So, I will be attending a "Pass/Fail" medical school, but when I asked a current upperclassman if there is internal ranking, he answered "No, BUT they can calculate your rank if the residency program needs it."
To me, that sounds like there is an internal ranking, but the school is not transparent about it.
Thoughts?
You hit the nail on the head. In hindsight, I feel like all the commotion about Year 1-2 grading is overblown. At the end of the day, a majority of the schools have some variant of pass/fail. Some may have additional tiers to reward students for diligent work (H/P/F...H, HP, P, LP, F, etc)...Students at these schools may seem to not like such a system because it "promotes competition", but I feel like most the stress is made by students themselves. My school actually grades students with a 3 digit numerical value based on standard deviation from the mean with 500 being average. A lot of people freaked out and petitioned the system saying that the school's too competitive and the school itself really didn't care much because it wasn't like a big deal to them so they're changing it to accomodate requests which does nothing for students.
At the end of the day, students will always be ranked internally. The exception to this is at notable schools (I think many ivies) who are very transparent about the fact that after P vs. F, grades are 100% confidential and thrown away. At most schools, however, there's something known as a
Dean's Letter that needs to be written in your 4th year. The Dean's Letter is composed of things that make you special to promote your standing (Johnny served on the promotions committee and volunteered here etc.), but one of the goals of the Dean's Letter is to come up with an objective ranking of a student relative to his or her peers because residencies will always want to know such a juicy fact. Therefore, medical schools will keep your grades and rank you and then put you in some category. At my school it's something like top 5% is exceptional, top 10% is outstanding, top 25% is excellent, top 50% very good, top 75% is good, etc and that's going to be in the Dean's Letter. Therefore, does it really matter if schools give out grades after every exam? No...students just think it does because if they're not getting top 10% on every exam, it just gets to them...at the end of the day, what matters is what quartile you fall in (at my school). However, class rank and 1st year grades are very low on the totem pole of importance and things like Step exams, Clinical grades, and possibly research and LORs are just as important.
OP, after you change your username, you should figure out how your school configures your dean's letter (is it truly a P or F stamp or is it a bunch of groups, or whatever) and make your moves from there. Also, even if it's just Pass or Fail, the next question to ask is how they determine AOA. If they say they say 1st and 2nd year has no influence on AOA, then you've found what in actuality is a "Pass or Fail" school and I can't be sure but I feel this is probably rare.
