Schools with true P/F system (no internal ranking) for years 1 & 2

[AnesthesiaMD]

Michigan State University is P/F for the first 2 years.

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[radi0headfan]

You stole the words right out of my fingertips. Thanks.

Np!

 

[CCLCMer]

P/F is really awesome. I can't even imagine how much more stressful med school would be if we had grades to worry about too.

 

[Virgil]

P/F is really awesome. I can't even imagine how much more stressful med school would be if we had grades to worry about too.

Are there any ramifications when CCLC students try to match into competitive residencies?

Also, I find it hard to believe that the top and the bottom of the class are COMPLETELY equal with exception to their board scores/recommendations or interviews. And how do they choose who gets to be in AOA? Please enlighten me.

 

[CCLCMer]

Are there any ramifications when CCLC students try to match into competitive residencies?

The first class graduates next year, so we'll find out.

Also, I find it hard to believe that the top and the bottom of the class are COMPLETELY equal with exception to their board scores/recommendations or interviews. And how do they choose who gets to be in AOA? Please enlighten me.

There are only 32 of us, so the top 10% would be three people. So there isn't any AOA here. All joking aside, I don't know how you could determine who was at the top of the class or the bottom even if you wanted to, because we don't have any tests either. What objective basis could they possibly rank us on?

 

[Da Moz]

i'm sure harvard and yale med school grads have a tough time getting residencies.

The OPPOSITE is true, which is one of the reasons I chose Yale over UCLA. My uncle was Yale med in '99 - matched #1 with each of his top 3 choices (residency programs are not supposed to give med students info on where they rank in the matching, but they do!). He did his residency at Harvard, and he said most of his Yale class got one of their top 3 choices. The matching at Yale has been one of the highest in the country.

 

[radi0headfan]

I'm compiling a list of allopathic schools which are strictly P/F (with absolutely no internal ranking) for years 1 and 2. So far I have

1. Pritzker
2. Yale

Do you know of any others?

here's the site w/ all your answers:

http://services.aamc.org/currdir/section1/grading1.cfm

 

[radi0headfan]

and here's the list:

http://services.aamc.org/currdir/section1/grading1.cfm

Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University
Boonshoft School of Medicine at Wright State University
Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Harvard Medical School
Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California
Loma Linda University School of Medicine
Mayo Medical School
McGill University Faculty of Medicine
Memorial University of Newfoundland Faculty of Medicine
Mercer University School of Medicine
Morehouse School of Medicine
Mount Sinai School of Medicine of New York University
New York University School of Medicine
Northern Ontario School of Medicine
Northwestern University, The Feinberg School of Medicine
Southern Illinois University School of Medicine
Stanford University School of Medicine
UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
University of Alabama School of Medicine
University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine
University of California, Davis, School of Medicine
University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine
University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine
University of Connecticut School of Medicine
University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine
University of Kentucky College of Medicine
University of Manitoba Faculty of Medicine
University of Massachusetts Medical School
University of Michigan Medical School
University of Minnesota Medical School
University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine
University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine
University of Utah School of Medicine
University of Virginia School of Medicine
University of Washington School of Medicine
Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine

 

[radi0headfan]

whoops! ..didnt realize this post was from a long time ago...one that i already posted in

 

[JHopRevisit]

:cough:
Hopkins, of course, loves to pit its students against eachother.

*Sigh.* Ok, whatever, I kind of get tired of adressing that stereotype.

Have you ever been here? I really encourage students to apply broadly, then visit schools in order to get a real sense of the atmosphere there rather than relying on things posted on SDN. "SDN consensus" was wrong for a number of schools, not just Hopkins, IMHO.

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I don't think the school keeps a ranking (although we obviously wouldn't know about it if they did) and our ranks don't appear on our Dean's letter, etc.

Just like other schools, we have our competitive students, our non-competitive students, our students who want to be dermatologists, our students who just want to survive the next exam, etc. Competitive nature isn't really about the school, its about you, and whether you give a damn.

**Ooops, sorry to help in reviving this old thread, I just searched "Hopkins" to see if anyone had posted revisit questions and didn't realize.**

PS That's not to say I wouldn't prefer P/F. You'll match based on your clinical years performance and board scores, you'll be fine without grades. But if you have "grades," it's actually not that big of a deal.

 

[yale11]

here's the scoop:
MS1-2: p/f, totally anonymous, online exams; no pop quizzes or homework or whatever
MS3-4: "graded" with most students getting high honors; mandatory but still anonymous exams at the end of the clerkships that do not count towards the grade
rank: there is absolutely no rank

it is my understanding that yale is the only school in the country that actually does not keep track of their students' grades at all for MS1-2 and also the only school that never creates or provides a class rank or "gpa" to residency directors. there are "grades" in the clinical years but as this information is not conveyed to residency directors it is not relevant. aoa does not exist. there are internal yale awards given out, but these are only announced at graduation (i.e. not on your residency resume) i have heard rumors that stanford does not rank but i don't go to school there...

 

[loomis]

Stanford is Pass/Fail all 4 years...including clinics (although there are "key" words in the evals...like excellent/outstanding/very good, etc....so i don't think it's "purely" pass/fail).

i was really worried being pass fail would come back to bite me when applying to residencies...many of the residents at stanford who did not go to stanford would make fun of us med students on clinics being "spoiled". however, i was stunned by how well our class matched (80% #1 choice, top 3 hospitals: harvard bwh/mgh, ucsf, stanford, over 90% to top 3). on the interview trail, several interviewers would poke fun at me for being from stanford since i "had it so good", but these people would also later contact me to followup on my interest with the program. though this is old (for the class of 2007), that year we also had the highest boards in the country (237....google to get the reference). it seems that the pass/fail concept seems to work....at least at the graduate level.

i have not been to other med schools so can't say and it seems like most people i meet are pretty happy in whatever med school they are at. but i can honestly say that i have enjoyed med school as much as i enjoyed college (in terms of learning new things, having fun, travelling). and i owe a tremendous amount of that to the lack of pressure from a P/F system. i took off about 7 years before going back to med school and was terrified about the stereotypes of how crazy school was. i was pleasantly surprised. you will have a great time!!! at this stage of the game, it's about self-motivation!best of luck

 

[taponthecloud]

here's the scoop:
MS1-2: p/f, totally anonymous, online exams; no pop quizzes or homework or whatever
MS3-4: "graded" with most students getting high honors; mandatory but still anonymous exams at the end of the clerkships that do not count towards the grade
rank: there is absolutely no rank

it is my understanding that yale is the only school in the country that actually does not keep track of their students' grades at all for MS1-2 and also the only school that never creates or provides a class rank or "gpa" to residency directors. there are "grades" in the clinical years but as this information is not conveyed to residency directors it is not relevant. aoa does not exist. there are internal yale awards given out, but these are only announced at graduation (i.e. not on your residency resume) i have heard rumors that stanford does not rank but i don't go to school there...

There's an AOA chapter at Yale Sch Med. Established 1920.

http://www.alphaomegaalpha.org/PDFs/ChapterInfo/ActiveChapters.pdf

 

[JHopRevisit]

IMHO, grading systems are all much ado about nothing. If you care to compare yourself with classmates, you'll find ways, no matter what school you're at. I'm sure a competitive student at a P/F school will compare their extracurricular achievements or how much professors like them. And its up to you to tune them out and do your own thing.

Yes, at first being graded gave me a little more anxiety than a student at a P/F school probably had. But there are so many exams in med school that a month or two in it really faded into the background, and I got back to just focusing on myself and how I learn the material, and my classmates did the same.

Obviously I've never gone to school at Yale, but I think that if their reputation is true, its because of self-selection. Non-competitive students don't care to compare, and maybe the non-competitve reputation draws more such students to Yale. Don't know if that's true, the Yale students can comment, but I think the best thing is for prospective students to try to get a feel for themselves on interview days and revisit days, rather than judge curricula or who has AOA or not.

OK, I'm out, it's so easy to get sucked into threads on SDN.

 

[notdeadyet]

IMHO, grading systems are all much ado about nothing.

I do find it interesting that when talk comes to grading systems, folks at Pass/Fail schools usually claim that they love it and can't imagine doing it any other way, and folks at Grade schools usually say it doesn't matter.

 

[pntgrd]

Both UCLA and Stanford are 4 years of P/F and they seem to do very well in matching.

 

[JHopRevisit]

I do find it interesting that when talk comes to grading systems, folks at Pass/Fail schools usually claim that they love it and can't imagine doing it any other way, and folks at Grade schools usually say it doesn't matter.

Probably self-selection again. It didn't matter to me, that's why I picked Hopkins. It mattered to someone else, that's why they picked Yale.

 

[MichaelG17]

I'm 99% sure Michigan State College of Human Medicine is P/F

 

[notdeadyet]

Probably self-selection again. It didn't matter to me, that's why I picked Hopkins. It mattered to someone else, that's why they picked Yale.

Actually, that doesn't hold true. Someone that cared about P/F would self-select to a P/F school, but someone who didn't care would go to either.

So folks at both P/F and Grade schools would consist of those with a preference as well as those ambivalent. But after attending med school for a while, it seems as if more at Grade schools are ambivalent but many more at P/F schools feel strongly in favor of their grading system. Interesting.

 

[JHopRevisit]

Actually, that doesn't hold true. Someone that cared about P/F would self-select to a P/F school, but someone who didn't care would go to either.

So folks at both P/F and Grade schools would consist of those with a preference as well as those ambivalent. But after attending med school for a while, it seems as if more at Grade schools are ambivalent but many more at P/F schools feel strongly in favor of their grading system. Interesting.

Perhaps, if you were certain that everyone at a P/F school prefers their system and everyone at a grading schools is ambivalent. Isn't more likely that you've just run into a few more more ambivalent people from grading schools, which makes total sense, and your recall bias (I just took epi, and they made me very paranoid abous biases ) is making it seem absolute?

Anyway, this is a silly discussion I think that I'm only engaging in because I have a test tomm and don't want to study (procrastinating on SDN, like the good 'ol days). I'm sure you're right and there's other things going on as well. My only point was I think there's better ways to judge a school, including the competitive nature of a school, than the grading system, yet there's a lot of discussion and hand-wringing associated with it.

 

[notdeadyet]

Perhaps, if you were certain that everyone at a P/F school prefers their system and everyone at a grading schools is ambivalent. Isn't more likely that you've just run into a few more more ambivalent people from grading schools, which makes total sense, and your recall bias (I just took epi, and they made me very paranoid abous biases ) is making it seem absolute?

Oh, I'm not looking to publish anything here. But it's been more than just a sample of one or two.

It's just a trend I've noticed from talking to lots of med students at various schools and from years of discussion on SDN. I don't know that I've met a single student at a P/F school who hates the system, but I know lots at Grade schools that do. And I know a hell of a lot of folks at P/F schools who love it and have only met a very small handful of folks at Grade schools who've said the same.

I'm open to change my mind on this if I see the trend change, but I'm not going to hold my breath. More and more schools have been moving from Grades to P/F systems for the non-clinical years and I don't know of many (any?) who've moved from P/F to Grades.

I think it will be a moot point pretty soon. Within 5-10 years, unless something radically changes, I think that schools that use Grades for the nonclinical years will be a fairly small minority. Between the combination of student satisfaction, med school grading (or lack therof) migration, and even things like the Step 1 moving to Pass/Fail, I think the signs are roadmap is laid out pretty clearly.

I wouldn't use grade system as a major determinant for school choice necessarily, but it has a lot more impact on your life and learning environment than odd things like faculty-student ratio and other metrics that go into school rankings.

btw- I'm with you; test tomorrow morning. Used to find the reproductive system pretty damn interesting before medical school.

 

[Leiflet]

The OPPOSITE is true, which is one of the reasons I chose Yale over UCLA. My uncle was Yale med in '99 - matched #1 with each of his top 3 choices (residency programs are not supposed to give med students info on where they rank in the matching, but they do!). He did his residency at Harvard, and he said most of his Yale class got one of their top 3 choices. The matching at Yale has been one of the highest in the country.

this is a prime example of why pre-meds should be encouraged to major
outside the sciences... so they can recognize verbal irony.

btw... here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony#Verbal_irony.2C_including_sarcasm

 

[JHopRevisit]

and even things like the Step 1 moving to Pass/Fail, I think the signs are roadmap is laid out pretty clearly.

I hope this happens, but I saw a survey pretty recently that said most med students opposed that change! You wanna talk about competitiveness...

(and I don't have that survey available any more, but I'm pretty sure it's true, if anyonce can help me out with a link I'd appreciate it)

I wouldn't use grade system as a major determinant for school choice necessarily, but it has a lot more impact on your life and learning environment than odd things like faculty-student ratio and other metrics that go into school rankings.

Fair enough.

 

[notdeadyet]

I hope this happens, but I saw a survey pretty recently that said most med students opposed that change! You wanna talk about competitiveness...

I don't like grades in medical school for the preclinical years, but I would actually have a problem with moving the Step 1 to P/F for reasons why I woudln't want to see the MCAT go away.

Grades don't tell me a lot about an individual applicant. A B from JHU is probably a lot different from a B from Saint Hopeful U. But it's hard to juggle the reputations of 130 some odd schools and how hard professors at each grade and what a particular year's talent pool is like.

Step 1 is an equalizer. You can get great grades in medical school which proves that you did great on whatever yardstick you used to measure you. But the Step 1 tells me how well you learned the material as compared with the rest of the country.

So I don't think it's a matter of competitiveness. I'm the least competitve guy but I do want the opportunity to display that I've learned my material. Grades from an individual course and an individual school don't do that, but the Step 1 does.

I've never seen the survey, but I'd be curious to see. Do you know if students overwhelmingly supported keeping the Step 1 as graded/quantitative? It's interesting. I would have thought more people would have been pro P/F Step 1 just to remove the stress of an MCAT with steroids looming on their horizon.

(by the way, feel free to remind me I said this when I start b!tching and moaning about the study I'm going through as I prepare for that...)

Good luck on your test...

 

[Instatewaiter]

I do find it interesting that when talk comes to grading systems, folks at Pass/Fail schools usually claim that they love it and can't imagine doing it any other way, and folks at Grade schools usually say it doesn't matter.

I am at a graded school, just finishing up my second year. Honestly, if I knew that everything was P/F I probably wouldnt have put in as much effort as I did, especially if I knew that there were no internal rankings.

So just based on my personality, I think the graded system has worked best for me.

 

[notdeadyet]

I am at a graded school, just finishing up my second year. Honestly, if I knew that everything was P/F I probably wouldnt have put in as much effort as I did, especially if I knew that there were no internal rankings.

Good stuff. I'm glad it worked out for you. I can see the point that if you might have a tendency to slack, a Grade school might be a good choice just to crack the whip so that you don't get off track. But if you don't have that tendency, it's a nice feeling to be able to focus on learning the professor's particular material to pass and focus most of your efforts on the material as it pertains to the boards, which will have a bigger impact on your future.

But yours is a great example. Some folks are more suited to one system than the other. Good advice is to figure out which system you are more suited to and choose accordingly. You might have problems preparing well for the boards by going to a P/F school and I would probably have trouble preparing for the boards by going to a Grade schoo.

 

[mediocriskid]

At Yale, not only is it pass fail, but test-taking is OPTIONAL and ANONYMOUS!!! if you are doing poorly in your own self examination, you are expected to seek help. this system has been around since like the 1930s.

Apparently you ski a lot too in the winter at Yale