Pre-clinical grading system is NOT that important...

[RogueUnicorn]

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Thanks for the perspectives. In terms of clinical education, it is a bit tough, and I think it takes some extra work on your part as an applicant to track down 3rd and 4th years (and maybe even get lucky and find some residents) to talk to. While I can't say that my current school is the "best" of the schools I was accepted to in regards to clinical experience, I heard the same positive things over and over again compared to my other schools. So I weighed that pretty heavily. Maybe I'm wrong.

In honesty even then I don't think it's going to be consistently informative. It's too dependent on running into the right people with the correct perspective, one that jives with the person asking the question to start with. Moreover, students at interview days tend to repeat platitudes that have not been thoroughly vetted; and people tend not want to believe negative things about their training to start with. With regards to clinical education I think it's really just reading between the lines to the best of your abilities and taking an essentially blind leap of faith.

This is the point of this thread. It wasn't to be contradictory. It was to discuss a topic that seemed to be oversimplified (in my opinion).

It's a good point

 

[MilkIsGood]

P/F unranked >graded >P/F ranked

To say grading system isn't important is just wrong, but it's not the most important criteria in choosing a school. It definitely changes the way you study

 

[survivordo]

So to discuss this further, IMO curriculum, insofar as mode of delivery of information is concerned, is incredibly overblown. I absolutely detest PBL, but I guarantee you I would have learned what I had to in a 100% PBL curriculum, about as well as I did in a school that's mostly lecture-focused. So much of the responsibility for learning falls on the individual student anyway, and as far as I'm concerned the school itself is more or less an auxiliary source of information.

THIS is a straight up fact and I wish more people would realize it, you have to put the onus on yourself. No one is going to do it for you regardless of where you go, what curriculum, where you rotate etc!

Survivor DO

 

[vibes]

So how would you rank the different grading systems?

 

[Charles_Carmichael]

So to discuss this further, IMO curriculum, insofar as mode of delivery of information is concerned, is incredibly overblown. I absolutely detest PBL, but I guarantee you I would have learned what I had to in a 100% PBL curriculum, about as well as I did in a school that's mostly lecture-focused. So much of the responsibility for learning falls on the individual student anyway, and as far as I'm concerned the school itself is more or less an auxiliary source of information.

I completely agree with this. I don't go to class. I don't stream lectures. I don't even know the names of most of the professors at my school or what they look like. But that's why I would always choose a school that doesn't have mandatory classes (thus, giving me the free time to learn on my own), even if it's H/P/F compared to a school that has more mandatory stuff, but comes with P/F. That's what I was trying to convey. Sorry if I was being unclear.

But that's just me, though. I can understand that others may have different priorities. For me, it was minimal class time during the pre-clinical years.

It's been brought up before, but re: clinical education, I think it's really impossible to know as a pre-med, and maybe even as a med student, what the "quality" of the rotations are like.

While there is certainly truth to that, I also don't think it's as difficult to get an idea of what the clinical years would be like. Especially when there's a resource like SDN with entire threads dedicated to a single school. I had a chance to talk with M3s/M4s at most of my interviews or on SDN to get a better idea of what to expect in the clinical years -- the amount of autonomy, the difficulty of grading, the diversity of pathology seen, whether residents actually look at your notes, etc. I know that's still hard to interpret (even as an M2), but it's better than going in blind. I, personally, felt that this was more important for me to get a feel for than many other factors. I understand that others may not view it that way or go out of the way, as I did, to get more information regarding this.

Both sides of this argument bring up good points, IMO. I'm just leaning more towards the side of "there are more important factors I would consider before looking at the grading system when choosing a school." Hope that clarifies what I was trying convey a bit better.