Current 4th year dental student here. I have been following this thread with interest since the announcement yesterday especially because this decision will also be impacting me when I matriculate in to medical school as part of OMFS residency. The current dental boards transitioned to P/F back in 2012-2013 so I thought it might be interesting to speculate a bit and discuss some similarities and differences
1. Most Dental Schools have a traditional graded curriculum with class ranks vs. Medical schools eliminated grading during preclinical years while having clinical grades that are "highly subjective"
Although alot of grading in D3 and D4 year are subjective and vulnerable to simple bad luck (not having the right patients and cases at the right time in order to fulfill requirements), traditional preclinical classes with grades offset this a little. Medical students, however, will be graded solely on their evaluations during their core clerkships which are highly subjective and also dependent on luck (which attending or resident you get assigned to) without objective preclinical grades for buffer.
When dental boards became P/F, residency PDs still had objective quantitative metrics to screen and rank applicants (gpa and rank). However, students from the few schools with a P/F curriculum benefitted immensely from this change. Interestingly, the handful of dental schools that have a P/F curriculum with no ranking are the ones that are traditionally considered "elite" (ie. Harvard, Columbia, Penn, UCSF, UCLA), which leads me to the next point...
2. The speculation that "elite" schools will benefit the most from a P/F board exam is most likely TRUE based on what has happened in dentistry
When dental boards went P/F, dental schools with elite names that also happened to have P/F curriculums benefitted. This is because students applying from these elite institutions got the benefit of the doubt even without board scores, GPA or class rank simply by virtue of them being from elite schools. The dental board part 1 used to be the great equalizer until they decided to get rid of numerical scores.
In addition, students from these P/F schools now didn't have to worry about doing well on the boards or stressing over getting that A instead of the A- in school classes. This meant that the new found free time can be used for research and strengthening CVs. From what I can see, residency programs in the most competitive specialties are filled with students coming from the above mentioned elite schools. Not hard to see why PDs would choose them.
Student A from Columbia who passed all his classes (no reported class rank) and his boards with 10 publications and 6 away rotations or Student B from state school with 3.7 gpa (ranked 30/100), passed his boards, one poster presentation, and three away rotations. Who would you choose? When board scores existed, the answer might not have been so obvious.
3. Dentistry has created a separate aptitude/admission exam called the ADAT to compare candidates for residencies while OMFS decided to adopt the NBME CBSE exam and use it as a filter similar to how medical residencies relied on Step 1 (or used to).
The same might happen with the most competitive specialties in medicine, who knows. All I know from experience is that this route just adds on additional stress, expenses, and time commitment to an already rigorous curriculum.
Just some thoughts to consider 😀
