Passing Threshold in P/F Schools

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It varies. Most adhere to thresholds of 70%. Very few have 60%. (Do correct me if I am wrong)
 
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It's hard to standardize because most schools don't use entirely standardized exams to begin with (i.e. one schools anatomy may have harder exams than another, while the second school may have killer histo exams, etc). My school's policy is usually a 70 or two standard deviations below the mean, whichever is lower.
 
Or you can go to my school, where they give only essay exams, spend about 4 weeks doing some magic, and then tell you if you pass or fail :laugh:

In the end, IMO it doesn't matter much what the "cutoff" is. P/F schools are for medical students who want to prove themselves by their experiences more than their grades. If you want to be able to work really hard in class and prove yourself through your high honors grades, simply don't go to a P/F school because you won't be very happy.
 
medstud2015 said:
Or you can go to my school, where they give only essay exams, spend about 4 weeks doing some magic, and then tell you if you pass or fail :laugh:

In the end, IMO it doesn't matter much what the "cutoff" is. P/F schools are for medical students who want to prove themselves by their experiences more than their grades. If you want to be able to work really hard in class and prove yourself through your high honors grades, simply don't go to a P/F school because you won't be very happy.
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Whatever medstud..... Gunner by any chance or just plain old troll with that silly name and just 5 posts
 
In the pre-DO forum they mentioned a poll (I never found it) that concluded that at graded (ABCDF) schools the A students are given honors, whereas at PF schools only a small percentage of the student body is given honors (by referring to the original exam grades before they were rounded to P and F). Therefore, graded schools are less gunner, because students compete against the exam and not against the other students.
 
MT Headed said:
In the pre-DO forum they mentioned a poll (I never found it) that concluded that at graded (ABCDF) schools the A students are given honors, whereas at PF schools only a small percentage of the student body is given honors (by referring to the original exam grades before they were rounded to P and F). Therefore, graded schools are less gunner, because students compete against the exam and not against the other students.
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Not necessarily. Several schools I've interviewed at have absolute cutoffs for honors that are irrespective of the performance of the class. Essentially, everyone in the class could get honors were they to perform above a certain level, meaning you're really only competing with yourself to get a good grade.
 
tantacles said:
Not necessarily. Several schools I've interviewed at have absolute cutoffs for honors that are irrespective of the performance of the class. Essentially, everyone in the class could get honors were they to perform above a certain level, meaning you're really only competing with yourself to get a good grade.
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That seems like a decent system.😀
 
medstud2015 said:
Or you can go to my school, where they give only essay exams, spend about 4 weeks doing some magic, and then tell you if you pass or fail :laugh:

In the end, IMO it doesn't matter much what the "cutoff" is. P/F schools are for medical students who want to prove themselves by their experiences more than their grades. If you want to be able to work really hard in class and prove yourself through your high honors grades, simply don't go to a P/F school because you won't be very happy.
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Interesting. How (un)common is it to fail at your school?
 
mmmcdowe said:
It's hard to standardize because most schools don't use entirely standardized exams to begin with (i.e. one schools anatomy may have harder exams than another, while the second school may have killer histo exams, etc). My school's policy is usually a 70 or two standard deviations below the mean, whichever is lower.
Click to expand...

I realize it's hard to standardize, but there are still interesting identifiable differences. For instance, (as I just learned from reading posts on this thread) certain schools require a P on all exams and others just require a P overall average to pass. It seems as if a school with the second kind of policy would be less stressful. It would be nice if someone could aggregate all of the information about different P/F schools and how each of their grading systems operate.
 
What are the P/F thresholds at other top schools?
 
WiredEntropy said:
I realize it's hard to standardize, but there are still interesting identifiable differences. For instance, (as I just learned from reading posts on this thread) certain schools require a P on all exams and others just require a P overall average to pass. It seems as if a school with the second kind of policy would be less stressful. It would be nice if someone could aggregate all of the information about different P/F schools and how each of their grading systems operate.
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What is being missed is the consequences of failing an exam at the schools. For example, you are allowed to fail two exams per semester at my school without any review of your candidacy. However, you still have to retake and pass the exams. I think anyone who is skimming the border in either school type is going to be VERY stressed, regardless.
 
medstud2015 said:
Or you can go to my school, where they give only essay exams, spend about 4 weeks doing some magic, and then tell you if you pass or fail :laugh:

In the end, IMO it doesn't matter much what the "cutoff" is. P/F schools are for medical students who want to prove themselves by their experiences more than their grades. If you want to be able to work really hard in class and prove yourself through your high honors grades, simply don't go to a P/F school because you won't be very happy.
Click to expand...

This is the argument that most graded pre-clinical schools use. However, one must realize a few thing. 1) Many students don't have a choice of schools. 2)Not everyone at a graded school can get honors, no matter how hard they work. For them, it is clearly a disadvantage. Since you can't really know for certain if you will be an honor medical student ahead of time, it is worth keeping this in mind no matter how motivated you are. 3) Pre-clinical grades are a footnote, and bad grades are much more likely to be a factor in admission than good grades. You are right in saying that p/f schools are more bent towards experiences, because experiences can actually have an effect. I'll take the three publications I cranked out during pre-clinicals to all pre-clinical honors any day. I also had the fortune of making headway into figuring out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and generally enjoyed my medical experience while focusing on learning the material rather than trying to strategize towards the test. :shrug:

As a side note, the grades at my school haven't gone down at all since transferring to p/f a few years ago.
 
mmmcdowe said:
This is the argument that most graded pre-clinical schools use. However, one must realize a few thing. 1) Many students don't have a choice of schools. 2)Not everyone at a graded school can get honors, no matter how hard they work. For them, it is clearly a disadvantage. Since you can't really know for certain if you will be an honor medical student ahead of time, it is worth keeping this in mind no matter how motivated you are. 3) Pre-clinical grades are a footnote, and bad grades are much more likely to be a factor in admission than good grades. You are right in saying that p/f schools are more bent towards experiences, because experiences can actually have an effect. I'll take the three publications I cranked out during pre-clinicals to all pre-clinical honors any day. I also had the fortune of making headway into figuring out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and generally enjoyed my medical experience while focusing on learning the material rather than trying to strategize towards the test. :shrug:
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This is exactly why I see P/F as a huge benefit. Pre-clinical grades are already effectively meaningless per residency PDs, so why would you take the chance of going to a graded school where solid grades do little to nothing but bad grades may very well hurt you? There's essentially no upside with the potential for some downside.

If you don't have a choice in schools then this discussion is moot, but P/F, if "used correctly" (i.e., as mmmc described), can be a huge help to you - not to mention a big stress reliever.
 
I didn't mean for this to become a discussion about the merits of P/F schools. Simply wanted to find out what the differences are (in terms of grading/passing threshold) between schools that already are P/F.
 
WiredEntropy said:
I didn't mean for this to become a discussion about the merits of P/F schools. Simply wanted to find out what the differences are (in terms of grading/passing threshold) between schools that already are P/F.
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Fair enough, but the answer to your question is: it varies. Might as well talk about the other related stuff too.
 
At my school, pass is 70% or greater, 65-69% are required to take a special exam to qualify for a 'conditional pass,' and 64% or less is a failure
 
At my school, 70% is passing. For first year, I think you have to average 70% to pass. However, for second year, you have to pass every exam to pass.
 
NickNaylor said:
This is exactly why I see P/F as a huge benefit. Pre-clinical grades are already effectively meaningless per residency PDs, so why would you take the chance of going to a graded school where solid grades do little to nothing but bad grades may very well hurt you? There's essentially no upside with the potential for some downside.

If you don't have a choice in schools then this discussion is moot, but P/F, if "used correctly" (i.e., as mmmc described), can be a huge help to you - not to mention a big stress reliever.
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This depends a lot on how effective your curriculum is. Our m1 year was p/f and a lot of people blew it off. I think our m2 curriculum was very good and high yield for step 1; I spent about an hour a day during most of m2 studying for step 1 prior to my dedicated time and otherwise just studied for class; being very prepared for exams gave me a solid fund of knowledge and prepared me very well for step 1. The material I had to study the most on my own was the p/f m1 material which I just didn't know to the same level of detail as the graded m2 info.
 
At my school (DO) passing is set at 70%. I hear that they will round at the end of the block only. So say if you finished with a 69.5 overall, you'd be allowed to pass. 69.4% and you take a remediation exam.

I also think there's a minimum score that you have to earn on each exam to be elligible to pass the block too but I'm not totally sure about that.
 
I'm not 100% on this, but a student at Pitt told us that course directors set their own pass score, and it's a recommended 1.5-2 standard deviations below the class mean. But my class will be the first to enter with the official P/F so they might change the guidelines.
 
MT Headed said:
In the pre-DO forum they mentioned a poll (I never found it) that concluded that at graded (ABCDF) schools the A students are given honors, whereas at PF schools only a small percentage of the student body is given honors (by referring to the original exam grades before they were rounded to P and F). Therefore, graded schools are less gunner, because students compete against the exam and not against the other students.
Click to expand...

IMO, this is not true. Some reasons:

1. Gunner's gonna gun no matter what the system is like.
2. With true grades it tends to drive your average medical student (not gunners, they are going hard 24/7....) into studying and worry too much.
 
tiedyeddog said:
IMO, this is not true. Some reasons:

1. Gunner's gonna gun no matter what the system is like.
2. With true grades it tends to drive your average medical student (not gunners, they are going hard 24/7....) into studying and worry too much.
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and med students shouldn't study? They're going to worry too much no matter what. That's the nature of med students.
 
Most courses at the school I'll be going to set the P/F mark for at 80% for an individual test. The professors can change that if the students are doing that well though.
 
drizzt3117 said:
and med students shouldn't study? They're going to worry too much no matter what. That's the nature of med students.
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Some people needlessly raise their own anxiety levels over stupid stuff. If you give a medical student an additional thing to agonize over they will find a way to sweat blood over it.
 
What are the P/F systems like at Stanford/HMS/Penn/Yale/Columbia/Hopkins/Cornell?
 
Ismet said:
I'm not 100% on this, but a student at Pitt told us that course directors set their own pass score, and it's a recommended 1.5-2 standard deviations below the class mean. But my class will be the first to enter with the official P/F so they might change the guidelines.
Click to expand...

Pass on any given exam is 2 standard deviations below the mean in the H/P/F system at Pitt. However, since the incoming class will be P/F, this will likely change to a more consistent numerical score to pass.
 
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