MSPE: To Waive or Not to Waive

[Mad Jack]

---

Members don't see this ad.

For LoRs, this is a pretty straightforward thing: Waive, period.

But for the MSPE, I've heard mixed things, and this appears to be a fairly rarely addressed topic in recent years. Some say it doesn't matter, some say you should screen it for inaccuracies, some say you should waive it. So do I waive the right to see my MSPE or not? PDs, do you care one way or the other?

 

[gutonc]

Do they even ask? I don't recall being asked to waive my right to see the MSPE. And everyone at my school was given the chance to sit down with an associate dean to go over it before it was finalized.

 

[NotAProgDirector]

I also didn't think this was even an option. It doesn't matter at all. As mentioned, most schools allow you to review it for accuracy. Some keep a final paragraph private.

 

[Mad Jack]

Do they even ask? I don't recall being asked to waive my right to see the MSPE. And everyone at my school was given the chance to sit down with an associate dean to go over it before it was finalized.

I also didn't think this was even an option. It doesn't matter at all. As mentioned, most schools allow you to review it for accuracy. Some keep a final paragraph private.

My school sent us a form that was basically like, "Do you waive your right to view your MSPE? If you choose not to waive this right, this decision will be stated on your MSPE." I guess this is a thing that looks scary but it isn't. So far as I know, they do not go over our MSPE with us, and do not provide it for us prior to submission, but I'll have to double-check with the staff.

 

[AdmiralChz]

Every couple of years at our program we get people that "waive" their right to see the LOR, and just this past year we had I think two who did so for MSPE. It is so exceedingly rare to see that it becomes a bit of a red flag - if you can't trust letter writers, why should we? This is even more true for the MSPE - you shouldn't have to do "double check" anything with "staff", that's literally their job.

At my med school some of the MSPE was somewhat confidential as it contained grade distributions for different classes. There literally is no reason you need to review this as your grade is your grade and there isn't anything you can do to change it.

 

[rrxr]

Every couple of years at our program we get people that "waive" their right to see the LOR, and just this past year we had I think two who did so for MSPE. It is so exceedingly rare to see that it becomes a bit of a red flag - if you can't trust letter writers, why should we? This is even more true for the MSPE - you shouldn't have to do "double check" anything with "staff", that's literally their job.

I agree that you should trust your "regular" letter writers that you got to choose, but the person writing your MSPE is usually not someone you chose. (In fact it may not even be someone that you know.) So I think it makes sense to let students make sure the MSPE (which is pseudo factual anyway) has no gross errors in name spellings, copy/paste mishaps, etc. I wish everyone in the world were guaranteed to do their jobs correctly, but they aren't so it seems reasonable to me that I get to make sure this person randomly assigned to me did their job.

 

[Raryn]

My MSPE consisted of a cover letter, a body letter, and an attachment with grade distributions for all the various classes. The cover letter and attachment we never saw, and they never gave us the option to see. I only know they existed as one of my classmates failed to match and he managed to get a copy of his full file from our home program, which included the entire MSPE.

The body letter summarized my extracurricular activites, my clerkship evals, and had a paragraph at the end that had the summative statement of where I was in the class (my school used "recommend", "highly recommend", and "exceedingly and highly recommend" as their code words) as well as a short description of us as a person (which the dean gleaned from a ~30 minute meeting). Not only did we get to see the body letter, we basically wrote all of the summaries of the extracurricular activities (the deans knew ****-all of what I had done outside of school) and had the opportunity to discuss with the dean any portions of the clerkship evals we felt were "formative" rather than "evaluative" feedback, where they would subsequently remove them from the letter.

There was no option to waive our right to see it one way or the other. If it existed, I don't know what I would have chosen. I found it an important exercise to see the dean's letter and request certain lines be removed from it (which were done afaik).

 

[mvenus929]

I got to read through my entire Deans letter, and our deans highly encouraged us to. Most of what I remember from it was snippets of our clerkship evaluations and a histogram of each clerkship's grade distributions along with where I fell.

I also don't know what I would have done if we had been told we had to waive our right to read the letter, but with so many schools having their students read through it, I doubt it'd be considered a red flag.

 

[Mad Jack]

Every couple of years at our program we get people that "waive" their right to see the LOR, and just this past year we had I think two who did so for MSPE. It is so exceedingly rare to see that it becomes a bit of a red flag - if you can't trust letter writers, why should we? This is even more true for the MSPE - you shouldn't have to do "double check" anything with "staff", that's literally their job.

At my med school some of the MSPE was somewhat confidential as it contained grade distributions for different classes. There literally is no reason you need to review this as your grade is your grade and there isn't anything you can do to change it.

The thing is, the MSPE is, at most places, visible to students precisely because it is supposed to be objective data. Not being able to see it is unusual, as students are frequently encouraged to review the document for accuracy at other schools due to the fact that the dean generally doesn't know most students personally. I've heard of errors as large as listing a "he" as a "she" and the like (a concern with a name like mine, actually) and other such things from students at other schools.

I dunno, I guess I don't really mind one way or another. If it's a red flag I'll just waive it I guess, I just figured I'd make sure there weren't any errors.

 

[rokshana]

yeah, i don't remember being asked to waive my MSPE and we were given a copy to look over to make sure there wasn't anything missing or inaccurate...but they did say that the final part with with Dean's recommendation would not be included.

there isn't anything in my MSPE that wasn't already known...the evaluations for each rotation were taken form the evaluations that we received throughout the clinical years.

 

[Mad Jack]

I got the official answer. It is expected that we do not waive, but because of FERPA they are covering their bases by offering a waiver if we so choose. I think it's one of those legal covering their bases things.