Ridiculous? Need some opinion...

[Countess827]

This is a question about the format of our Histology and Embryology Course. Just some background information. At my school, the Histology and Embryology Course are combined into one. Histology, however, finishes in October, while Embryology continues until December. In December, we have a cumulative final. The new policy at our school is that you must be passing the class with exams 1-3, and mandatorily pass the final to pass the class.

Now, we were told the cumulative final exam would be representative of all the material presented, with a breakdown of 40 embryology, 35 histology. However, the final did not represent an equal distribution of questions from the histology sections.

We're on a pass-fail system, so 65 is a passing score. The class average on the final was a 65 exactly. People who normally do well, and score in the 80s or lower 90s barely passed the final exam (with a 65 exactly or a 66, etc.) or just didn't pass the exam. So now, if you failed the final exam, but are still passing the course, you have to take a retake exam. Of course for the retake, they are going to average the first final and the retake final to come up with your final score.

For me, I just feel like if the class average is 65, then its not a problem with the students, its a problem with the exam. This whole process seems very unfair and I was curious to get an opinion from other med students.

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[Hayden2102]

What would you propose is unfair about the system?


Were you all given full disclosure about the format of the exam and of your curriculum?
Were you given enough time to study for the exam, both throughout the course and closer to the exam date?
Were you actually taught the information that you were expected to reproduce in the exam or were the questions out of left field?
Were you told how the questions were distributed in the exam?
Has your class been close to failing an exam ever before?

If the answer to most of these is yes, maybe you guys just aren't working hard enough...

 

[Pontifex Maximus]

I agree, if the average for an exam is just barely passing, the exam was probably too difficult.

 

[Hayden2102]

Hmm also, maybe you could ask the faculty how previous years did on the same test. If there is a significant drop in performance for your year, perhaps you could suggest as a conglomerate that the test was too hard this year.

If performace is similar to previous years then you probably have been warned before, right?

 

[dilated]

**** yeah that's unfair. You fail the block if you fail one test and the average is slightly above passing? This is medical school, not intro to psych. If 40% of the class fails that is a failure of the administration, not the students. If that happened at my school we'd raise hell, of course here they never fail more than 5% of the class.

 

[Countess827]

Were you all given full disclosure about the format of the exam and of your curriculum? Yes.

Were you given enough time to study for the exam, both throughout the course and closer to the exam date? No, after histology ended, we added another course and lab to our schedule, Neuro.

Were you actually taught the information that you were expected to reproduce in the exam or were the questions out of left field? No, the questions were out of left field.


Were you told how the questions were distributed in the exam? Like I said, there were supposed to be 35 histo, 40 embryo, but they were not distributed as we were told. There were supposed to be more questions emphasized from the newer embryo material, and then an equal distribution of questions each section from histology. The exam did not follow this format.

Has your class been close to failing an exam ever before? No, we've never been close to failing an exam like this before.

 

[med_heidelberg]

It is more likely that the exam was too difficult. Students at other schools arent scoring so badly on histo exams are they? At my school (in germany), passing is 60% and sometimes the exams are so difficult that over 80% of the people fail so they have to lower the minimum grade to pass, and of course, plenty of people fail and they have to do it over. They make the exams as difficult as possible to weed out people before the first board exam .. they think this will increase the schools overall score .. lovely eh?

You should ask around and see how people who took this exam last year fared and make a comparison.

 

[TheMightyAngus]

Why was the exam so difficult? Were the questions poorly worded/vague? If so, I'd say you have a case. If not, suck it up and do better next time.

 

[Hayden2102]

Were you all given full disclosure about the format of the exam and of your curriculum? Yes.

Were you given enough time to study for the exam, both throughout the course and closer to the exam date? No, after histology ended, we added another course and lab to our schedule, Neuro.

Were you actually taught the information that you were expected to reproduce in the exam or were the questions out of left field? No, the questions were out of left field.


Were you told how the questions were distributed in the exam? Like I said, there were supposed to be 35 histo, 40 embryo, but they were not distributed as we were told. There were supposed to be more questions emphasized from the newer embryo material, and then an equal distribution of questions each section from histology. The exam did not follow this format.

Has your class been close to failing an exam ever before? No, we've never been close to failing an exam like this before.

Kick up a fuss then. Might as well, you've got nothing to lose.

When we had a bad histo formative exam, the faculty came in and blasted us and said we aren't working hard enough. Have they said anything to your class about the test results?

 

[Countess827]

No, that's the part making this worse. The faculty have seen the results and are worried, but they have chosen to remain silent with no communication concerning the test results directly. Of course there are a lot of people angry after the exam, and the fact they have yet to communicate with us is making it no better. Some people have been at school all this week too, and even ventured to talk to the faculty. They've said talking to the faculty members has shown to have little help.