pass/fail vs. grades

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SUPERSTARZ

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Which schools are pass/fail?

Are most schools leaning towards this method?

Which do YOU like better: pass/fail or grades?

How does it effect learning?

Are students really more competitive when they are receiving grades instead of just pass/fail?

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Originally posted by SUPERSTARZ
Which schools are pass/fail?

Are most schools leaning towards this method?

Which do YOU like better: pass/fail or grades?

How does it effect learning?

Are students really more competitive when they are receiving grades instead of just pass/fail?

you can search for previous threads on this topic.....those were only about a month old.

a good number of schools are pass/fail.
i like p/f.
imho i think students are a little bit more competitive when there are actual grades involved.
sure there are gunners at every school regardless of whether it is grades or p/f but we all want to do well its just how we go about that....

i think p/f allows a more laid back style for us to take when it comes to doing well. thats just me.

i would think learning would not be any different in both settings but maybe grades would lead me to feel a little more stress to get an A.

damn now i gotta see if i can wake up for black friday sales.
 
On the other hand, some schools have "honors," "high pass," and "pass" which, call me insensitive, sound suspiciously like "A," "B," and "C."

Are their any schools which actually have only "pass" or "fail?"

I also have to say that gunners will havel little effect on your medical school experience. You will rise and fall on your own merits.

There is something of an "urban myth" quality to most of the gunner stories.
 
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Originally posted by Panda Bear
On the other hand, some schools have "honors," "high pass," and "pass" which, call me insensitive, sound suspiciously like "A," "B," and "C."

Are their any schools which actually have only "pass" or "fail?"

yeah there are a good number of schools that are purely p/f for the first 2 years....

once again you can prolly find the list if you search for it. if im not mistaken.....ucla is one of these schools?? not sure im sleepy.
 
There are a number of schools with true P/F for the first two years, among them include:
Harvard
Mount Sinai
USC-Keck (sort of, since technically you can also get dean's recognition at the end of the academic year if you've performed exceptionally well, though this is based on both academic performance as well as "extracurricular" factors)
UCSF
Northwestern
NYU (I think?)
CWRU

Then there seems to be a few schools with true P/F all four years:
UCLA
Stanford
Yale
Pritzker
Among these, only Stanford doesn't have an AOA chapter, so the other schools must still use some form of evaluation to "rank" their students, at least by the end of third year.

Also, some schools have true P/F for the first year only:
Vanderbilt
WashU
Michigan
Duke

The above lists are NOT meant to be comprehensive. I am sure I'm leaving out quite a few. The point is that most schools that use a true P/F system are elite medical schools. The truth is, most medical schools are still using A/B/C/D or H/HP/P/F or H/P/F system. No matter how you call it, these are still very similar grading systems and none of them are P/F in the true spirit of the phrase. Many elite schools still shy away from any true P/F grading, including Hopkins, Emory, UNC, Pitt, Mayo, UCSD, Penn, etc., so there is really no correlation between grading system and how 'highly ranked' a school might be.

Finally, I want to say that don't worry about grading too much. I currently go to a med school without true P/F as listed above, and it's not as bad as I had initially thought. I must admit that I was worried about it last year before entering med school, but having grades really hasn't been overbearing for me. One shouldn't give up a great acceptance just because the school is not true P/F (this is pretty obvious).

NOTE: Current med students at given institutions please correct me if I placed your school in the wrong category above.
 
yeah...down with AOA!!!
 
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