Thanks for replying....I don't know why the heck I wrote down that there is no ranking and that its just pass/fail the first two yrs and High pass and low pass 3rd and 4th yr.
Howdy, first year student here (who is joining your class-- go 2011!) passing down the word of several fourth years. You're right in that most of the pre-clinical classes are H/P/F; some of the courses like pbl and masturbation 101 are just P/F (THANK GOD, although you'd think I'd have one of the two down by now. I'll leave you to figure out which one. I bet this post makes you glad that I'm going to be in YOUR class next year, doesn't it? That's right, you should consider
all your options before picking
any school.). There is no traditional ranking of students per se, there is "grouping," which is NOT based very heavily at all on your first and second year performance.
What do I mean by grouping, which is kind of a term I made up by myself? Well, in your fourth year when you are applying to residencies, you're going to have the dean write you a letter where you are going to be classified to give program directors an idea of where you stand against the rest of your class. You made be described as "outstanding, excellent, great, good, etc." depending on where you stand. Where you stand is based mostly on your board scores and your performance during your third year-- which depends a lot on your clinical knowledge and how well you interact with patients, how well you play with others, how motivated you are, how you deal with authority, etc.
So while I'll never have a letter written about you stating that "silas2642 was 171/172 in her class-- what a *******; really makes you re-think the concept of whether or not P should equal MD, eh Mr. Program Director?," I may receive a less than enthusiastic letter written about me that states that I am "recommended" because after all they accepted me and can't NOT recommend me unless they know I'm some sort of danger to society (which I'm not).
So I hope that that answers any questions that you may have.
To answer the previous poster's question, the white coat ceremony is in early September, and it's pretty nice. You'll be getting something about it in the mail with the date pretty soon along with everything else.
Also, for all of you eager beavers thinking about buying TEXTBOOKS-- DON'T. Textbooks are expensive and a waste of time, and there are very few that you need. If you're going to buy something useful, buy Lippincott's Biochemistry (although the biochemistry syllabus is really really good so you won't need this) for the diagrams and to use for reference, but you don't need it.
