use a rubric where each aspect of your application is worth a certain number of points, and applicants are then ranked at the interview season in order by how many points they were given. One member of the admissions committee is responsible for doing the initial scoring but all of the applications are reviewed by the full committee and small adjustments are made, if needed. The MSPE is worth relatively little on our rubric. Interviews and clerkship grades are by far the most important... everything else is comparatively unimportant, though obviously in the aggregate everything else adds up to a significant amount of the total score.

 

[Stagg737]

clerkship grades are by far the most important

This is something I've always found interesting given the significant inconsistency in how clerkships are graded. Seems like unless there was a breakdown of evaluator comments and shelf scores that this would be a fairly inaccurate way to rate candidates.

 

[NickNaylor]

This is something I've always found interesting given the significant inconsistency in how clerkships are graded. Seems like unless there was a breakdown of evaluator comments and shelf scores that this would be a fairly inaccurate way to rate candidates.

Yeah, I don't disagree. Personally I find the MSPE comments most helpful since those actually include qualitative comments about how someone did, albeit brief. Some MSPEs do include specifics on shelf performance, and when they include performance relative to the rest of the class that's helpful. For the purposes of our process, though, those things are irrelevant: scoring on our rubric is done based on the absolute grade without regard to relative performance or other things.