School now does not give honors for 3rd year

[sylvanthus]

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How screwed am I? No matter how well we do, we cannot get honors for 3rd year. This was a reactive policy to cut down on competition apparently. So, since almost every other medical school in the country will have students with honors 3rd year and I will have none, how bad is this? Do I make it up with glowing recommendation letters? A line in my deans letter stating we don't have honors 3rd year for our school?

 

[Doctor4Life1769]

You're toast. 😴

 

[AlexMorph]

How screwed am I? No matter how well we do, we cannot get honors for 3rd year. This was a reactive policy to cut down on competition apparently. So, since almost every other medical school in the country will have students with honors 3rd year and I will have none, how bad is this? Do I make it up with glowing recommendation letters? A line in my deans letter stating we don't have honors 3rd year for our school?

..............................................................

you don't think your school will mention that little factoid in the MSPE?

Sigh...next we will have the P/F school students complaining about how they can overcome not getting honors in their histo class...ffs

 

[RapplixGmed]

I'd say this is a good thing. Grading is so ridiculously subjective in 3rd year its better to just not deal with it.

 

[sylvanthus]

..............................................................

you don't think your school will mention that little factoid in the MSPE?

Sigh...next we will have the P/F school students complaining about how they can overcome not getting honors in their histo class...ffs

Ya cuz thats even close to the same importance level. Everywhere we go we hear how important rotation grades are for getting into residency. Do we ever hear about histo grades? I don't freakin think so. So, yes, excuse me if I think this is something important that needs to be explored more.

 

[235009]

i'm quite surprised by the strangely dismissive response in this thread ...i would think this would be a really big deal, especially if someone wants to go into a competitive specialty. However I feel like how big of a deal this is will depend on how well known your school is to residencies you will be applying to.

I would think that some residency directors who are unaware of this very strange/unique policy at your school might automatically eliminate your application without reading that one line in your MSPE if your third year grades don't meet their standards. But if we're talking about a highly recognized school nationally this probably won't be a problem. It might also not be a problem if you are applying within the same state/region where residency directors would be getting many applications from your school and would be aware of this policy. I can see this being an enormous disadvantage though if we are talking about a less well known school and you have your heart set on doing residency far away while most graduates stay in-state.

I'm all for a non-competitive environment but while eliminating honors in the first two years can be very positive, doing so in third year can have many downsides since that is the #1 or #2 factor that PDs look at.

 

[AlexMorph]

Ya cuz thats even close to the same importance level. Everywhere we go we hear how important rotation grades are for getting into residency. Do we ever hear about histo grades? I don't freakin think so. So, yes, excuse me if I think this is something important that needs to be explored more.

If you are so concerned, maybe you should find out what the school is doing to let it be known to others that they don't give out honors. That MIGHT quell your anxieties.

 

[2012mdc]

How screwed am I? No matter how well we do, we cannot get honors for 3rd year. This was a reactive policy to cut down on competition apparently. So, since almost every other medical school in the country will have students with honors 3rd year and I will have none, how bad is this? Do I make it up with glowing recommendation letters? A line in my deans letter stating we don't have honors 3rd year for our school?

As long as your school is making it very clear in your dean's letter that honors are not offered then you will be fine. Are they making your system completely P/F?

And yes great LOR's will still help a lot

 

[sylvanthus]

Nope, we oddly enough had honors for 1st and 2nd year, but will not for 3rd year.....Plus, we are still somehow ranked 1-75. Not even quartiles, but strict seat number. Not sure how this cuts down on competition, more like forces us into less competitive specialties, which is oddly enough the mission of the school.....Coincidence?


Also, this is not a well known school but a new one. So, not only the disadvantage of coming from an unknown school, but now no honors for 3rd year. Hello family medicine residency in detroit!

 

[WellWornLad]

Residency directors will just be looking more closely at your Step 1 score and letters of recommendation. Not a big deal.

I love how confident you are that you would've honored your entire 3rd year, however. At least you won't have to see that bubble burst...

 

[womp]

If you go to a top school then it's not too bad. If you go to a middle of the pack school and you're trying to get out of your state, then you better do a lot of away rotations and impress them.

Having no grades puts even more pressure on you to do well on Step 1 and 2.

 

[sylvanthus]

Residency directors will just be looking more closely at your Step 1 score and letters of recommendation. Not a big deal.

I love how confident you are that you would've honored your entire 3rd year, however. At least you won't have to see that bubble burst...

Learn to read, I never said I would honor my entire 3rd year......

 

[deuce924]

To the OP, you might try taming down your defensiveness and you might get some actual answers to your question.

I would actually like it if my school went to pass/fail for 3rd year clerkships. The grading is too subjective and unpredictable. I assume your school will make mention of this grading policy when sending out your grades to programs. Also I think Program Director's will just use other parts of your application includin your PS, LORs, and your STEP scores. Good luck with 3rd year.

 

[2012mdc]

Nope, we oddly enough had honors for 1st and 2nd year, but will not for 3rd year.....Plus, we are still somehow ranked 1-75. Not even quartiles, but strict seat number. Not sure how this cuts down on competition, more like forces us into less competitive specialties, which is oddly enough the mission of the school.....Coincidence?


Also, this is not a well known school but a new one. So, not only the disadvantage of coming from an unknown school, but now no honors for 3rd year. Hello family medicine residency in detroit!

You need to relax. PD's will see that you are P/F for 3rd year and will simply look at LOR's to see how you did and then focus on Step 1 and other stuff.

This could be an advantage to you. Without having to worry about doing well on the shelf, you can spend more time/effort doing well clinically for the attendings that you click with that will write letters for you. You can end up with very strong letters if you put the effort in and you will come off as a honors student in your letters.

Just do well. The definition/requirements may have changed but as long as you adjust and do well you will be fine.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

Your dean's letter will still have clinical comments from 3rd year, so I would think programs could evaluate you that way. That stuff is probably more important than your grade because grades are usually largely about shelf performance. Since they already have your step 1 and likely step 2 scores on application, I don't know what shelf scores would add.

Honestly, it sounds like a good idea to me because the whole subjective grading thing in 3rd year is weird. Now being a resident, I've got to say that most students are pretty much identical in their overall performance. How some get honors and some don't isn't so clear.

 

[CatFactorial]

Assume I've repeated the same answer.

OP, you're welcome.

 

[justaregularmed]

All this really does is make it messy to measure between fellow classmates and if you have AOA (sounds like probably not) that'll carry more weight. Otherwise really business as usual.

 

[WellWornLad]

Learn to read, I never said I would honor my entire 3rd year......

I'll "learn to read" a little later, after I've brushed up on hyperbole.

The implication of your post is that you've been "screwed" out of hypothetical honors. I'm just suggesting that perhaps you (like 90% of med students) might be better off without that distinction. If you're as high-strung as you come off on this thread, you might be better off without that pressure.

 

[justaregularmed]

I'll "learn to read" a little later, after I've brushed up on hyperbole.

The implication of your post is that you've been "screwed" out of hypothetical honors. I'm just suggesting that perhaps you (like 90% of med students) might be better off without that distinction. If you're as high-strung as you come off on this thread, you might be better off without that pressure.

lol

 

[jdh71]

"honors" is garbage and they should get rid of it - there is no standardization and it's largely a popularity contest when subjective clinical scores are factored in

more objective and standard scores should be used, such as national shelf examination percentiles and step 2

 

[squareknot]

Assuming that you will be taking shelf exams for each rotation, will your scores be used for ranking, even though you will get a "pass"? There def are schools that are strict P/F, but there are also plenty that are "P/F" but have a hidden rank list for the MSPE. So, programs may weigh your rank more heavily. Just a guess.

 

[RapplixGmed]

If you're a new school, I'd say its even better. Think about it this way: at a new school the clinicians you will be dealing with will have no experience with what an "honors" student is according to the policies of the school (some schools are <10% honors in 3rd year while others are >40% so even these standards change a lot) so the grading will be even more subjective. It would have probably boiled down to whether you brought in doughnuts on the last day of the rotation.

Who knows you might not have gotten any honors anyways, so you wouldn't have gotten "cheated" out of anything. If anything, this is a relatively neutral decision that helps the weaker students a lot more than it hurts the top students.

As our IM clerkship director told us about grading: Welcome to the real world, deal with it.

 

[jdh71]

Assuming that you will be taking shelf exams for each rotation, will your scores be used for ranking, even though you will get a "pass"? There def are schools that are strict P/F, but there are also plenty that are "P/F" but have a hidden rank list for the MSPE. So, programs may weigh your rank more heavily. Just a guess.

I have zero clue why any medical would not have a shelf exam for every single major rotation.

• If you're a surgery PD, you simply make your way to that section of the dean's letter and notice the high (or low) national percentile on the shelf
• ?????
• Profit!!!

Overall rank could still be done based an averages of the two digit scores given with each shelf exam. Then everyone is the same. Though, this would make class rank much less important and it shouldn't be that important, because it you simply cannot make cross school comparisons like that because different tiers of schools take different caliber of students. The great equalizer would be that national percentile rank.

 

[MedStudentWanna]

The implication of your post is that you've been "screwed" out of hypothetical honors.

Yes, but the poster never claimed that he'd honor all of third year. I don't think it's out of line to believe that you'll work your ass off to honor the specialty you want to go into. If I knew I was set on being a surgeon, I'd do anything in my power to honor my surgery rotation. The OP is venting that it doesn't matter how hard he works on the rotation, there is no honor. Nowhere did he imply that he'd honor the whole year.

 

[MedStudentWanna]

Are there schools that don't have shelf exams for every rotation?

 

[WellWornLad]

Yes, but the poster never claimed that he'd honor all of third year. I don't think it's out of line to believe that you'll work your ass off to honor the specialty you want to go into. If I knew I was set on being a surgeon, I'd do anything in my power to honor my surgery rotation. The OP is venting that it doesn't matter how hard he works on the rotation, there is no honor. Nowhere did he imply that he'd honor the whole year.

Thanks for clearing that up. Again, I was being hyperbolic, but the point remains the same. The vast majority of med students don't honor 3rd year clerkships (unless there is rampant grade inflation) and grading is terribly subjective, so the assumption that taking away honors is a bad thing may be somewhat optimistic, even arrogant.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

I have zero clue why any medical would not have a shelf exam for every single major rotation.

• If you're a surgery PD, you simply make your way to that section of the dean's letter and notice the high (or low) national percentile on the shelf
• ?????
• Profit!!!

Overall rank could still be done based an averages of the two digit scores given with each shelf exam. Then everyone is the same. Though, this would make class rank much less important and it shouldn't be that important, because it you simply cannot make cross school comparisons like that because different tiers of schools take different caliber of students. The great equalizer would be that national percentile rank.

We used shelfs for most of our rotations, but I don't think our scores were reported on our dean's letter anyway. Instead, they were just calculated into your overall grade. With us, too, they were heavily curved and overall not worth that much.

I agree, though, that using objective scores is probably a good thing. As mentioned above, you've already got all the comments in the dean's letter and letters for the subjective stuff. The whole assigning a grade based on subjective stuff is really hard. As interns, we get to grade the medical students on our rotation, and there are 50 kajillion different possible scores, making it pretty much impossible to do in any fair type of way. Some students are awesome, most are pretty OK and a few aren't so hot. Putting that into a grading scoring system is hard.

 

[Deferoxamine]

No Honors for 3rd year? Ridiculous. Unless you are at literally one of the best medical schools in the country.

 

[Mattchiavelli]

Are there schools that don't have shelf exams for every rotation?

Our school has shelves in all 3rd year rotations, save for Neurology which does a homegrown exam. One set of students a year gets a shelf to make sure students aren't getting the shaft education-wise.

 

[Law2Doc]

Your dean's letter will still have clinical comments from 3rd year, so I would think programs could evaluate you that way. ...

Agree. Lots of med schools do grading differently -- different hurdles for honors, different emphasis on things like the shelf, some still use letter grades. Since there are so many variations, most PDs I know simply use the evals and (where available) class rank and ignore the grades. If you get glowing evals and have a solid step 1, that's all you need even for the most competitive fields.

 

[username456789]

Agree. Lots of med schools do grading differently -- different hurdles for honors, different emphasis on things like the shelf, some still use letter grades. Since there are so many variations, most PDs I know simply use the evals and (where available) class rank and ignore the grades. If you get glowing evals and have a solid step 1, that's all you need even for the most competitive fields.

I hope that's the case, because my school is very stingy with clinical honors, although I have got some very excellent evals during my third year.

 

[Law2Doc]

I hope that's the case, because my school is very stingy with clinical honors, although I have got some very excellent evals during my third year.

You'll be fine.

 

[sylvanthus]

This whole situation is extremely frustrating to me. While I should be excited to enter 3rd year and explore all the specialities, instead I feel limited already. I feel like the most competitive specialities are out before I even begin. Not sure what to do about it as it makes me feel extremely frustrated and helpless. I know people will jump on me and tell me to suck it up and deal with it and that I am overreacting etc. But, that doesn't change the fact that this situation really seems to be a hindrance in my mind. Everything I read (the NRMP match criteria, Rules of the Road for EM, etc etc) points toward clerkship grades as one of the most important selection criteria.



Anyway, done ranting.

 

[Roberie]

This whole situation is extremely frustrating to me. While I should be excited to enter 3rd year and explore all the specialities, instead I feel limited already. I feel like the most competitive specialities are out before I even begin. Not sure what to do about it as it makes me feel extremely frustrated and helpless. I know people will jump on me and tell me to suck it up and deal with it and that I am overreacting etc. But, that doesn't change the fact that this situation really seems to be a hindrance in my mind. Everything I read (the NRMP match criteria, Rules of the Road for EM, etc etc) points toward clerkship grades as one of the most important selection criteria.



Anyway, done ranting.

I know this won't assuage your anxiety, but it seems residency programs would just have to rely on the rest of your application to make a decision. This seems no different than comparing students from Pass/Fail schools to those with traditional grading criteria.

Not earning honors =/= School not giving honors

 

[Doctor Bagel]

This whole situation is extremely frustrating to me. While I should be excited to enter 3rd year and explore all the specialities, instead I feel limited already. I feel like the most competitive specialities are out before I even begin. Not sure what to do about it as it makes me feel extremely frustrated and helpless. I know people will jump on me and tell me to suck it up and deal with it and that I am overreacting etc. But, that doesn't change the fact that this situation really seems to be a hindrance in my mind. Everything I read (the NRMP match criteria, Rules of the Road for EM, etc etc) points toward clerkship grades as one of the most important selection criteria.



Anyway, done ranting.

I honestly doubt this would close doors for you to match into a competitive specialty. You'll still have things like Step 1, research, letters, clinical eval comments, etc.. to make you competitive. I don't think programs would hold it against you that grades weren't given for third year. Instead, they'll look at the other parts of your application to see if they're solid. So, yeah, I can see why it's frustrating, but I also think you're catastrophizing just a little about the effects of this change on your future.

 

[Dwindlin]

My school doesn't do honors in 3rd year. My classmates do just fine each year in the match.