UT Southwestern P/F 1st Semester?

[hawkeey]

Hey guys,

This mostly applies to Texas applicants but there are some out of staters who apply as well.

The curriculum committee at UT Southwestern is considering making part of the first year pass / fail.

This seems to be a move by the curriculum committee to level the playing field since incoming students have had a variety of previous academic experiences. Additionally, this is also a response to the curriculum becoming more difficult than it was in the past. For sure though, the curriculum committee is against making the entire four years P/F.

How do people feel about P/F versus grades? What are the advantages / disadvantages?

Hawkeey

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[kerplunk112]

i sure hope they do..im still not even sure how the grading system works there. what classes it applied too etc.

it obviously encourages a stiffer level of competition...to have grades. but the reason is prob more psychological than anything. I thought the reason they did away with grades was so lawyers for the plaintiff couldnt use it against physicians getting sued. a C in anatomy looks a lot more incompetant than a pass.

 

[sprinkibrio]

Hawkeey, did you have to go through it? What did you think?

I think having Honors/High Pass/Pass/Fail is the best system. It's almost the same as the current A/B+/B/C/F (minus one category) but without the huge stigma of a GPA and aiming for the A in each and every class. I may be wrong (never having gone to med school and all...) but with the H/HP/P/F system, people can aim for one H per semester in an important class (anatomy if intersted in surgery) and high passes in the rest without feeling guilty about lowering a GPA not trying for getting all A's, because although they might mean nothing comepared to rank stressing over the letter grade can still happen.

However, I would rather have the current grade scale than only P/F. I don't think P/F lets you stand out in what you're strong in, therefore, making you work harder at standing out for residencies in other areas (third year/USMLE). I think the high prevalence of P/F in schools is what makes these two qualifiers so important to residencies and filled with pressure.

I, who went to a crappy high school in Florida, had to work my butt off against boarding school kids from the northeast to do well at my undergrad in curved pre-med courses. I could have gone to my state school instead of a pre-med bootcamp type school and gotten a 4.0 just to be less prepared when I got to med school, but I didn't. Shouldn't I be able to show off my stuff now that I've worked so hard? Then again, I know that there are a lot of economic factors involved in where people go to high school/college, so having a level playing field in the beginning also sounds fair. I just know that I chose SW because I like that little extra push that motivates me to do better.

edit--Ooo I noticed they are thinking of it for only 1st semester. I don't that should be a big deal, mentally tone down everything I said! 😉

 

[MonkeyNuts!]

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, because this is important.

From what I understand from talking to UTSW students and also the interview day, it seems like although they hand out As-Fs, the letter really means nothing, and neither does your GPA, because they take the raw scores from your classes and then use them to calculate your class rank, which is what actually gets sent out during residency matching. (Or is it your GPA too? That's what I'm confused on, but definitely they said the letters really mean nothing).

So then you could technically make a 95 on an exam, and be given a B if the curving allows, but then it's the actual 95 that gets put into your class ranking? (I thinK? Should have clarified it better on interview day but I heard like 3 separate explanations that all seemed to run around the bush...)

 

[sprinkibrio]

http://www4.utsouthwestern.edu/stuaff//stuinfo/MatchSWStyle2005.pdf

p.23 They get a transcript (which I'm assuming has your grades) with a bar graph for each class to compare each grade to.

http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/vgn/images/portal/cit_56417/44/22/2819872005-2008student.pdf

p.13 No cumulative rank is given. GPA for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd as well as only for 3rd is given.

Who knows what's really important. This is very confusing.

 

[Wizard of Oz]

What you call the grades doesn't matter (honor/pass/fail vs. A/B/C). What stresses people is how they are assigned. Is an A/honor a set percentage of correct answers, or can only a certain portion of the class get it? My school uses A/B/C, but who cares if the class average is an 88? Almost half the class winds up with an A, very non-competative and then you have to hold a 4.0 to get AOA. If only the top 20% of the class CAN get an A/honor, then that is much more competative. 👍

I don't think that it has anything to do with previous academic background at all. Your exam performance will reflect who studied the most since med school started. They start from the beginning.

The reason why a lot of places use pass/fail is because all of their students who pass the classes pass boards too. Since by and large, USMLE is the measuring stick for med students and not grades, what your GPA is doesn't matter. Either you know the material or not, and the USMLE will show how well you knew it compared to the rest of the country.

 

[ThatOne]

I don't think that it has anything to do with previous academic background at all. Your exam performance will reflect who studied the most since med school started. They start from the beginning.

Hah. Right, so a bioscience major, from whom many of the first year classes are review is on the same footing as a humanities student who may be learning much of the material for the first time? Sounds implausible. Each step of education builds on the step before. This isn't to say that the humanities major couldn't end up doing better than the bioscience major, but that the former would have much more work to do than the latter.

 

[Dookter]

Hah. Right, so a bioscience major, from whom many of the first year classes are review is on the same footing as a humanities student who may be learning much of the material for the first time? Sounds implausible. Each step of education builds on the step before. This isn't to say that the humanities major couldn't end up doing better than the bioscience major, but that the former would have much more work to do than the latter.

The advantage wanes quickly. Sure, the first few months of med school were easier for me than for some of my classmates b/c I had at least heard of the things we were talking about, even if I did not directly remember all the details. However, after that initial advantage, we're all in the same boat.

 

[hawkeey]

Ok, I'll answer a few questions:

Grading at UT Southwestern

I have gone through a semester of it, and it's a little bit stressful and kind of like the undergrad. The problem is that your classmates are the select few who got into medical school. You are now competing with the cream of the crop... the most successful pre-meds from not only your college but every other college. Despite being 90% Texan, UT Southwestern students went to college all over the country.

This means, that unless the tests are easily aceable, you will most likely not get an 'A' everytime. A few years ago, the tests were close aceable... a lot of people scored in the high 90's ( > 95% ). Recently, the courses and the tests have become more discriminating. For most courses so far a curve has been imposed approximating the following pattern:

A: first 20%
B+: next 30%
B: next 30%
C: bottom 20%

This is not so bad... 50% of the class gets a B+ or higher.

Some courses retain certain set limits... that if you get above a certain percent then you are guaranteed a certain grade regardless of how the rest of the class performs.

The primary goal is to first pass the course, and then if possible also get a good grade. It is very possible to fail courses in medical school if you are not careful. UT Southwestern does make it difficult to completely fail out of school though... the worse that usually happens is that you have to retake the course during the summer.

Do grades matter?

The concensus is pretty much that grades do not really matter... especially in the first year. It will have an impact on residences; however, the third year of medical school is weighted much higher than the first two years. The third year is the first clinical year, and clinical assessments are weighted as much or greater than normal coursework. You apply to residences just after your third year of medical school... so basically your third year GPA gets multiplied by a factor of 2.

Beyond that, you have letters of recommendations, research and/or extracurricular activities, USMLE scores.

Psychologically, I think having grades makes the environment a lot more tense, but after a while you learn to accept B's and even the occassional C while trying to aim for that A. It just depends on your priorities and much of a life outside of medical school do you want.

In summary, it's basically just like being a pre-med all over again, except its harder.

 

[MonkeyNuts!]

Ok, I'll answer a few questions:

Grading at UT Southwestern

I have gone through a semester of it, and it's a little bit stressful and kind of like the undergrad. The problem is that your classmates are the select few who got into medical school. You are now competing with the cream of the crop... the most successful pre-meds from not only your college but every other college. Despite being 90% Texan, UT Southwestern students went to college all over the country.

This means, that unless the tests are easily aceable, you will most likely not get an 'A' everytime. A few years ago, the tests were close aceable... a lot of people scored in the high 90's ( > 95% ). Recently, the courses and the tests have become more discriminating. For most courses so far a curve has been imposed approximating the following pattern:

A: first 20%
B+: next 30%
B: next 30%
C: bottom 20%

This is not so bad... 50% of the class gets a B+ or higher.

Some courses retain certain set limits... that if you get above a certain percent then you are guaranteed a certain grade regardless of how the rest of the class performs.

The primary goal is to first pass the course, and then if possible also get a good grade. It is very possible to fail courses in medical school if you are not careful. UT Southwestern does make it difficult to completely fail out of school though... the worse that usually happens is that you have to retake the course during the summer.

Do grades matter?

The concensus is pretty much that grades do not really matter... especially in the first year. It will have an impact on residences; however, the third year of medical school is weighted much higher than the first two years. The third year is the first clinical year, and clinical assessments are weighted as much or greater than normal coursework. You apply to residences just after your third year of medical school... so basically your third year GPA gets multiplied by a factor of 2.

Beyond that, you have letters of recommendations, research and/or extracurricular activities, USMLE scores.

Psychologically, I think having grades makes the environment a lot more tense, but after a while you learn to accept B's and even the occassional C while trying to aim for that A. It just depends on your priorities and much of a life outside of medical school do you want.

In summary, it's basically just like being a pre-med all over again, except its harder.

So let me get this straight. If you make a raw score of let's say 95 and you are given a B+ or an A, it is the letter grade assignment that gets translated into GPA points and then factored into your GPA/class rank?

I'll tell you what people at UTSW told me. My tour guide said something like the letter grades don't mean anything, because your raw scores determine your class rank, which is what they send out to residencies. And then the faculty member giving the orientation talk said that GPA is what gets sent out, and that grades aren't that competitive at all (didn't make any mention of whether it is the letter grade or the raw score or whatever).

And then the dude at lunch said something different and didn't really expand on it, by then I was so frustrated with everyone trying to convince me that this place wasn't a competitive environment, when all I wanted to know was the grading structure (cmon i'm used to the environment JHU baby) that I just gave up.

 

[Dookter]

So let me get this straight. If you make a raw score of let's say 95 and you are given a B+ or an A, it is the letter grade assignment that gets translated into GPA points and then factored into your GPA/class rank?

I'll tell you what people at UTSW told me. My tour guide said something like the letter grades don't mean anything, because your raw scores determine your class rank, which is what they send out to residencies. And then the faculty member giving the orientation talk said that GPA is what gets sent out, and that grades aren't that competitive at all (didn't make any mention of whether it is the letter grade or the raw score or whatever).

And then the dude at lunch said something different and didn't really expand on it, by then I was so frustrated with everyone trying to convince me that this place wasn't a competitive environment, when all I wanted to know was the grading structure (cmon i'm used to the environment JHU baby) that I just gave up.

I think part of the problem is that different parts of the curriculum are handled differently at UTSW [and at many other medical schools]. I could be wrong, but I think even specific classes have different grading schemes from other classes. So the answers you got could have depended on who you talked with and what they were familiar with. Now I'll shut up since the last time I said anything about the UTSW grading scales I was surrounded by a band of injuns from UTSW and tied to a tree for three days...

 

[MonkeyNuts!]

I think part of the problem is that different parts of the curriculum are handled differently at UTSW [and at many other medical schools]. I could be wrong, but I think even specific classes have different grading schemes from other classes. So the answers you got could have depended on who you talked with and what they were familiar with. Now I'll shut up since the last time I said anything about the UTSW grading scales I was surrounded by a band of injuns from UTSW and tied to a tree for three days...

Hmm ok thanks, this probably makes the most sense...

 

[potato51]

I like that we have a graded system. The folks who get the A's are stars in my opinion and deserve a grade besides a mere "pass."

The classes are different in their grading schemes. A couple are P/F. One you get an outright curve in (biochem), and the others have grade cutoffs for letter grades (93=A though so far in those courses the cutoffs have been lowered, allowing more people to get higher grades). It's really not that bad, except the tests have been made more difficult. Couldn't believe my eyes how easy the anatomy tests from previous years were compared to ours... wow.

As for stress/tension, that's largely self-determined. If you go in with a competitive mindset, you're likely to let it bother you when folks make better grades. I couldn't care less and I'm doing just fine.

 

[hawkeey]

Potato is right, different courses are graded completely differently. There are some courses which are already P/F.

To be honest, UTSW is in a state of flux and things keep changing from year to year. What I'm reporting here is a potential change for the incoming class.

In the past, all of the courses had grade cutoffs. Only recently have curves been introduced due to increased difficulty of the courses. Some courses have adjusted their grading premptively where as other courses have not. The hardening of the courses can be attributed to the new interim dean of the medical school. The purpose of this is so that residency programs can differentiate UTSW graduates.

Let's discuss what actually goes out to residency programs:
1) Your grades in the form of quartiles* (ie. X scored in the 2nd quartile in Biochemistry in his class) - strong emphasis on this
2) Perhaps your GPA and Class Rank (the quartiles above mean a lot more to programs than these aggregated numbers)
3) Dean's Letter describing what you have done with your medical school career
4) Recommendation letters from faculty - usually clinical faculty who have a closer relationship with you

*the first quartile is the top 25% of the class
the second quartile is the top 50% - 25% of the class
the third quartile is the next 25% of class
the fourth quartile is the bottom 25%

All schools submit this information regardless if they are graded or P/F or high pass / low pass, etc.

The above is my understanding of the situation. Check with your favorite medical school dean or graduating MS4 for confirmation.

So in reality all of this is really just a cosmetic change to make your life seemingly less stressful.