D
deleted421268
What are specific medical schools that follow unranked pass/fail scale?
Last edited by a moderator:
What are specific medical schools that follow pass/fail scale?
Would be a long list. Most are pass/fail. Better question is which is not
What is the difference between ranked and unranked pass/fail? Reworded Thanks for suggestion!Pretty sure a better question is: which schools are unranked pass/fail? Ranked pass/fail is no different from a graded system, and schools with ranked pass/fail can be more stressful/competitive... and thus a huge turnoff for many people.
What is the difference between ranked and unranked pass/fail? Reworded Thanks for suggestion!
What is the difference between ranked and unranked pass/fail?
These links may be outdated as curricula change regularly. School websites probably give good information regarding their grading policy, but some schools with pass/fail grading deceptively hide information regarding internal ranking. So hence the purpose of this thread.
Using pass/fail scales how do schools rank students if there are no letter grades assigned with GPA values?I'm not sure this is correct based on what my school has told us. We were told that it is required for the performance of individual students to be compared to the whole class for the purpose of the MSPE, which is the letter written by your medical school that goes with your residency application. That may be a numerical rank or just top quartile, top 20%, etc., but I'm pretty sure every single school has to do this, regardless of whether they call themselves ranked or unranked or whether the students are made aware of this ranking. My school ranks us into quartiles and they told us that this is the most they can get away with in terms of being "unranked." This is discussed in at least one of the threads you linked.
I'm not sure this is correct based on what my school has told us. We were told that it is required for the performance of individual students to be compared to the whole class for the purpose of the MSPE, which is the letter written by your medical school that goes with your residency application. That may be a numerical rank or just top quartile, top 20%, etc., but I'm pretty sure every single school has to do this, regardless of whether they call themselves ranked or unranked or whether the students are made aware of this ranking. My school ranks us into quartiles and they told us that this is the most they can get away with in terms of being "unranked." This is discussed in at least one of the threads you linked.
So is there no such thing as ''unranked'' pass/fail medical schools?
Unranked pass/fail schools exist. They are Harvard, Yale, Hopkins and Columbia. I'm pretty sure Sinai is also unranked pass/fail and few others are too but I don't know the full details.
Ya I'm interested in knowing all the unranked pass/fail medical schools that existUMich as well I believe for the first 2 years if anyone is making a list.
Are most of the unranked pass/fail medical schools top medical schools or are there mid tier and low tier MD schools also unranked pass/fail?Unranked pass/fail schools exist. They are Harvard, Yale, Hopkins and Columbia. I'm pretty sure Sinai is also unranked pass/fail and few others are too but I don't know the full details.
Why is this of great importance to you?Ya I'm interested in knowing all the unranked pass/fail medical schools that exist
Why is this of great importance to you?
Nowhere in any of what you quoted does it say preclinical comparisons must be made. I can tell you 100% the school I'm at does not mention rank/quartile/etc regarding preclinical grades, only clinical rotations.I don't mean this rudely, but you haven't correctly guessed my school's grading scheme (which I was purposely vague about for the sake of anonymity). I likely would not pass your recommendations onto them regardless lol.
I'd like to hear from someone who reviews MSPEs or is more familiar with the process to back up your assertion that some schools do not have any comparison whatsoever of how a student performs within their class. Based on my (admittedly limited) research, it appears to be the AAMC that sets the guidelines for the MSPE, not the LCME.
Here are their recommendations, which have multiple mentions of comparing individual students against the rest of their class, suggesting to me that this is an expected part of the MSPE: https://www.aamc.org/download/470400/data/mspe-recommendations.pdf
In particular:
- "Graphic representations of students’ comparative performance should be incorporated within the body of the MSPE, not as appendices."
- "Provide a summative assessment, based up on the school’s evaluation system, of the student’s comparative performance in medical school, relative to his/her peers, including information about any school-specific categories used in differentiating among levels of student performance."
- "In keeping with one of the guiding principles for the new MPSE recommendations, this letter should be one method through which schools can provide comparative information on applicants. "
- "It is imperative that the information used to compare students is clearly stated in the summary. For example, 'Quartile placement was determined using a point system of 3 points for each honors grade, 2 points for high pass, 1 point for pass and -1 point for a failing grade. Every course in the M1-M3 year is counted equally (no weighting of courses or clerkships). USMLE scores, community service, or research are not considered in quartile placement.' "
This is something to consider when deciding where to matriculate among your acceptances, I wouldn't use this to decide where to apply. You'll find out the grading systems at interview days/second looks.
Then go. It's not big enough of a deal to not go to medical school over.
I don't mean this rudely, but you haven't correctly guessed my school's grading scheme (which I was purposely vague about for the sake of anonymity). I likely would not pass your recommendations onto them regardless lol.
I'd like to hear from someone who reviews MSPEs or is more familiar with the process to back up your assertion that some schools do not have any comparison whatsoever of how a student performs within their class. Based on my (admittedly limited) research, it appears to be the AAMC that sets the guidelines for the MSPE, not the LCME.
Here are their recommendations, which have multiple mentions of comparing individual students against the rest of their class, suggesting to me that this is an expected part of the MSPE: https://www.aamc.org/download/470400/data/mspe-recommendations.pdf
In particular:
- "Graphic representations of students’ comparative performance should be incorporated within the body of the MSPE, not as appendices."
- "Provide a summative assessment, based up on the school’s evaluation system, of the student’s comparative performance in medical school, relative to his/her peers, including information about any school-specific categories used in differentiating among levels of student performance."
- "In keeping with one of the guiding principles for the new MPSE recommendations, this letter should be one method through which schools can provide comparative information on applicants. "
- "It is imperative that the information used to compare students is clearly stated in the summary. For example, 'Quartile placement was determined using a point system of 3 points for each honors grade, 2 points for high pass, 1 point for pass and -1 point for a failing grade. Every course in the M1-M3 year is counted equally (no weighting of courses or clerkships). USMLE scores, community service, or research are not considered in quartile placement.' "
ETA: And it looks like they put in your shelf exam scores and that sort of thing anyway, which is a direct comparison of your performance to the average US medical student, is it not?
But what if someone just has one acceptance
For someone who is trying to figure out what schools I want to apply to considering whether a school is unranked P/F, Ranked P/F, letter grade system should be of no value in terms of considering what schools I want to apply to?
And honestly, as I mentioned, my school is not strictly pass/fail for the majority of our courses and ranks us by quartiles for our MSPE. It is PLENTY collaborative/non-competitive - people share study resources and go above and beyond to help each other out all the time. I have never heard of anybody trying to sabotage somebody to get a better grade or anything like that. I think it's more about the culture of the school/personality of the students than the grading system. Perhaps the grading system might contribute to a more competitive atmosphere at some schools, but that hasn't been my experience.
And regarding stress - I don't think I would work any less hard if I knew I wasn't being ranked against my classmates. Because I'm not just studying to get a good grade on an individual test or get a high ranking. I'm studying to prepare for my boards and prepare to be a good doctor. So even without being ranked, I would still work as hard as I reasonably could while maintaining my physical and mental health.
I don't mean this rudely, but you haven't correctly guessed my school's grading scheme (which I was purposely vague about for the sake of anonymity). I likely would not pass your recommendations onto them regardless lol.
My school ranks us into quartiles and they told us that this is the most they can get away with in terms of being "unranked." This is discussed in at least one of the threads you linked.
I'd like to hear from someone who reviews MSPEs or is more familiar with the process to back up your assertion that some schools do not have any comparison whatsoever of how a student performs within their class. Based on my (admittedly limited) research, it appears to be the AAMC that sets the guidelines for the MSPE, not the LCME.
Here are their recommendations, which have multiple mentions of comparing individual students against the rest of their class, suggesting to me that this is an expected part of the MSPE: https://www.aamc.org/download/470400/data/mspe-recommendations.pdf
In particular:
- "Graphic representations of students’ comparative performance should be incorporated within the body of the MSPE, not as appendices."
- "Provide a summative assessment, based up on the school’s evaluation system, of the student’s comparative performance in medical school, relative to his/her peers, including information about any school-specific categories used in differentiating among levels of student performance."
- "In keeping with one of the guiding principles for the new MPSE recommendations, this letter should be one method through which schools can provide comparative information on applicants. "
- "It is imperative that the information used to compare students is clearly stated in the summary. For example, 'Quartile placement was determined using a point system of 3 points for each honors grade, 2 points for high pass, 1 point for pass and -1 point for a failing grade. Every course in the M1-M3 year is counted equally (no weighting of courses or clerkships). USMLE scores, community service, or research are not considered in quartile placement.' "
ETA: And it looks like they put in your shelf exam scores and that sort of thing anyway, which is a direct comparison of your performance to the average US medical student, is it not?
What are specific medical schools that follow unranked pass/fail scale?
Yeah I def haven't ever heard of unranked clinical years!Okay, sure. I guess I assumed that students looking for "true pass/fail unranked" wanted it all 4 years and not just preclinical. Bottom line, you will be ranked comparatively at some point no matter what school you go to.
Yeah I def haven't ever heard of unranked clinical years!
Well no, I didn't tell you what my school's grading system is. I told you that they rank us into quartiles for the MSPE, not whether it's P/F or letter grades or Honors/P/F or H/HP/P/F, what the grading system is in each year, how they determine that quartile rank, etc. You assumed that my school is/describes itself as true pass/fail, and that's not correct.
OP did not specifically mention that they were asking about preclinical years. In fact, I'm sure you didn't do this on purpose or anything, but you didn't even specify in your posts that you were talking about only preclinical years until now, unless I'm missing something.
And most premeds don't mention/realize that M3/M4 might be different when I see these types of posts. As an applicant, I certainly didn't realize that no matter what I would be ranked/competing for grades for at least half of med school. I just think it's important to be honest with pre-meds insofar as there is no such thing as an unranked, true pass-fail system for all 4 years of medical school.
I agree that ranked pass/fail systems are dumb. I don't think we're actually in disagreement about anything here. I'm just pointing out to OP and others in this thread that every single school ranks their students at one point or another, and you will be competing with your classmates regardless in the clinical years when it really counts. I'm not sure why you seem to be in opposition to me stating that truth.
Using pass/fail scales how do schools rank students if there are no letter grades assigned with GPA values?
Yeah, I guess for me and my friends, that was not common knowledge, so that's where I'm coming from here. And a lot of the applicants I talk about this with seem surprised.
Lol lawper the yale system describes preclinical years pretty sure. Can't have optional attendance clinical rotations or optional shelf exams
Because ranking isn't based on GPA, its simply based on total overall points and percentages. For example, two students can both have 3.0 GPAs but one could be ranked a lot higher because they consistently got 89%s on everything and the other sat at 80% the whole semester
Very true. A point that sometimes gets lost in this discussion is the fact that just because a school doesn't compile a formal rank of its students doesn't mean that it does not have copious amounts of performance data. The question comes down to what the school decides to do with it all.
Also, there ranking and then there is ranking. The old school method was a linear scale with every student numbered. Now it's more common to see quartiles or quintiles, which allows some camouflage for lower performing students. You can argue that both are ranking systems, although I believe there are substantial difference between the two approaches.
If you go to a AAMC meeting, standardizing the MSPE is one of the top two dead, beaten horses (#1 is a cap on residency applications). With the release of the MSPE Task Force's report last year it will be interesting to see how much uptake occurs in the next few years.
With regard to the "comparative information" included in MSPE's, a lot of it involves histograms of grade distributions to provide some context for a given student's marks. An Honors means a lot more if it's earned by 10% of the class versus 50%. Conversely, a Pass isn't so damning if that grade is given to 80% of the class.
I'm pretty sure as long as each school continues to follow its own curriculum and has its own grading criteria, MSPEs won't be standardized anytime soon.
I always propose the strategy of making preclinical years of every school unranked pass/fail and then proceed to standardize clinical grading. But as long as some schools refuse to accept unranked pass/fail preclinical curricula for AOA purposes (which other schools don't have nor care), the MSPEs will continue to be unstandardized and difficult to interpret.
The moral of the story here is, when you attend your interviews if grading scale is this important to you - ask them to specify if numerical/letter grades are reported on your transcript, or if it just reports Pass/Fail.
Out of curiosity...do any of the students here actually feel non-P/F grading causing some kind of pressure or competition IRL?
Oddly, if one were to score 100% on Micro and Immuno and get 50% on Path (for a total score of 90%), their grade would be reported as "90 - Fail", because of the failure in the Pathology component. It makes absolutely no sense.
Having to pass each defined element in an integrated curriculum makes perfect sense. Especially when you see how much pathology is on Step 1.
I don't disagree - but it appears very peculiar that a transcript might indicate a student earned a 90 but still failed the course, an ambiguity that could be remedied with choosing either P/F or Numerical grade reporting on the transcript.
What does the transcript show after successful remediation?
Also consider that each school has a unique culture, and each class has a unique character. There is evidence to support the idea that P/F grading improves student well being (review here), but this has to be counterbalanced by the fact that not assigning grades gives residency programs less information to make decisions.