Someone tell me it'll be ok..

[PL198]

Not sure what you mean. Anyone who exceeds the score cutoff gets an A and the cutoff is never adjusted upward. Like I said, there's no curving to limit the number of A's so your grades are not affected by other people's performance.

Performance is still always relative. Like it or not, letter grades have relative meanings. Just because there isn't any cutoff adjustment one year, doesn't mean the class wouldn't be made harder the next. Everyone can't get a 100. There has to be stratification of students.

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[DermViser]

Not sure what you mean. Anyone who exceeds the score cutoff gets an A and the cutoff is never adjusted upward. Like I said, there's no curving to limit the number of A's so your grades are not affected by other people's performance.

You actually think people will be less stressed and less competitive with letter grades. vs "true" P/F?

Never said the rep is dead, I said it was out of date.

 

[DermViser]

Performance is still always relative. Like it or not, letter grades have relative meanings. Just because there isn't any cutoff adjustment one year, doesn't mean the class wouldn't be made harder the next. Everyone can't get a 100. There has to be stratification of students.

Thank you. Never have understood the defending of letter grades and H/HP/SP/MP/F (same thing) by students and say oh there's no competition and everyone works with eachother bc theoretically everyone can get an "A". #1 - that NEVER happens and #2 - if it did to where everyone was doing well, the professor would make the next test very hard to better stratify out grades. They must really think people are fools to believe that.

 

[ChEMD]

there have been no changes in reputation. so it is still " in date"

What he's saying is the reputation is based on experiences people had X number of years ago, and isn't an accurate representation of the school in its present form, so it is "out of date". However, it isn't dead, because people still propagate this old reputation largely from what they've read on the internet or have heard from people that attended the school in its previous form.

It really goes for any school, if you didn't actually attend it yourself, you really have no grounds to talk about how the school operates or what it's student body is like. Just because you talk to a disgruntled student at a particular school doesn't mean that everyone there has the same experience.

 

[PL198]

All achievement in life is relative. Without relative standards, no one has anything to base their achievement on. Running a 4 min mile isn't cool because of 4 minutes arbitrarily sounding good, it's because so few people are able to do so. I never get the people that are like " I'm not competing with someone else, I'm just trying to be the best I can be." well yeah and that's great, but you're basing your standards for achievement on the commonly accepted norms for performance. Which is essentially the definition of competition.

 

[jturkel]

What he's saying is the reputation is based on experiences people had X number of years ago, and isn't an accurate representation of the school in its present form, so it is "out of date". However, it isn't dead, because people still propagate this old reputation largely from what they've read on the internet or have heard from people that attended the school in its previous form.

It really goes for any school, if you didn't actually attend it yourself, you really have no grounds to talk about how the school operates or what it's student body is like. Just because you talk to a disgruntled student at a particular school doesn't mean that everyone there has the same experience.

I know what he's saying. I have co-residents and friends elsewhere who just graduated from there there. Not being propagated. Still (again) "in date". Thanks though.

 

[DermViser]

What he's saying is the reputation is based on experiences people had X number of years ago, and isn't an accurate representation of the school in its present form, so it is "out of date". However, it isn't dead, because people still propagate this old reputation largely from what they've read on the internet or have heard from people that attended the school in its previous form.

It really goes for any school, if you didn't actually attend it yourself, you really have no grounds to talk about how the school operates or what it's student body is like. Just because you talk to a disgruntled student at a particular school doesn't mean that everyone there has the same experience.

Except @jturkel said, "cant begin to list the number of attendings, residents, and med students that i've interviewed/worked with that have exerperienced/said/heard things at/about the program." At least on SDN if you use the Search function, Baylor never has that type of culture, while apparently UTSW is well known to have it.

 

[DermViser]

I know what he's saying. I have co-residents and friends elsewhere who just graduated from there there. Not being propagated. Still (again) "in date". Thanks though.

They're probably just "disgruntled".

 

[ChEMD]

I know what he's saying. I have co-residents and friends elsewhere who just graduated from there there. Not being propagated. Still (again) "in date". Thanks though.

Lol alright, well I can't argue with "my friend told me so it must be universally true" logic, so you win.

 

[jturkel]

Lol alright, well I can't argue with "my friend told me so it must be universally true" logic, so you win.

friend(s), colleague(s) (resident(s), fellow(s)), attending(s)......those add up. i'm not gonna debate it further b/c there is nothing to debate. cheers.

 

[DermViser]

Lol alright, well I can't argue with "my friend told me so it must be universally true" logic, so you win.

It's like you're not even listening.

 

[ChEMD]

friend(s), colleague(s) (resident(s), fellow(s)), attending(s)......those add up. i'm not gonna debate it further b/c there is nothing to debate. cheers.

I already said you win.

 

[SBR249]

there have been no changes in reputation. so it is still " in date"

IF there had been changes then it wouldn't be "out of date"...by your logic any circulating reputation is always accurate merely because it's circulating. You cannot assume that updates to reputations are always instantaneous, this becomes more and more true the higher up you go as updates filter upwards.

friend(s), colleague(s) (resident(s), fellow(s)), attending(s)......those add up. i'm not gonna debate it further b/c there is nothing to debate. cheers.

UTSW has 230 students per class. You probably would've had to talk to a fair number to figure out what the "culture" of the place is. Also, those who've just graduated went through the preclinical curriculum 4 years ago and there have been many changes since then.

Performance is still always relative. Like it or not, letter grades have relative meanings. Just because there isn't any cutoff adjustment one year, doesn't mean the class wouldn't be made harder the next. Everyone can't get a 100. There has to be stratification of students.

By your logic, the class averages would have a noticeable downward trend or an up-down-up-down trend year on year. Based on personal knowledge that isn't generally the case. I'm not sure what you think I'm implying but it definitely isn't that letter grades are meaningless.

You actually think people will be less stressed and less competitive with letter grades. vs "true" P/F?

Where did I say that? I have always said that UTSW would be better off moving to a "true" P/F [emphasis not mine] and I've always told the administration that. What I am saying is that the current system is not as "competitive" as people like to think it is. There is only truly a competition when it's a zero sum game meaning others' performance directly impacts your relative results. I just don't see that. As for stress...see below.

No, in fact I've never mentioned that it's less stress. In fact, what I do see and what I think is that letter grades increase stress. But a stressed med school is not a gunner. It's certainly not a happy student by any stretch of the imagination, but I think to call everyone who works hard or is stressed a "gunner" is over the top. I mean, if that's the case, what do we call every single med student who takes the USMLE? A "gunner"? Perhaps "gunner" is a very loosely used term, but my impression is always that a gunner is someone who seeks to advance to the detriment of others. Otherwise, I'd just say the person works hard or has high expectations.

I'll never understand the black and white thinking that goes on here where a school is either all good or all bad and good = rainbows, puppies, unicorns, and endless coddling and bad = stress, competition, gunners, cultural malignancy, etc. No. UTSW isn't a perfect school and I'll readily admit we will never win awards for having happy students, but by the same token, I don't think that automatically defines us as malignant, gunner, or cutthroat.

Thank you. Never have understood the defending of letter grades and H/HP/SP/MP/F (same thing) by students and say oh there's no competition and everyone works with eachother bc theoretically everyone can get an "A". #1 - that NEVER happens and #2 - if it did to where everyone was doing well, the professor would make the next test very hard to better stratify out grades. They must really think people are fools to believe that.

To address point #1, a level playing field does not automatically mean everyone comes out with the same result. However, the understanding that the way the system is set up will not prejudice the performance of one student vs. another can cut down the competition by a lot. Your logic is puzzling in that you think just because it's an impossibility that everyone gets the same result (which is impossible), the system cannot be equitable in how it affects the final outcome and therefore the default assumption is there will be high levels of competition. The fact that not everyone gets an A has more to do with the fact that not everyone is at the same level and every one is different in terms of capability, willingness to work, and how good of a student they are. It's not as if I got an A which led to someone else missing out on an A. Even though the end result for both scenarios is that some people will have A's and some won't.

Regarding point #2, the assumption is that there is a quota or limit (soft or hard) on the number of good grades given out. My personal experiences do not corroborate that. For example, this past year, for quarter 2, about 36% A's, 47% B+/B's. For quarter 3, 47% A's, 41% B+/B's. For quarter 4, 60% A's, 37% B+/B's. If they were truly trying to stratify the students, they've done a terrible job as the number of students who made A/B went from 83% to 97% as the year progressed. At a finer level of detail, I've looked at class averages from exam to exam throughout the year and the trend do not match what you would expect if the professors were actively adjusting the content to keep the grade distribution constant.

So in the end, my point is that letter grades are not perfect. It does increase stress (given the personality of the average premed/med student, is that a surprise?) and that's what I don't like about it. I'm glad they are ditching it. However, it does not foster the unhealthy levels of competition that others think or assume it does and stress is not automatically coincident with gunnerism or cutthroat competition.

 

[DermViser]

IF there had been changes then it wouldn't be "out of date"...by your logic any circulating reputation is always accurate merely because it's circulating. You cannot assume that updates to reputations are always instantaneous, this becomes more and more true the higher up you go as updates filter upwards.

Read what jturkel wrote AGAIN. You can assess the culture of a medical institution pretty well by talking to med students, residents, and attendings who have gone or graduated from those institutions. Why you're not getting this I have yet to understand.

UTSW has 230 students per class. You probably would've had to talk to a fair number to figure out what the "culture" of the place is. Also, those who've just graduated went through the preclinical curriculum 4 years ago and there have been many changes since then.

So how many people (NNT) does he have to talk to? 150? 200? to figure out the culture? Yes, then please tell us what changes have taken place in the preclinical curriculum from 4 years ago.

By your logic, the class averages would have a noticeable downward trend or an up-down-up-down trend year on year. Based on personal knowledge that isn't generally the case. I'm not sure what you think I'm implying but it definitely isn't that letter grades are meaningless.

Again, I don't think you understand what @PL198 is getting at. Read what he said again.

Where did I say that? I have always said that UTSW would be better off moving to a "true" P/F [emphasis not mine] and I've always told the administration that. What I am saying is that the current system is not as "competitive" as people like to think it is. There is only truly a competition when it's a zero sum game meaning others' performance directly impacts your relative results. I just don't see that. As for stress...see below.

No, in fact I've never mentioned that it's less stress. In fact, what I do see and what I think is that letter grades increase stress. But a stressed med school is not a gunner. It's certainly not a happy student by any stretch of the imagination, but I think to call everyone who works hard or is stressed a "gunner" is over the top. I mean, if that's the case, what do we call every single med student who takes the USMLE? A "gunner"? Perhaps "gunner" is a very loosely used term, but my impression is always that a gunner is someone who seeks to advance to the detriment of others. Otherwise, I'd just say the person works hard or has high expectations.

I'll never understand the black and white thinking that goes on here where a school is either all good or all bad and good = rainbows, puppies, unicorns, and endless coddling and bad = stress, competition, gunners, cultural malignancy, etc. No. UTSW isn't a perfect school and I'll readily admit we will never win awards for having happy students, but by the same token, I don't think that automatically defines us as malignant, gunner, or cutthroat.

Again competition isn't just when "others' performance directly impacts your relative results." Letter grades automatically stratify people esp. when it's A/B+/B/C/D/F. If you think a highly stressed med school class doesn't breed a gunner, then I don't know what to tell you. You realize everyone has to take the USMLE to be licensed right? Taking the exam doesn't make u a gunner. If you don't feel that "bad = stress, competition, gunners, cultural malignancy, etc." then they're no helping you. I'm glad you admit the underlined statement.

To address point #1, a level playing field does not automatically mean everyone comes out with the same result. However, the understanding that the way the system is set up will not prejudice the performance of one student vs. another can cut down the competition by a lot. Your logic is puzzling in that you think just because it's an impossibility that everyone gets the same result (which is impossible), the system cannot be equitable in how it affects the final outcome and therefore the default assumption is there will be high levels of competition. The fact that not everyone gets an A has more to do with the fact that not everyone is at the same level and every one is different in terms of capability, willingness to work, and how good of a student they are. It's not as if I got an A which led to someone else missing out on an A. Even though the end result for both scenarios is that some people will have A's and some won't.

Regarding point #2, the assumption is that there is a quota or limit (soft or hard) on the number of good grades given out. My personal experiences do not corroborate that. For example, this past year, for quarter 2, about 36% A's, 47% B+/B's. For quarter 3, 47% A's, 41% B+/B's. For quarter 4, 60% A's, 37% B+/B's. If they were truly trying to stratify the students, they've done a terrible job as the number of students who made A/B went from 83% to 97% as the year progressed. At a finer level of detail, I've looked at class averages from exam to exam throughout the year and the trend do not match what you would expect if the professors were actively adjusting the content to keep the grade distribution constant.

So in the end, my point is that letter grades are not perfect. It does increase stress (given the personality of the average premed/med student, is that a surprise?) and that's what I don't like about it. I'm glad they are ditching it. However, it does not foster the unhealthy levels of competition that others think or assume it does and stress is not automatically coincident with gunnerism or cutthroat competition.

TL;DR
If you think that a professor is completely happy with a majority getting A's and not having a proper distribution of grades, then you don't know medical school academics. It only took them decades to finally do it, and only bc they were probably losing people to better, more reputable places out of state (with true P/F grading) or Baylor (if they still choose in-state)

 

[PL198]

IF there had been changes then it wouldn't be "out of date"...by your logic any circulating reputation is always accurate merely because it's circulating. You cannot assume that updates to reputations are always instantaneous, this becomes more and more true the higher up you go as updates filter upwards.



UTSW has 230 students per class. You probably would've had to talk to a fair number to figure out what the "culture" of the place is. Also, those who've just graduated went through the preclinical curriculum 4 years ago and there have been many changes since then.



By your logic, the class averages would have a noticeable downward trend or an up-down-up-down trend year on year. Based on personal knowledge that isn't generally the case. I'm not sure what you think I'm implying but it definitely isn't that letter grades are meaningless.



Where did I say that? I have always said that UTSW would be better off moving to a "true" P/F [emphasis not mine] and I've always told the administration that. What I am saying is that the current system is not as "competitive" as people like to think it is. There is only truly a competition when it's a zero sum game meaning others' performance directly impacts your relative results. I just don't see that. As for stress...see below.

No, in fact I've never mentioned that it's less stress. In fact, what I do see and what I think is that letter grades increase stress. But a stressed med school is not a gunner. It's certainly not a happy student by any stretch of the imagination, but I think to call everyone who works hard or is stressed a "gunner" is over the top. I mean, if that's the case, what do we call every single med student who takes the USMLE? A "gunner"? Perhaps "gunner" is a very loosely used term, but my impression is always that a gunner is someone who seeks to advance to the detriment of others. Otherwise, I'd just say the person works hard or has high expectations.

I'll never understand the black and white thinking that goes on here where a school is either all good or all bad and good = rainbows, puppies, unicorns, and endless coddling and bad = stress, competition, gunners, cultural malignancy, etc. No. UTSW isn't a perfect school and I'll readily admit we will never win awards for having happy students, but by the same token, I don't think that automatically defines us as malignant, gunner, or cutthroat.



To address point #1, a level playing field does not automatically mean everyone comes out with the same result. However, the understanding that the way the system is set up will not prejudice the performance of one student vs. another can cut down the competition by a lot. Your logic is puzzling in that you think just because it's an impossibility that everyone gets the same result (which is impossible), the system cannot be equitable in how it affects the final outcome and therefore the default assumption is there will be high levels of competition. The fact that not everyone gets an A has more to do with the fact that not everyone is at the same level and every one is different in terms of capability, willingness to work, and how good of a student they are. It's not as if I got an A which led to someone else missing out on an A. Even though the end result for both scenarios is that some people will have A's and some won't.

Regarding point #2, the assumption is that there is a quota or limit (soft or hard) on the number of good grades given out. My personal experiences do not corroborate that. For example, this past year, for quarter 2, about 36% A's, 47% B+/B's. For quarter 3, 47% A's, 41% B+/B's. For quarter 4, 60% A's, 37% B+/B's. If they were truly trying to stratify the students, they've done a terrible job as the number of students who made A/B went from 83% to 97% as the year progressed. At a finer level of detail, I've looked at class averages from exam to exam throughout the year and the trend do not match what you would expect if the professors were actively adjusting the content to keep the grade distribution constant.

So in the end, my point is that letter grades are not perfect. It does increase stress (given the personality of the average premed/med student, is that a surprise?) and that's what I don't like about it. I'm glad they are ditching it. However, it does not foster the unhealthy levels of competition that others think or assume it does and stress is not automatically coincident with gunnerism or cutthroat competition.

no the average is going to stay relatively constant assuming the class adjusts in difficulty as resources and other advantages to learning content increase. Like step 1. If they were doing their system wisely, they would carefully adjust it so that the mean doesn't continually go up every year and make it harder and harder to stratify people. Due to intrinsic properties of large numbers, the relative decrease in difficulty to obtain a 225 is much more than the decrease to obtain a 250 or higher, more impressive scores than the mean unless you continually adjust the test so that the mean stays a constant value. as the numeric value of that mean increases, stratification becomes more and more difficult. Because of this, you have less and less stratification and the test becomes even worse at it's purpose- one of the different tools used to stratify students.

There's no point in giving 50 % of the class A's. It isn't about doing x amount of work or achieving x mark to get a grade, it's being in a certain percentile of performance relative to your peers which accompanies a grade. Any class where 50 % of the class gets A's is a joke. I mean it's just a fact of life. If we don't stratify, we have no way of ranking candidates. I'd much rather have stratification on academic issues like grades and step 1, rather than making it "which student kissed AMA and AMSA's *ss enough to get their preferred specialty?"

I'm not saying letter grades are stupid, or that true P/F is great, or anything regarding the efficacy of either grading system. It's just an important point that stratification is necessary. True P/F get around this by the fact that they already have stud students.

Gunning(actual gunning, like that can result in adverse treatment to patients) is horrible. I definitely am not advocating for that at all. However, we have to be open with the fact that everything in life is a competition. Everything is relative.

 

[DermViser]

no the average is going to stay relatively constant assuming the class adjusts in difficulty as resources and other advantages to learning content increase. Like step 1. If they were doing their system wisely, they would carefully adjust it so that the mean doesn't continually go up every year and make it harder and harder to stratify people. Due to intrinsic properties of large numbers, the relative decrease in difficulty to obtain a 225 is much more than the decrease to obtain a 250 or higher, more impressive scores than the mean unless you continually adjust the test so that the mean stays a constant value. as the numeric value of that mean increases, stratification becomes more and more difficult. Because of this, you have less and less stratification and the test becomes even worse at it's purpose- one of the different tools used to stratify students.

There's no point in giving 50 % of the class A's. It isn't about doing x amount of work or achieving x mark to get a grade, it's being in a certain percentile of performance relative to your peers which accompanies a grade. Any class where 50 % of the class gets A's is a joke. I mean it's just a fact of life. If we don't stratify, we have no way of ranking candidates. I'd much rather have stratification on academic issues like grades and step 1, rather than making it "which student kissed AMA and AMSA's *ss enough to get their preferred specialty?"

I'm not saying letter grades are stupid, or that true P/F is great, or anything regarding the efficacy of either grading system. It's just an important point that stratification is necessary. True P/F get around this by the fact that they already have stud students.

Gunning(actual gunning, like that can result in adverse treatment to patients) is horrible. I definitely am not advocating for that at all. However, we have to be open with the fact that everything in life is a competition. Everything is relative.

That and those schools realize that preclinical grades don't mean jack squat to residency program directors when it comes to selecting applicants, hence "true" P/F. And it is not just the top-tier medical schools that do this either.

 

[SBR249]

Read what jturkel wrote AGAIN. You can assess the culture of a medical institution pretty well by talking to med students, residents, and attendings who have gone or graduated from those institutions. Why you're not getting this I have yet to understand.


So how many people (NNT) does he have to talk to? 150? 200? to figure out the culture? Yes, then please tell us what changes have taken place in the preclinical curriculum from 4 years ago.


Again, I don't think you understand what @PL198 is getting at. Read what he said again.



Again competition isn't just when "others' performance directly impacts your relative results." Letter grades automatically stratify people esp. when it's A/B+/B/C/D/F. If you think a highly stressed med school class doesn't breed a gunner, then I don't know what to tell you. You realize everyone has to take the USMLE to be licensed right? Taking the exam doesn't make u a gunner. If you don't feel that "bad = stress, competition, gunners, cultural malignancy, etc." then they're no helping you. I'm glad you admit the underlined statement.



TL;DR
If you think that a professor is completely happy with a majority getting A's and not having a proper distribution of grades, then you don't know medical school academics. It only took them decades to finally do it, and only bc they were probably losing people to better, more reputable places out of state (with true P/F grading) or Baylor (if they still choose in-state)

No I'm NOT going to read something again when I understood it perfectly fine the first time. A reputation that hasn't changed much in decades is more like to be out of date than be "still current", anything that is up to date would show a history of continual adjustment and change. What changed from 4 years ago? We went from curving to not curving. When all of a sudden you no longer have a quota system on grades it makes a big difference. Yes, you can assess institutional culture by talking with people, however, we have no idea how many of what kind of people in which specialty the poster talked with. I'm sorry if I don't buy hearsay from someone about my OWN institution and experiences. And no, I don't think a slightly more stressful environment breeds gunners like a culture.

I see that I'm not going to change your mind and you are certainly not going to change my mind by preaching to me how the world is black and white so we'll just agree to disagree. Regardless, UTSW continues to be a med school that's well thought of by most people and like I said, I don't understand the trashing that you seem to love piling on it.

BTW: no the impetus was because it's now part of the requirement for continued accreditation by the LCME and it would have happened sooner however, if we didn't lose our curriculum reform committee faculty chair twice in the process dragging the process out. But thanks for assuming anyway.

no the average is going to stay relatively constant assuming the class adjusts in difficulty as resources and other advantages to learning content increase. Like step 1. If they were doing their system wisely, they would carefully adjust it so that the mean doesn't continually go up every year and make it harder and harder to stratify people. Due to intrinsic properties of large numbers, the relative decrease in difficulty to obtain a 225 is much more than the decrease to obtain a 250 or higher, more impressive scores than the mean unless you continually adjust the test so that the mean stays a constant value. as the numeric value of that mean increases, stratification becomes more and more difficult. Because of this, you have less and less stratification and the test becomes even worse at it's purpose- one of the different tools used to stratify students.

There's no point in giving 50 % of the class A's. It isn't about doing x amount of work or achieving x mark to get a grade, it's being in a certain percentile of performance relative to your peers which accompanies a grade. Any class where 50 % of the class gets A's is a joke. I mean it's just a fact of life. If we don't stratify, we have no way of ranking candidates. I'd much rather have stratification on academic issues like grades and step 1, rather than making it "which student kissed AMA and AMSA's *ss enough to get their preferred specialty?"

I'm not saying letter grades are stupid, or that true P/F is great, or anything regarding the efficacy of either grading system. It's just an important point that stratification is necessary. True P/F get around this by the fact that they already have stud students.

Gunning(actual gunning, like that can result in adverse treatment to patients) is horrible. I definitely am not advocating for that at all. However, we have to be open with the fact that everything in life is a competition. Everything is relative.

You are assuming that there's a large market for producing resources and study aids like for USMLE. That's not the case, this is a course taught by a med school with only about 230 students per year, there's no quantum leaps of improvement in preparation like with pathoma. I can say that the study aids that are common among the class tend to not vary a lot and those that are passed down are at least several years old. So no, I don't think quality of these aids has a big impact on year to year variation in grades.

And no, the average will not be constant, it would fluctuate in a predictable pattern in the scenario you described. Your hypothetical scenario was that too many people did well one year and then the next year the class is harder. So what you would see is a steady upward creep followed by a hard correction on year OR up-down-up-down variation but the key is that it would be cyclical as adjustments are made, the effect is demonstrated and further adjustment is made. It would be extremely difficult to proactively adjust so that the average is constant, especially in such a small student population. This isn't the USMLE where they have 20000K test-takers a year all taking the exam on different dates. This is 230 students taking the same exams at the same time in a one shot deal annually. Not as easy.

As for stratification, I'm not even sure why we are arguing about the merits of stratification. The facts are in the data and the fact is 50% of our class gets A's. Is it terrible for stratification? Yes. But so what? The whole point is that our curriculum is not as cutthroat as some people say it is and this is proof of that. If students are comforted by the fact that no one is trying to cap A's or make this the Hunger Games: Med School Edition, then I'd say that's a win, stratified or not. If you think our classes at UTSW are a joke, then I guess you are allowed to think that. Maybe next time you meet a UTSW student or alum you can tell them that their education is a joke because 50% of their class can get A's.

In any case, I'm not going to argue about stratification, I'm arguing that there is a lot of misconceptions out there about UTSW and a lot of assumptions and armchair theorists out there that are not backed up by actual data which I have seen (and experienced).

 

[PL198]

I said relatively constant. I mean the whole 50 % of the class thing defeats the purpose of A. All it tells me is that your professors aren't good at understanding and employing statistics.

 

[DermViser]

No I'm NOT going to read something again when I understood it perfectly fine the first time. A reputation that hasn't changed much in decades is more like to be out of date than be "still current", anything that is up to date would show a history of continual adjustment and change. What changed from 4 years ago? We went from curving to not curving. When all of a sudden you no longer have a quota system on grades it makes a big difference. Yes, you can assess institutional culture by talking with people, however, we have no idea how many of what kind of people in which specialty the poster talked with. I'm sorry if I don't buy hearsay from someone about my OWN institution and experiences.

I see that I'm not going to change your mind and you are certainly not going to change my mind by preaching to me how the world is black and white so we'll just agree to disagree. Regardless, UTSW continues to be a med school that's well thought of by most people and like I said, I don't understand the trashing that you seem to love piling on it.

No, actually you didn't understand it. jturkel was not referring at all to reputation passed down thru the decades.. He's talked with "attendings, residents, and med students that i've interviewed/worked with that have exerperienced/said/heard things at/about the program." It's entirely irrelevant what specialty those people ended up going to, in assessing institutional and student body culture.

Newsflash: Most medical schools don't put a quota system in the first place during the preclinical years and limit the number of "Honors" or "A" grades the class can get. No one said that UTSW is not well thought of, with respect to bringing in NIH money or other useless USWNR metrics. You yourself "readily admit we will never win awards for having happy students". Yup, that's the type of med school everyone wants to go to.

As a side note, I wouldn't mind being viewed by residency PDs as "hardened, seasoned" if it gives me a leg up.

Yup, no gunner mentality there.

 

[SBR249]

I said relatively constant. I mean the whole 50 % of the class thing defeats the purpose of A. All it tells me is that your professors aren't good at understanding and employing statistics.

All that tells me is that letter grades don't really matter and isn't doing a good job at stratification which is probably why the curriculum is transitioning to P/F. I mean there's only so many ways one can ask questions about sensitivity/specificity within the scope of medical education to stratify people without seeming petty. In any case, it just proves that having a letter grade system doesn't lead to the kind of culture that UTSW has a rep for.

No, actually you didn't understand it. @jturkel was not referring at all to reputation passed down thru the decades.. He's talked with "attendings, residents, and med students that i've interviewed/worked with that have exerperienced/said/heard things at/about the program." It's entirely irrelevant what specialty those people ended up going to, in assessing institutional and student body culture.

Newsflash: Most medical schools don't put a quota system in the first place during the preclinical years and limit the number of "Honors" or "A" grades the class can get. No one said that UTSW is not well thought of, with respect to bringing in NIH money or other useless USWNR metrics. You yourself "readily admit we will never win awards for having happy students". Yup, that's the type of med school everyone wants to go to.



Yup, no gunner mentality there.

And I wasn't referring to the reputation passed down through the decades either. If I go to talk with a 50y/o attending now about XX med school that he attended, I bet he'll have some great accurate insights about what's like there now right? My point is that many of these people are at stages so long past the preclinical curriculum that even if you talked with them NOW, their information would still be out of date. Specialty may be mostly irrelevant, but let's say you talked exclusively with derm residents. Are you telling me that you won't find a higher proportion of over-achievers or "gunners" or people who knew those kinds of people?

Now sure what's with the newsflash as I never said any med school set quotas or grade limits. Throughout this entire discussion that has always been purely associated with the hypothetical concept of "stratification". As for UTSW, yes, I will be brutally honest and admit we will never win awards for having happy students. But many med schools won't. That does not mean the UTSW students are unhappy. Perhaps I should have rephrased it as "we will never win awards for having the happiest students" to better reflect my meaning and intent. But in the end, I'd characterize many of my classmates as content and motivated. Any school has its upsides and its imperfections and UTSW is no exception, but it's not a school that drives students away either. Along with its well regarded reputation, UTSW also has one of the lowest tuition rates in the country and lowest debt burden among graduates. People may be drawn to flashy vague stuff like "P/F preclinical" (when you yourself admit preclinical grades are worth "jack squat") or "student happiness" and therapy dogs in the library or whatnot, but $$ still talks. $17000 a year for med school can be a quite powerful attraction, and I imagine with the new curriculum it'll be even better.

As for the gunner mentality, like I said, the perception is not something I created and in fact judging from my posts I'm against the unfair perceptions that UTSW engenders. But I'm certainly not going out of my way to refute this perception where my opinion is not solicited. I'd preferred to be judged by my merits, but we don't always get what we want. Given how competitive some residencies are, are you telling me that this mentality is uniquely prevalent among UTSW students? I certainly hope you aren't tell me that in order to not be a gunner, you have to not care about how to improve your chances at your desired residency or the factors involved?

 

[CherryRedDracul]

Grading systems are crazy. 90-85% people in a school I know get honors in their clinical years.

It's like ~5% at my school. Yeah, it's crazy enough that even our PDs don't like how it punishes students relative to other schools.

 

[DermViser]

And I wasn't referring to the reputation passed down through the decades either. If I go to talk with a 50y/o attending now about XX med school that he attended, I bet he'll have some great accurate insights about what's like there now right? My point is that many of these people are at stages so long past the preclinical curriculum that even if you talked with them NOW, their information would still be out of date. Specialty may be mostly irrelevant, but let's say you talked exclusively with derm residents. Are you telling me that you won't find a higher proportion of over-achievers or "gunners" or people who knew those kinds of people?

Now sure what's with the newsflash as I never said any med school set quotas or grade limits. Throughout this entire discussion that has always been purely associated with the hypothetical concept of "stratification". As for UTSW, yes, I will be brutally honest and admit we will never win awards for having happy students. But many med schools won't. That does not mean the UTSW students are unhappy. Perhaps I should have rephrased it as "we will never win awards for having the happiest students" to better reflect my meaning and intent. But in the end, I'd characterize many of my classmates as content and motivated. Any school has its upsides and its imperfections and UTSW is no exception, but it's not a school that drives students away either. Along with its well regarded reputation, UTSW also has one of the lowest tuition rates in the country and lowest debt burden among graduates. People may be drawn to flashy vague stuff like "P/F preclinical" (when you yourself admit preclinical grades are worth "jack squat") or "student happiness" and therapy dogs in the library or whatnot, but $$ still talks. $17000 a year for med school can be a quite powerful attraction, and I imagine with the new curriculum it'll be even better.

As for the gunner mentality, like I said, the perception is not something I created and in fact judging from my posts I'm against the unfair perceptions that UTSW engenders. But I'm certainly not going out of my way to refute this perception where my opinion is not solicited. I'd preferred to be judged by my merits, but we don't always get what we want. Given how competitive some residencies are, are you telling me that this mentality is uniquely prevalent among UTSW students? I certainly hope you aren't tell me that in order to not be a gunner, you have to not care about how to improve your chances at your desired residency or the factors involved?

If you read his post you would see he didn't just talk to the "50 y/o attending" or just attendings, in general. Many of the people he talked to are his co-residents and friends who graduated from there and students still there and he never said they were of one specialty. Competitive specialties don't have a monopoly of "gunners" anymore than IM or Surgery. Based on your logic, if he talked with only Plastics residents, all of them would have said they loved it there since many of them did well in med school on average. Great crack at Derm by the way.

I'll rephrase as you obviously misunderstood (again). Preclinical grades are low in importance when it comes to residency program selection as stated by program directors. This is directly from the NRMP Charting Outcomes of the Match. However, if your school grades and stratifies preclinicals, AS YOUR SCHOOL DOES, then it DOES factor into medical school class rank, which IS important to program directors. Also if you categorize "true" P/F preclinicals as "flashy vague stuff" then yes, you're a gunner. Your wise crack about student happiness in quotes "and therapy dogs in the library" as if it's some amorphous thing that you can't quantify is ridiculous and proves that you're a gunner. Different medical schools and their teaching hospitals have different cultures. That's fact.

I never said it's a school that drives students away. Medical school is a seller's market right now (at even the worst med school) and UTSW's tuition (as are ALL Texas med schools, including BCM) are highly subsidized by the state - hence the low debt burden and low tutition rates. That's not something special about UTSW. But top premeds who have a lot more choices of where they can go, won't, esp. when confronted with letter grades vs. "true" P/F.

Your argument is essentially "we will never win awards for having the happiest students" but student happiness is for the birds, and who wants P/F anyways, and we have really really cheap tuition and $$ still talks.

You actually are going of your way to refute the perception when your opinion was not solicited. In you attempt to demonstrate how not competitive, non-gunnerish it is there, I don't think you realize how certain statements of yours in your posts show that you are a gunner. I'll let you have the last word on it though, since you're so convinced that it isn't like that at all. All the best.

 

[SBR249]

If you read his post you would see he didn't just talk to the "50 y/o attending" or just attendings, in general. Many of the people he talked to are his co-residents and friends who graduated from there and students still there and he never said they were of one specialty. Competitive specialties don't have a monopoly of "gunners" anymore than IM or Surgery. Based on your logic, if he talked with only Plastics residents, all of them would have said they loved it there since many of them did well in med school on average. Great crack at Derm by the way.

I'll rephrase as you obviously misunderstood (again). Preclinical grades are low in importance when it comes to residency program selection as stated by program directors. This is directly from the NRMP Charting Outcomes of the Match. However, if your school grades and stratifies preclinicals, AS YOUR SCHOOL DOES, then it DOES factor into medical school class rank, which IS important to program directors. Also if you categorize "true" P/F preclinicals as "flashy vague stuff" then yes, you're a gunner. Your wise crack about student happiness in quotes "and therapy dogs in the library" as if it's some amorphous thing that you can't quantify is ridiculous and proves that you're a gunner. Different medical schools and their teaching hospitals have different cultures. That's fact.

I never said it's a school that drives students away. Medical school is a seller's market right now (at even the worst med school) and UTSW's tuition (as are ALL Texas med schools, including BCM) are highly subsidized by the state - hence the low debt burden and low tutition rates. That's not something special about UTSW. But top premeds who have a lot more choices of where they can go, won't, esp. when confronted with letter grades vs. "true" P/F.

Your argument is essentially "we will never win awards for having the happiest students" but student happiness is for the birds, and who wants P/F anyways, and we have really really cheap tuition and $$ still talks.

You actually are going of your way to refute the perception when your opinion was not solicited. In you attempt to demonstrate how not competitive, non-gunnerish it is there, I don't think you realize how certain statements of yours in your posts show that you are a gunner. I'll let you have the last word on it though, since you're so convinced that it isn't like that at all. All the best.

And I never implied he talked with only one specialty hence why I said I DIDN'T KNOW and it may be important. And, neither did I say he only talked with attendings but the majority of the people that he listed are far removed from the preclinical med school stage of their training. And you misunderstood my point about specialties, I was merely illustrating that there are differences between people in different specialties. You can't honestly tell me there is the same number of "gunners" in family med versus plastics. So based on your scenario let's say you are in family med and you talk with a bunch of people in fam med, I bet you'll find more people willing to say UTSW has a gunner culture than if you talked with a bunch of "happy gunners" in plastics.

As for preclinical grades factoring into ranking, you don't even really know how much they do factor into rankings. It's not much. Sure it has an impact, but even our administration will admit that the real stratification happens in the clinical clerkship grades. So you can't say that a letter grade preclinical curriculum automatically leads to gunner culture because it has some contribution to rankings without knowing the details.

As for my supposed "gunner mentality" perhaps you need to read my comment again. I merely said "P/F preclinical" not "'true' P/F preclinical" because face it, everyone wants to get on that bandwagon and I've seen enough flashy brochures trumpeting those things. In the end, many med schools have rankings that they will disclose in their dean's letters, and for many, preclinical performance does contribute some of the ranking, just as it does at UTSW. As for the "wise crack", I don't consider student happiness as irrelevant. But I do consider it as a personal, individualized metric. Different places have different cultures, true but like I said, it's not black and white, good or bad. How do you measure happiness? What metric should you use? Is a therapy dog in the library the panacea for student experience? Is not having one automatically a sign that a place is a hellhole? My using those examples is merely pointing out that yes, they are attractive and people may consider them, but I don't often hear students talking about XX school having therapy dogs and YY school doesn't. But I do hear about cost and debt burdens a lot and it's a big factor for many people. That's fact. You implied that people wouldn't want to go to UTSW because of "student happiness" and I'm using those example to illustrate that I've heard just as many people if not more put money ahead of other more appealing factors and that "student happiness" isn't the be all and end all of "where should I go for med school?" Tell me where is the "gunner" in that?

So you never said the school drives students away except when its curriculum causes students to go elsewhere? Baylor may be highly subsidized for instate but their out of state is considerably higher, meaning about 30% of their class pays a higher rate whereas UTSW do not charge out of state students higher rates due to the fact that every one of them gets a scholarship to bring it down. Also, again, I never said it was something unique to UTSW but rather something UTSW has going for it. You say top premeds will not attend UTSW but I've never seen any proof of that or even that letter grades vs. true P/F has such a large impact on the decision. Care to share some data?

As for a summation of my argument. Here it is. It's that we may not have the "happiest students" but our students are not generally unhappy. Happiness is a personal metric that's more than just therapy dogs or whatnot. Everyone is getting onboard with P/F and so is UTSW and I think it's the right move and will improve "happiness" and the learning environment. However, the current system of grades isn't as cutthroat as some people assume it is or portrays it to be. Sure we may not be perfect in every respect, but $$ is a big advantage for us as is our good name.

And my "going out of my way" comment was in response to residency application. This is SDN forum. Can anyone honestly say their opinions are "solicited"? You can accuse me of hypocrisy merely because I'm active on here. But I'm not about to offer up my opinion to PDs willy nilly. You may think I'm being gunner in my comments but every example you bring up of my comments is misunderstood, taken out of context, misread, or contrived. But then again we are basically talking past each other the entire time.

 

[jhamaican]

Disclaimer: I am not a troll, been on these boards for years now.

I only write this post because I wish someone had warned me... I should have listened when I saw the true motto of UTSW: "Friends don't let friends go to UTSW"

as a recent UTSW graduate, I can tell you that unfortunately the reputation is alive and well and well deserved. The gunner-attitude it still very much in effect.

There were multiple cheating scandals at my time during UTSW that were never really addressed or made public. UTSW was in the process of possibly losing Parkland at the time so another shot to the school was not what they needed and as a result a number of cheating scandals were swept under the rug. A large proportion (30-50)+!! can never really know because it was not made public just heard from multiple faculty and guilty students, individuals in our class got caught cheating, were never truly reprimanded or suffered repercussions. Another administrator got fired as he would often go out drinking with the medical students (professional much?) and subsequently exams started to disappear from his office "question bank". I always wondered why my solid step scores did not correlate with class rank... (245+ yet deep 4th quartile ok sure).'


A large proportion of your class will live at home and/or are married, and as lectures are optional, could care less about their classmates.

You do not exist to the majority of faculty with a few bright exceptions

This is the malignant culture/atmosphere that UT southwestern eagerly endorses.

Very cold/cut throat environment and after seeing how medical students are treated at my current residency, although I matched well, regret my choice to go to UTSW 100%

You can chalk up my post to a bitter graduate, but all of the above is true. If my post reaches just 1 individual and convinces them to choose greener pastures then my post was worthwhile.

The only positive I can say is that UTSW was dirty cheap tuition wise, but as they say, you usually get what you pay for in life.

Would not recommend

 

[moisne]

Seems like no one told you what you wanted to hear...

"it will be ok"

 

[sliceofbread136]

On a slight tangent, what kind of a medical school uses letter grades esp. in the first 2 years? It seems like at the most it would be H/HP/P/MP/F.

Anyways, do you know how you are ranked in your Dean's letter?

Lots of schools? My school does letter grades all 4 years

Edit: after reading the rest of the thread I see my school is frequently mentioned lol

 

[LabMonster]

At a TX MD school. Got done with a rough midterm today and I'm freaking out about pre-clinical grades (yr 1 going into yr 2). I've been getting straight Bs except for one C in anatomy. About 60-70% of the class usually will get a B in each class, so It seems like I could easily be near the bottom of the class. I'm really worried that I'll be stuck in a residency in podunk no where. Will I have any options in terms of location and getting into a decent program? I' d like to be in a decent city like Austin, Dallas, Houston, Irvine, Los Angeles area, DC, or NYC since my SO is in finance and will also need to be able to find a job.

Have I already shut a lot of doors? I'm looking at pediatrics, PM&R and psychiatry right now.

To the OP

Chill out. You're supposed to be learning, not destroying your soul. Your program, SDN will tell you otherwise, but you already made it to medical school...

So: study more - why? You will use this crap, there is so much you will use and the other half is garbage, but you still need to know it. Hard to know which you need and what you will toss. "B" is "above average", and "C" is average. Average at an American medical school is fine.

"I regret to inform you that with your grades you probably won't match anywhere. But keep in mind, many medical school graduates carry on successful lives in other aspects of medicine besides clinical." Said someone without any post grad knowledge. Maybe they do - but I seriously doubt it, and they've never worked to put food on a table or had any stresses at all. If they did - they shouldn't be such a ****head.

That quote is horse****. Classic SDN crap. Whether that's narcissism, a plush upbringing or just being a dick, not sure and don't care, don't worry.

Go to work.

Whatever you are doing is not up to your setandards, so work harder. Medical school is hard - there are smarter people than you in your class. You can't change that. Where you CAN stand out is being a good goddamned doctor. I wasn't awesome on med school tests. I was awesome on wards. I do know medicine, but I sucked at the med-school game. I got my residency. I'm working where I want, getting paid what I want.

Trust me. Above average and average in medical school are ok. Hammer your boards to keep your options open. Your specialty interests don't require a huge board score or class rank. Learn to learn. Learn for your future patients.

The academic idea of perfection for a physician is antiquated. You need to be able to think, establish a differential, establish a bond with a patient and execute a plan. It's really not how or where you train but HOW YOU FINISH as a physician.

I know dinguses who attended "known" schools whose patient don't ever want to see them again and I've met patients who love certain docs regardless of their backgrounds - and research shows this increases compliance.

Chill. You're in medical school - you need to know that make you "in" the club. Work hard, learn more, treat your patients well.