Unproctored test - class mean too high

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dave221 said:
I am OMS 1, we recently had our first assessment that was done remotely and I believe it was not proctored in any way. Some say there is some AI built into the software that monitors the students while taking exam, but to my knowledge my test was not recorded. I studied so hard and ended up with an okay-good score. But when I looked into the class average, it was so high. We can see the entire data, how many students got a particular score etc

Either everyone is too smart and working hard or a good percentage of students are cheating. Why cant the school invest in some better software to stop cheating. This might demotivate students who work hard but end up faring average to below average in the class. Especially I felt anatomy score was much inflated since they were mostly first order questions.
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If you want to, ask the school. “Some say” is meaningless. But be prepared, even if you are right, to look like a whiny kid mad someone did better. It’s not ok but it’s reality
 
dave221 said:
I am OMS 1, we recently had our first assessment that was done remotely and I believe it was not proctored in any way. Some say there is some AI built into the software that monitors the students while taking exam, but to my knowledge my test was not recorded. I studied so hard and ended up with an okay-good score. But when I looked into the class average, it was so high. We can see the entire data, how many students got a particular score etc

Either everyone is too smart and working hard or a good percentage of students are cheating. Why cant the school invest in some better software to stop cheating. This might demotivate students who work hard but end up faring average to below average in the class. Especially I felt anatomy score was much inflated since they were mostly first order questions.
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How high? Our first assessment had the highest first exam average of any incoming class...second exam was a very different story.

It could just be that everyone studied hard for the first exam, or that it was review from material similar to the MCAT. Averages will probably go down over time.
 
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I believe it. I know for a fact that many of my classmates (OMS-2) are cheating on unmonitored at-home quizzes. As a result, the quiz averages went up by maybe 10-15 points compared to last year's in-person quizzes. However, actual exams are strictly monitored and I doubt there's much cheating there (this is reflected by our exam averages).
When you say "assessment", do you mean major exam? Because if your school isn't truly enforcing your academic honesty policy for those you need to bring it up with your someone from student government or your advisor.
 
dave221 said:
I am OMS 1, we recently had our first assessment that was done remotely and I believe it was not proctored in any way. Some say there is some AI built into the software that monitors the students while taking exam, but to my knowledge my test was not recorded. I studied so hard and ended up with an okay-good score. But when I looked into the class average, it was so high. We can see the entire data, how many students got a particular score etc

Either everyone is too smart and working hard or a good percentage of students are cheating. Why cant the school invest in some better software to stop cheating. This might demotivate students who work hard but end up faring average to below average in the class. Especially I felt anatomy score was much inflated since they were mostly first order questions.
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Lots of speculation there in the first sentence.

I'm a believe in Occam's Razor, so maybe I'm just a romantic in believe the last bolded item.
 
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So OP, just to be clear here, you’re concerned people are cheating because you worked hard and scored lower than some of your classmates? Do you really believe that many of your classmates are cheating?

If I may ask, why are you concerned about this: class rank, graded preclinical years, etc?
 
I mean what exactly are you seeing for your class averages? At my school I feel like overall they're pretty high, and I think its because med students tend to be pretty bright and we are still taking them in person so its not like a lot of fishy stuff is going on.
 
Yeah, no doubt people will cheat when given the opportunity. It's fact. I don't, because 1- I'll rather just learn material so it's easier during dedicated. 2- Why cheat on a meaningless in house exam to get a slightly better grade when in the long run, class rank isn't that important, and the risks outweigh the benefits.
 
Thanks everyone for your inputs. I am totally against cheating as scoodoboop mentioned it’s not going to help me in the long run. Since there is opportunity to cheat, it feels unfair to people like me who is not going to cheat no matter what. With steps going pass fail for us, class grades are important when compared to previous years and this puts us non cheaters in a big disadvantage.

All our in-house exams are going to be this way, remote non proctored. People were openly discussing the school uses version that is not compatible with AI, we were not asked to consent to use our iPad webcam so it’s obvious they are not recording us, and we are allowed to use scrap paper, literally do whatever we want. Some said they were covering up their iPad camera just in case, though we are not being monitored.

I am just going to focus on my studying and ignore the rest. Still think, there should be some level of control and monitoring , no matter if something is happening or not. Or just make it open book officially and harden the questions and limit the time.
 
dave221 said:
Thanks everyone for your inputs. I am totally against cheating as scoodoboop mentioned it’s not going to help me in the long run. Since there is opportunity to cheat, it feels unfair to people like me who is not going to cheat no matter what. With steps going pass fail for us, class grades are important when compared to previous years and this puts us non cheaters in a big disadvantage.

All our in-house exams are going to be this way, remote non proctored. People were openly discussing the school uses version that is not compatible with AI, we were not asked to consent to use our iPad webcam so it’s obvious they are not recording us, and we are allowed to use scrap paper, literally do whatever we want. Some said they were covering up their iPad camera just in case, though we are not being monitored.

I am just going to focus on my studying and ignore the rest. Still think, there should be some level of control and monitoring , no matter if something is happening or not. Or just make it open book officially and harden the questions and limit the time.
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This sounds like some online DNP nonsense and should never be allowed of medical education.
 
dave221 said:
Thanks everyone for your inputs. I am totally against cheating as scoodoboop mentioned it’s not going to help me in the long run. Since there is opportunity to cheat, it feels unfair to people like me who is not going to cheat no matter what. With steps going pass fail for us, class grades are important when compared to previous years and this puts us non cheaters in a big disadvantage.

All our in-house exams are going to be this way, remote non proctored. People were openly discussing the school uses version that is not compatible with AI, we were not asked to consent to use our iPad webcam so it’s obvious they are not recording us, and we are allowed to use scrap paper, literally do whatever we want. Some said they were covering up their iPad camera just in case, though we are not being monitored.

I am just going to focus on my studying and ignore the rest. Still think, there should be some level of control and monitoring , no matter if something is happening or not. Or just make it open book officially and harden the questions and limit the time.
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I'm appalled at the cheapness and irresponsibility of your school!
 
I mean, COMATs (and I'm assuming MD shelfs) are being taken at home and aren't being proctored either. I'm sure people are cheating. There's nothing you can do about it though, so just worry about yourself and don't let stuff like this bother you.
 
Maybe you aren't used to being around high achieving people so much. One thing that is poignant for this thread is a quote that I heard during medical school orientation to all the medical students:

50% of you in this room are going to be in the bottom half of the class, and 80% of you are sitting there right now thinking, "it isn't going to be me."
 
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Sure some people are cheating on an un- proctored exam, I doubt it’s everyone though. If I were you I wouldn’t care about it, I would learn the material and go take the test and try to retain it for boards by doing anki cards , those who are cheating and end up being the top of the class due to cheating won’t matter and mean much at the end of day cause they will have shi*t step scores(step 2 and comlex) also class rank will continue to matter less then step 2 and comlex scores so it won’t mean much at the end of the day.
 
Agree with all your inputs. I was just bit mad as I know at least 4 of my classmates who cheated for sure. As most of you mentioned, it might still be very small percentage, nothing significant to drastically increase the mean, I'd better up my game, thanks!
 
Our school takes the student Honor Code VERY seriously. The hard working students deserve to take exams on a level playing field. If we catch students cheating, it could turn into repeating the year and result in a 50k mistake. I have seen it happen. If you are aware of any cheating, you should report it.
 
coolsands155 said:
Idk about that. I emailed an SMP (reputable program) about their decision to go fully-online and the integrity of exams. They beat around the bush and mentioned that their winter semester exam averages were "higher than normal" when they moved online. I also got in touch with current students (both SMP and medical students) and they said cheating was rampant.
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I don't go to that school so I cannot say whether cheating occurs or not. but what I can say definitively is all throughout medical school, I heard many versions of slanted/biased tests, cheating, etc. and the most of it in the first semester. Sure cheating occurred but the reality is that it was incredibly minor and most people can't handle not being the best that they were in college.

and it is so much easier to blame cheaters than to come to terms with the fact that you aren't the best.
 
On a related note, I know some people think of the best ways to cheat like it was their purpose in life, but honestly, that mental effort could just be put to working smarter/harder and killing the exam. Furthermore, for well-written and timed exams, cheating may actually be immediately detrimental (on that exam performance I mean). I mean think about it, what's easier: knowing the right answer or spending an inordinate amount of time looking up the answer?
 
fldoctorgirl said:
I mean, COMATs (and I'm assuming MD shelfs) are being taken at home and aren't being proctored either. I'm sure people are cheating. There's nothing you can do about it though, so just worry about yourself and don't let stuff like this bother you.
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Have you taken a comat? You’ll probably score lower if you try to cheat on it. It would take days to find answers and even then you’ll probably get it wrong
 
fldoctorgirl said:
I mean, COMATs (and I'm assuming MD shelfs) are being taken at home and aren't being proctored either. I'm sure people are cheating. There's nothing you can do about it though, so just worry about yourself and don't let stuff like this bother you.
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For nbme shelves, it’s on a special browser that locks out other sites and monitors computer activity. I guess there’s no camera running, but the time limits are such that there’s no way you could look up all the answers. You only get 2 minutes per question. This is for the basic science ones anyway. You likely wouldn’t finish if you tried to look up more than one or two answers, so even if you wanted to cheat it’s not worth it.

But we go into school for our exams.
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
For nbme shelves, it’s on a special browser that locks out other sites and monitors computer activity. I guess there’s no camera running, but the time limits are such that there’s no way you could look up all the answers. You only get 2 minutes per question. This is for the basic science ones anyway. You likely wouldn’t finish if you tried to look up more than one or two answers, so even if you wanted to cheat it’s not worth it.

But we go into school for our exams.
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We’re going into school for our exams right now too, but they’ll be online after thanksgiving. However, you bring up a good point about time. Our school gives 1st years 90 sec per question. They’re professor written exams, but unless you had your notes posted on the wall in front of you I doubt you’d have time to read a question stem, figure out what they’re asking, and look it up.

However, let’s say you studied for the exam, answered everything you could and had plenty of time to spare, then you could feasibly go back and look up answers to things you were iffy on. That could easily take a typical B student into A range if they just look up minutiae after answering other stuff first.
 
pagingdoctormom said:
We’re going into school for our exams right now too, but they’ll be online after thanksgiving. However, you bring up a good point about time. Our school gives 1st years 90 sec per question. They’re professor written exams, but unless you had your notes posted on the wall in front of you I doubt you’d have time to read a question stem, figure out what they’re asking, and look it up.

However, let’s say you studied for the exam, answered everything you could and had plenty of time to spare, then you could feasibly go back and look up answers to things you were iffy on. That could easily take a typical B student into A range if they just look up minutiae after answering other stuff first.
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Yeah it’s a sad reality that when medicine is so stats driven, that type of behavior will be selected for.
 
MLNS said:
Have you taken a comat? You’ll probably score lower if you try to cheat on it. It would take days to find answers and even then you’ll probably get it wrong
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Lol yes I have and I agree. I meant more in the sense that you could have a "cheat sheet" on things you are weak on or something like that. I agree that trying to look things up would just backfire. Gotta love those COMAT questions where even google doesn't know the answer.
 
FrkyBgStok said:
I don't go to that school so I cannot say whether cheating occurs or not. but what I can say definitively is all throughout medical school, I heard many versions of slanted/biased tests, cheating, etc. and the most of it in the first semester. Sure cheating occurred but the reality is that it was incredibly minor and most people can't handle not being the best that they were in college.

and it is so much easier to blame cheaters than to come to terms with the fact that you aren't the best.
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Only thing is being the best doesn't matter. There are several people who don't care about preclinical stuff and can just focus on passing even if scoring below class average. Then when Step season comes along, they can focus entirely on demolishing the exams and proceed to excelling on clinical years.
 
Lawpy said:
Only thing is being the best doesn't matter. There are several people who don't care about preclinical stuff and can just focus on passing even if scoring below class average. Then when Step season comes along, they can focus entirely on demolishing the exams and proceed to excelling on clinical years.
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Step 1 will be P/F, so Step 2 will become more important. So studying during clinicals will be more important. PD's do look at class rank, although they may anecdotally say different. 65% in the recent PD survey look at class rank. I really don't subscribe to the ignoring pre clinical and study for boards approach. Nailing clinical rotations requires some degree of pre clinical knowledge.
 
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Angus Avagadro said:
Step 1 will be P/F, so Step 2 will become more important. So studying during clinicals will be more important. PD's do look at class rank, although they may anecdotally say different. 65% in the recent PD survey look at class rank. I really don't subscribe to the ignoring pre clinical and study for boards approach. Nailing clinical rotations requires some degree of pre clinical knowledge.
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That survey had an 18% response rate.
 
Angus Avagadro said:
Step 1 will be P/F, so Step 2 will become more important. So studying during clinicals will be more important. PD's do look at class rank, although they may anecdotally say different. 65% in the recent PD survey look at class rank. I really don't subscribe to the ignoring pre clinical and study for boards approach. Nailing clinical rotations requires some degree of pre clinical knowledge.
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Class rank doesn't matter unless its directly factored in AOA. I think existing Step 1 resources are plenty for clinical years prep
 
Angus Avagadro said:
True, but it is in line with earlier PD surveys.
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69% of PDs looked at class rank in the 2014 survey (used that one because it had a 50% response rate—the 2018 one had a 29% response rate), but it was rated at a 3.9. So not unimportant, but rated lower than almost everything else that as many or more PDs cited (only exception was personal statement). Even being an MD senior was more important than class rank and looked at by more PDs.

Also, honors in preclerkship grades was only cited by 25% and had a rating of 3.5. So while class rank is obviously somewhat important to a lot of PDs, it doesn’t seem like preclerkship grades specifically are very important.
 
Angus Avagadro said:
Step 1 will be P/F, so Step 2 will become more important. So studying during clinicals will be more important. PD's do look at class rank, although they may anecdotally say different. 65% in the recent PD survey look at class rank. I really don't subscribe to the ignoring pre clinical and study for boards approach. Nailing clinical rotations requires some degree of pre clinical knowledge.
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Studying for boards is studying preclinical knowledge. There are people on this site that have described their clinical success following a boards focused, do the bare minimum to pass in-house exams approach. It works, and will continue to work. Like I've said before, schools do not have a monopoly on preclinical knowledge. Also, their teaching is usually inferior to that of third party resources.
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
69% of PDs looked at class rank in the 2014 survey (used that one because it had a 50% response rate—the 2018 one had a 29% response rate), but it was rated at a 3.9. So not unimportant, but rated lower than almost everything else that as many or more PDs cited (only exception was personal statement). Even being an MD senior was more important than class rank and looked at by more PDs.

Also, honors in preclerkship grades was only cited by 25% and had a rating of 3.5. So while class rank is obviously somewhat important to a lot of PDs, it doesn’t seem like preclerkship grades specifically are very important.
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No argument, so it is important, ( same as not unimportant) as you agree. AOA is ranked lower than class rank as you point out. PD surveys have ranked it 4 out of 5 in importance on most surveys. Centainly not as high as Boards or LORs, but yet a significant factor unlike what many propose on SDN. Anecdotal reports from PDs saying class rank is not important doesn't mean much to me. SDN is replete with stories from residency applicants who told the PD they ranked them #1 and the PD says " You made my day!", only to not be ranked at all by the program. When I sat on a resident selection comittee, we looked at class rank. When i write a LOR, I always mention class rank if they are in the top half. If not, I dont mention it. If I would look at an app and the student had a low class rank and a high board score, i might wonder why and look for an answer. Sickness? LOA? Family crisis? Bright and lazy? Bright and lazy is a no go for residency candidates. I'm sure some programs dont care, but the data indicates some do. My opinion, but I can't subscribe to boards at the expense of pre clinical classes. YMMV.
 
Angus Avagadro said:
No argument, so it is important, ( same as not unimportant) as you agree. AOA is ranked lower than class rank as you point out. PD surveys have ranked it 4 out of 5 in importance on most surveys. Centainly not as high as Boards or LORs, but yet a significant factor unlike what many propose on SDN. Anecdotal reports from PDs saying class rank is not important doesn't mean much to me. SDN is replete with stories from residency applicants who told the PD they ranked them #1 and the PD says " You made my day!", only to not be ranked at all by the program. When I sat on a resident selection comittee, we looked at class rank. When i write a LOR, I always mention class rank if they are in the top half. If not, I dont mention it. If I would look at an app and the student had a low class rank and a high board score, i might wonder why and look for an answer. Sickness? LOA? Family crisis? Bright and lazy? Bright and lazy is a no go for residency candidates. I'm sure some programs dont care, but the data indicates some do. My opinion, but I can't subscribe to boards at the expense of pre clinical classes. YMMV.
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I don’t completely disagree. I just think the fact that almost none of the PDs said honoring preclerkship grades was important and that consistency of grades was more important points to that PDs just want to see that you generally did well. And since class rank is not unimportant and almost all the clerkship grades answers were fairly important, I’m betting that plays more into the class rank thing than preclerkship grades. Also, the other stuff is more important. So passing your preclerkship classes, crushing step, and doing well in clerkship seems to be what the survey is getting at.

And like @slowthai pointed out, studying for step is studying for clerkship. My school has a ton of clinical material in preclerkship with tons of clinical reasoning sessions using real patients. I almost exclusively use third party boards resources, and I do very well in all those sessions.
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
I don’t completely disagree. I just think the fact that almost none of the PDs said honoring preclerkship grades was important and that consistency of grades was more important points to that PDs just want to see that you generally did well. And since class rank is not unimportant and almost all the clerkship grades answers were fairly important, I’m betting that plays more into the class rank thing than preclerkship grades. Also, the other stuff is more important. So passing your preclerkship classes, crushing step, and doing well in clerkship seems to be what the survey is getting at.

And like @slowthai pointed out, studying for step is studying for clerkship. My school has a ton of clinical material in preclerkship with tons of clinical reasoning sessions using real patients. I almost exclusively use third party boards resources, and I do very well in all those sessions.
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I dont necessarily disagree. Some pre clinical lectures are poor and don't highlight board rich material. All I can say, if I didnt answer the question of why low class rank and high board scores, i would not rank the candidate highly. Having said that, these cases are not common. In recent memory, every student I wrote letters for university programs where they matched, were in the top quartile of their class. It generally goes hand in hand. Good students and good board scores. I'm sure the boards only approach has worked for some, but I can't recommend it. I'm not trying to be irritating, I just believe it's not a good approach. Just wanted to have my thoughts out there so there are other opinions for SDNers to contemplate so they can make the best decisions for themselves. Good luck and best wishes to all!
 
Angus Avagadro said:
I dont necessarily disagree. Some pre clinical lectures are poor and don't highlight board rich material. All I can say, if I didnt answer the question of why low class rank and high board scores, i would not rank the candidate highly. Having said that, these cases are not common. In recent memory, every student I wrote letters for university programs where they matched, were in the top quartile of their class. It generally goes hand in hand. Good students and good board scores. I'm sure the boards only approach has worked for some, but I can't recommend it. I'm not trying to be irritating, I just believe it's not a good approach. Just wanted to have my thoughts out there so there are other opinions for SDNers to contemplate so they can make the best decisions for themselves. Good luck and best wishes to all!
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How would you respond to someone with a low preclinical class rank who straight honored clinical years?
 
Lawpy said:
How would you respond to someone with a low preclinical class rank who straight honored clinical years?
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I dont know. I've never seen it before. Those are only 2 components of someones app, so I wouldn't be able ro comment on ranking. My suspicion to this hypothetical is that they might be a hard worker and maybe not a great test taker. LORs and an audition at our program would certainly add some texture. Being able to pass specialty boards might be a concern. Thats about all I can think of with limited information.
 
Angus Avagadro said:
I dont necessarily disagree. Some pre clinical lectures are poor and don't highlight board rich material. All I can say, if I didnt answer the question of why low class rank and high board scores, i would not rank the candidate highly. Having said that, these cases are not common. In recent memory, every student I wrote letters for university programs where they matched, were in the top quartile of their class. It generally goes hand in hand. Good students and good board scores. I'm sure the boards only approach has worked for some, but I can't recommend it. I'm not trying to be irritating, I just believe it's not a good approach. Just wanted to have my thoughts out there so there are other opinions for SDNers to contemplate so they can make the best decisions for themselves. Good luck and best wishes to all!
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Yeah I think the idea that people are crushing boards but barely passing their modules is pretty far fetched. In my experience, studying using almost nothing but board material has been more than sufficient to honor all of MS1. But part of that is because I made sure to look at my school’s powerpoints to make sure I wasn’t neglecting anything they thought was important that wasn’t in BnB/fa.
 
Angus Avagadro said:
Our school takes the student Honor Code VERY seriously. The hard working students deserve to take exams on a level playing field. If we catch students cheating, it could turn into repeating the year and result in a 50k mistake. I have seen it happen. If you are aware of any cheating, you should report it.
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Just kick them out if theyre caught. Whats the point of letting them repeat
 
Matthew9Thirtyfive said:
Yeah I think the idea that people are crushing boards but barely passing their modules is pretty far fetched. In my experience, studying using almost nothing but board material has been more than sufficient to honor all of MS1. But part of that is because I made sure to look at my school’s powerpoints to make sure I wasn’t neglecting anything they thought was important that wasn’t in BnB/fa.
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Yeah, this is where having NBMEs really helps. If you get poorly written in-houses like me, it's easy to barely pass if you don't put in the effort to know enough of the low yield stuff they like to test on. Well, that was the case for M1 at least. Really hoping I can skate by on the strength of step studying this year.
 
They probably are cheating. It sucks, your school should be proctoring. Its actually quite easy to do given the tech we have available. But on the other hand why are you spending time and energy worrying about it? Learn the material as best you can and it will help you on boards. It doesn't matter what anyone else is doing. Like at all.
 
slowthai said:
Yeah, this is where having NBMEs really helps. If you get poorly written in-houses like me, it's easy to barely pass if you don't put in the effort to know enough of the low yield stuff they like to test on. Well, that was the case for M1 at least. Really hoping I can skate by on the strength of step studying this year.
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Yeah we have in-house and nbme. If we only had nbme I wouldn’t even look at the school powerpoints. I literally only look at them a couple days before the exam to make sure I didn’t totally miss something they’re going to throw at me on the in-house lol.
 
At my school, the difference between getting an A and getting a B on an exam is whether or not you obsessively cram every small, unbolded line of text on every PowerPoint slide. Those who get all A’s are in the first quartile of the class, mostly A’s and some B’s are in second, mostly B’s are in the third, and mostly C’s are in the fourth. The first-quartile students who consistently memorize every single low-yield detail on the poorly organized, error-ridden slides probably perform better on boards because of their strong work ethics and/or above-average memories, not because of a causal relationship between class exam performance and board performance.
 
Osminog said:
At my school, the difference between getting an A and getting a B on an exam is whether or not you obsessively cram every small, unbolded line of text on every PowerPoint slide. Those who get all A’s are in the first quartile of the class, mostly A’s and some B’s are in second, mostly B’s are in the third, and mostly C’s are in the fourth. The first-quartile students who consistently memorize every single low-yield detail on the poorly organized, error-ridden slides probably perform better on boards because of their strong work ethics and/or above-average memories, not because of a causal relationship between class exam performance and board performance.
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That sucks. We have had a couple of those types of in-house exams, but most of them have had a lot of overlap thankfully.
 
Osminog said:
At my school, the difference between getting an A and getting a B on an exam is whether or not you obsessively cram every small, unbolded line of text on every PowerPoint slide. Those who get all A’s are in the first quartile of the class, mostly A’s and some B’s are in second, mostly B’s are in the third, and mostly C’s are in the fourth. The first-quartile students who consistently memorize every single low-yield detail on the poorly organized, error-ridden slides probably perform better on boards because of their strong work ethics and/or above-average memories, not because of a causal relationship between class exam performance and board performance.
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So true. And I hate so much how ignorant administrators love to push this propaganda of doing well in class = doing well on boards, like their curriculum is the holy grail of preclinical knowledge. Like no, your curriculum is obsolete. Accept it. Smart people are smart people, and they will do well regardless of what kind of exam you throw at them. I'm obviously not one of those people, so I have to focus my efforts on what actually matters.
 
Some of these posts are really depressing me. I struggled like crazy at the beginning of med school before getting the help I needed. Now I’m usually above average on in-house exams but unfortunately we had some very highly weighed classes 1st semester so I’m probably not moving from the third quartile anytime soon.

I focus on board stuff now mostly anyway as a 2nd year and thought that was more important but some are saying class rank is more important than I thought
 
Billroth_III said:
Some of these posts are really depressing me. I struggled like crazy at the beginning of med school before getting the help I needed. Now I’m usually above average on in-house exams but unfortunately we had some very highly weighed classes 1st semester so I’m probably not moving from the third quartile anytime soon.

I focus on board stuff now mostly anyway as a 2nd year and thought that was more important but some are saying class rank is more important than I thought
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Don't listen. No one cares about class rank unless you're in the top 10% or bottom 10%. Focus on step.
 
slowthai said:
So true. And I hate so much how ignorant administrators love to push this propaganda of doing well in class = doing well on boards, like their curriculum is the holy grail of preclinical knowledge. Like no, your curriculum is obsolete. Accept it. Smart people are smart people, and they will do well regardless of what kind of exam you throw at them. I'm obviously not one of those people, so I have to focus my efforts on what actually matters.
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I'm not an administrator. I work for a living; I teach medical students.

And I can tell you that at my school and every other school (MD and DO) that has presented info at medical education conferences on pre-clinical performance, the data points match point for point as to pre-clinical GPA and Board scores.

I agree that the top students will do well no matter what, even if the curriculum is delivered in Korean, but everybody else has to work at it.
 
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