What are some medical schools where there is help among students instead of everyone gunning?

[ratman7]

Is there a list of schools that promote working together among others, and does not have to deal with competition all the time (through preclinical years)?

My understanding are that P/F schools and schools without internal rankings exemplify these whereas those schools with H/P/F, A/B/C/D/F all have the students competing against each other.

What are some schools without internal rankings that follow P/F? (Does MSAR tell you this?)
Are there a handful of these types of schools or only a few?
Are these schools usually harder to get in (higher median MCAT, GPA?)?
Would going to one of these schools be viewed slightly worse than a competitive, ranked one?

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[GypsyHummus]

Osteopathic Medical Schools with an emphasis in underserved primary care.

 

[CrimsonKing]

University of Michigan has true P/F w/o internal ranking in the first two years. I feel that there was a thread on this just a few months ago where we collected a large list of programs with true P/F. The search function is your friend, as mentioned above.

I know there are some programs that also don't have a ranking system for the clinical years, but no ranking whatsoever makes you more difficult to rank as an applicant to competitive residency programs.

 

[BuckyBadger!]

UW-Madison! The first year is P/F. I am currently an undergrad at UW and I've met a lot of med students while shadowing. All 10+ that I've talked with say they really like the atmosphere at UW and emphasize how cooperative it is.

 

[ratman7]

University of Michigan has true P/F w/o internal ranking in the first two years. I feel that there was a thread on this just a few months ago where we collected a large list of programs with true P/F. The search function is your friend, as mentioned above.

I know there are some programs that also don't have a ranking system for the clinical years, but no ranking whatsoever makes you more difficult to rank as an applicant to competitive residency programs.

Yes, I found that thread after posting this x)

UMich however is a top tier (right?) and I doubt they give you consideration if you do not come from a top ugrad or have something extraordinary as ECs.

 

[aegistitan]

Well this sums up my reaction to the first few posts quite well.

Quite a weird reaction to get from what you thought was an innocent post, huh? I've been lurking around here for several years now since I was in med school. People tend to forget the reason that student doctor exists, (for students). I know that I viewed student doctor as a kind of mentor, since I didn't have a good mentor in medical school. Some people on here get extremely anal when you bring something up that they have already discussed. They read your post and think, "Gosh, what a ******, we discussed like just three years ago" (Read that quote with a Napoleon Dynamite voice). Some people view numbers of posts as a pre-requisite to be in the cool crowd. You get the impression that they would write on the rest of their resumes for the rest of their lives that they have 1000+ posts on student doctor. Why do I come here? It is a sick obsession that my wife tells me I need to stop. I get a kick out of a lot of the threads and once in a while, learn something. Once in a while, somebody will be extremely helpful and post a link to the previous discussion, rather than flame the OP. I think mostly, that people just love to win an argument, and put others down while being completely anonymous.

Anyway, what OP wants is a list of all P/F no internal ranking medical schools. And it is cumbersome to sift through all of the school specific threads to get this information, so he wants to ask us for the knowledge we already have so he can spend less time searching, is that such a crime?

This is what you're looking for:

Mind you it is a couple of years old

 

[TREDWISE]

Osteopathic Medical Schools with an emphasis in underserved primary care.

What's weird is I have a friend who is an M1 at a DO school right now and she says that her class is filled with gunners.

 

[aegistitan]

What's weird is I have a friend who is an M1 at a DO school right now and she says that her class is filled with gunners.

I'm pretty sure most DO schools are filled with gunners because most are graded A/B/C/F, could be wrong though. It's just the nature of the grading system - not specific to DO schools. Either way the proportion of MD schools graded P/F is greater than the proportion of DO schools graded P/F, so you're less likely to find gunners at MD schools.

 

[redpanda]

I actually think the vast, vast majority of medical schools have a positive and cooperative atmosphere.

The stories of crazy gunners and competitiveness are actually a very small minority of any medical school class.

Let me remind OP that gunners are going to do their thing regardless of the grading system, and when I say gunner I mean someone who is actively sabotaging other students (NOT someone who is just a pretentious prat or who studies a lot). A P/F grading system does not remove the imperative to study hard since Step 1, Step 2, and shelf exams (which figure into clerkship grades) are still predicated on a broad knowledge base and those things that do get looked at in residency applications.

 

[SteveL7228]

Well this sums up my reaction to the first few posts quite well.



Anyway, what OP wants is a list of all P/F no internal ranking medical schools. And it is cumbersome to sift through all of the school specific threads to get this information, so he wants to ask us for the knowledge we already have so he can spend less time searching, is that such a crime?

This is what you're looking for:

Mind you it is a couple of years old

Great list and info...thank you. Would be nice if someone had something similar for DO schools

 

[WingedOx]

I would much rather be ranked in all 4 years than in just the clinical years.

At least in the first two years your ranking is your own responsibility based on how you perform. Clinical rotation evaluations are all subjectivity.*

*shelf exams excluded, but my school placed very little weight on them

 

[ratman7]

Thanks @aegistitan ! I believe DermViser posted the condensed list of the specific internal no rank and P/F schools on one of the other forums. In that list, the majority of them were top 25 med schools, which kind of disappointed me.

I would much rather be ranked in all 4 years than in just the clinical years.

Should whether the school ranks students or not be factored [fairly large weight] on the schools you apply to?
I don't want to go to a med school where all everyone else cares about is to be at the top of the class. I want to go somewhere where the entire class (or at least 90% of the class) cooperates with each other in a supportive environment.

 

[aegistitan]

Thanks @aegistitan ! I believe DermViser posted the condensed list of the specific internal no rank and P/F schools on one of the other forums. In that list, the majority of them were top 25 med schools, which kind of disappointed me.



Should whether the school ranks students or not be factored [fairly large weight] on the schools you apply to?
I don't want to go to a med school where all everyone else cares about is to be at the top of the class. I want to go somewhere where the entire class (or at least 90% of the class) cooperates with each other in a supportive environment.

could you link me to that thread if you know which one it is?

 

[redpanda]

Thanks @aegistitan
Should whether the school ranks students or not be factored [fairly large weight] on the schools you apply to?
I don't want to go to a med school where all everyone else cares about is to be at the top of the class. I want to go somewhere where the entire class (or at least 90% of the class) cooperates with each other in a supportive environment.

Look, you're trying to go to medical school. Medical school admissions selects a bunch of people who have been at the top of their class for years and still want to be at the top of the class. Wanting to be at the top of the class does not mean that people do not cooperate with each other. The learning environment is a product of the people in the class, not the structure of the school. In the end, almost every program is going to rank you somehow on your MSPE (hello code words!). It's going to happen, so get used to it. Pick a program with people you think you'll like, opportunities you like, and a curriculum you can live with.

 

[ratman7]

could you link me to that thread if you know which one it is?

1. Harvard University - NO: http://hms.harvard.edu/departments/...tion-and-policies/203-grading-and-examination
2. Stanford University - YES: http://med.stanford.edu/md/curriculum/assessment-grading.html
3. Johns Hopkins University - NO: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/pass-fail-schools.926253/#post-12700616
4. University of California—San Francisco - YES: http://meded.ucsf.edu/ume/essential-core-assessment-and-grading-policy
5. University of Pennsylvania (Perelman) - NO: http://www.med.upenn.edu/admiss/curriculum2.html
6. Washington University in St. Louis - NO: http://bulletinoftheschoolofmedicine.wustl.edu/policies/mdprogram/Pages/GradingSystem.aspx
7. Yale University - YES: http://medicine.yale.edu/education/admissions/education/yalesystem.aspx
8. Columbia University - YES: http://ps.columbia.edu/ps/education/academic-progress-promotion
9. Duke University - : http://www.dukedavisoncouncil.org/?page_id=1363
10. University of Washington - YES: http://www.uwmedicine.org/education/documents/md-program/Student-Handbook.pdf
11. University of Chicago (Pritzker) -YES: https://pritzker.uchicago.edu/admissions/faq.shtml
12. University of California—Los Angeles (Geffen) - YES: http://www.medstudent.ucla.edu/offices/sao/clinical/GradingStudentEvaluations.cfm, http://alphaomegaalpha.org/ucla_chapter_info.html
13. University of Michigan—Ann Arbor - YES: http://www.med.umich.edu/lrc/medcurriculum/curriculum/grading.html
14. University of California—San Diego - YES: http://senate.ucsd.edu/manual/Regulations/SDRegulation503.pdf
15. Cornell University (Weill) - YES: http://weill.cornell.edu/education/curriculum/first/hum_str_stu.html
16. Vanderbilt University - YES: https://medschool.vanderbilt.edu/student-affairs/grading-policy
17. University of Pittsburgh - NO: http://www.omed.pitt.edu/curriculum/ms-1.php, http://www.omed.pitt.edu/curriculum/ms-2.php
18. Northwestern University (Feinberg) - NO: http://www.feinberg.northwestern.ed...ormation/awards-honors/alpha-omega-alpha.html
19. Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai - YES: http://icahn.mssm.edu/static_files/MSSM/Files/Education/Student Resources/Student Handbooks/Student Handbooks 2013/Grading System.pdf
20. New York University - NO: http://school.med.nyu.edu/studentsf...ducation/curriculum/curriculum-stages/stage-1; http://webdoc.nyumc.org/school2/files/school2/Alpha_Omega_Alpha_Medical_Honor_Society.pdf

There probably more that are, but this was all that was on the thread

 

[SouthernSurgeon]

Here's something that's probably actually more useful:

http://www.jacr.org/article/S1546-1440(13)00767-9/addons

The supplemental appendix that goes with this article has a master "decoder" list for program's MSPE's. This tells you what goes on behind the scenes at a lot of supposedly "pass/fail" schools.

 

[sunflower18]

I interviewed at 14 schools, and literally every single one emphasised how collaborative and cooperative they are, how they have a FB/Dropbox where everyone shares all of their study materials, that nobody competes with each other, etc. Literally every single school. Perhaps it's naive, but I believe that all of the students I talked to were being truthful. I'm really glad to hear that collaboration is so widespread among med students across the country.

 

[aegistitan]

Here's something that's probably actually more useful:

http://www.jacr.org/article/S1546-1440(13)00767-9/addons

The supplemental appendix that goes with this article has a master "decoder" list for program's MSPE's. This tells you what goes on behind the scenes at a lot of supposedly "pass/fail" schools.

Very useful, thanks!

I interviewed at 14 schools, and literally every single one emphasised how collaborative and cooperative they are, how they have a FB/Dropbox where everyone shares all of their study materials, that nobody competes with each other, etc. Literally every single school. Perhaps it's naive, but I believe that all of the students I talked to were being truthful. I'm really glad to hear that collaboration is so widespread among med students across the country.

But what school wouldn't say that?

 

[Bovary]

I interviewed at 14 schools, and literally every single one emphasised how collaborative and cooperative they are, how they have a FB/Dropbox where everyone shares all of their study materials, that nobody competes with each other, etc. Literally every single school. Perhaps it's naive, but I believe that all of the students I talked to were being truthful. I'm really glad to hear that collaboration is so widespread among med students across the country.

Wasn't it all so tiring!?

Even at schools with super-high stat applicants aiming for orthopedic surgery and graded preclinical years, everyone gushed about how collaborative the environment is. Where did this myth of the cutthroat med school come from? Was this the case in an earlier era?

 

[singergirl18]

SLU and Creighton seem to really foster the collaborative environments!

 

[sunflower18]

Wasn't it all so tiring!?

Even at schools with super-high stat applicants aiming for orthopedic surgery and graded preclinical years, everyone gushed about how collaborative the environment is. Where did this myth of the cutthroat med school come from? Was this the case in an earlier era?

Exactly! I have no idea! I didn't interview at Harvard or Hopkins or anything, but I interviewed at several top 25 schools and they all seemed incredibly non-competitive. I'm really thankful for that, and very hopeful that cutthroatness in med school is exactly what you said -- a myth.

 

[soccerman93]

Thanks @aegistitan ! I believe DermViser posted the condensed list of the specific internal no rank and P/F schools on one of the other forums. In that list, the majority of them were top 25 med schools, which kind of disappointed me.



Should whether the school ranks students or not be factored [fairly large weight] on the schools you apply to?
I don't want to go to a med school where all everyone else cares about is to be at the top of the class. I want to go somewhere where the entire class (or at least 90% of the class) cooperates with each other in a supportive environment.

We're all going to get ranked sooner or later...I'd rather find out early on that I'm not (insert competitive specialty) material if that were the case. I suppose you could apply only to P/F schools but I bet it would be wiser to make that decision with schools you've been accepted to rather than at the front end of the admissions process. Even if your app is sterling you never really know which schools will pass on your app for whatever reason. And if you end up balling out in preclinicals those rankings may help you out

 

[jqueb29]

We're H/P/F at OU but pretty much everybody helps each other

 

[xffan624]

Wasn't it all so tiring!?

Even at schools with super-high stat applicants aiming for orthopedic surgery and graded preclinical years, everyone gushed about how collaborative the environment is. Where did this myth of the cutthroat med school come from? Was this the case in an earlier era?

I was at a medical student party last year and there was a student from another medical school there. We were chatting a bit and she commented how her school was a completely different environment from ours and more of a every person for themselves environment. So apparently they do exist.

 

[TREDWISE]

I was at a medical student party last year and there was a student from another medical school there. We were chatting a bit and she commented how her school was a completely different environment from ours and more of a every person for themselves environment. So apparently they do exist.

This is why I don't really buy that this is a person-specific issue. But I do wonder whether the grading scale is enough to put everyone edge in and of itself. As for this DO school I mentioned, I'm not sure what the purpose of being a gunner is when you want to go into primary care. Whatever!

 

[ridethecliche]

I heard there was some crazy drama at riverside when some people formed a FB group for studying and only invited about half the class. Then word got out...

 

[redpanda]

I heard there was some crazy drama at riverside when some people formed a FB group for studying and only invited about half the class. Then word got out...

Clutch the pearls! People weren't invited to study with half the class! Oh no!

 

[Ace Khalifa]

SLU and Creighton seem to really foster the collaborative environments!

+1 for SLU. I sat in one of their classes before the interview day started. Everyone I met was really nice and my buddy who is an M1 there now (who never BS's with me ever) said SLU truly was a collaborative environment. Also, SLU is true P/F with no internal ranking, so that's a plus.

 

[tantacles]

Rosalind Franklin also has P/F grades now, and it isn't included in the list. Very collaborative students.

 

[ZX10R]

I think that it depends on the incoming class more than anything else; of course, top 15 schools will probably carry more of the closet gunners than mid-tier schools. You should really pick your school that you think is your best fit. (Facility/faculty/interviews/MS4s'/Location)

 

[Goro]

Yup! My students shed their gunner ways as soon as they get the acceptance letter.

Osteopathic Medical Schools with an emphasis in underserved primary care.

 

[TREDWISE]

What are some schools where there is gunning among students instead of everyone trying to help each other?

 

[Afford]

I felt a really friendly atmosphere at all the schools that I visited regardless of whether they were P/F, HP/P/F, or A/B/C, etc. There will be less stress on the med student if the classes are P/F, but I felt that the atmosphere was independent of the grading scheme. I don't think anywhere I visited had a certain percentage quota for their grades, so 100% of people could get A's.

 

[Australopithekus]

I interviewed at 14 schools, and literally every single one emphasised how collaborative and cooperative they are, how they have a FB/Dropbox where everyone shares all of their study materials, that nobody competes with each other, etc. Literally every single school. Perhaps it's naive, but I believe that all of the students I talked to were being truthful. I'm really glad to hear that collaboration is so widespread among med students across the country.

Exactly this. You're worrying about the wrong stuff at this stage.

 

[NickNaylor]

Exactly! I have no idea! I didn't interview at Harvard or Hopkins or anything, but I interviewed at several top 25 schools and they all seemed incredibly non-competitive. I'm really thankful for that, and very hopeful that cutthroatness in med school is exactly what you said -- a myth.

To some degree this is just good masking. Everyone has an inner gunner. Some hide it better than others. You will discover this for yourself when you start M3, where the stress and fatigue of the environment causes many people to reveal their true personalities. Some of the people I found to be "collaborative" during the first two years became huge dinguses during third year. Not everyone, of course, but enough to start a trend.

 

[sunflower18]

To some degree this is just good masking. Everyone has an inner gunner. Some hide it better than others. You will discover this for yourself when you start M3, where the stress and fatigue of the environment causes many people to reveal their true personalities. Some of the people I found to be "collaborative" during the first two years became huge dinguses during third year. Not everyone, of course, but enough to start a trend.

That is really good insight. I hadn't thought of that before, but it certainly makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the perspective! I'll keep that in mind.

 

[Bovary]

I first learned "gunner" to mean "They'll throw you under the bus to further themselves", but this might not be the best word here. I picture what @NickNaylor just described to be more like "too damn tired to actively help each other with journal club"; not as much malicious as just normal human worn out, which is tough to fault someone for. But IDK, because fatigue is no excuse for being an dingus, as NN says.

 

[NickNaylor]

I first learned "gunner" to mean "They'll throw you under the bus to further themselves", but this might not be the best word here. I picture what @NickNaylor just described to be more like "too damn tired to actively help each other with journal club"; not as much malicious as just normal human worn out, which is tough to fault someone for. But IDK, because fatigue is no excuse for being an dingus, as NN says.

Try "oh hey guys, I made this presentation for rounds and I thought I would let you know 10 minutes before rounds." Or "oh hey guys, I saw your patients this morning and figured I would present them if you don't mind."

k

 

[Bovary]

Try "oh hey guys, I made this presentation for rounds and I thought I would let you know 10 minutes before rounds." Or "oh hey guys, I saw your patients this morning and figured I would present them if you don't mind."

k

O.

 

[aegistitan]

Try "oh hey guys, I made this presentation for rounds and I thought I would let you know 10 minutes before rounds." Or "oh hey guys, I saw your patients this morning and figured I would present them if you don't mind."

k

I'm not familiar with the rounding system, but what's so bad about this?

 

[operaman]

This is a thread the OP should bookmark and come back to after finishing preclinicals. I remember thinking about similar things before starting and it's interesting to look at it now with the benefit of hindsight. My experience:

1) Every class is collaborative, but you will not collaborate much with the majority of your class unless you have a very small (<50) class. Some people are loners, some groups will have a different style, some people you'll like/dislike, some people will like/dislike you. I think everyone ends up finding their own group and those are the people you will truly collaborate with.

2) No matter the attitude of the class, you still have to learn it yourself in the end. However you do this is up to you, but nobody is helping you on exam day.

3) Everyone guns hard at first. Med school is pretty good at sifting everything out. About half the class will be below average. Many undergrad superstars will be average. People eventually find their stride.

4) Of all the student-produced notes/study guides/other resources that generous students shared with the class, I can count on one hand the number I found actually helpful in 2 years of preclincals and still have plenty of fingers left over. Most of the benefits come from making these things, not reviewing them. Tutors and other upperclassmen often had the best resources and could attest to which ones most accurately reflected the exams. Things shared via class dropbox were never all that helpful I'm afraid, at least not for how I studied. Maybe others found them useful.

5) Every class has a different vibe. Your class will be different from whatever you see when you interview.

6) Look skeptically on any stories about people gunning during 3rd year. It happens, but quite frequently people will equate working hard with gunning. I never stole another student's patient, but if a new one came in and nobody else wanted to take it, I wasn't about to sit by just so we all had an even number. If the attending asks a student a question and they don't know it, and then the attending asks if anyone else in the group knows the answer, I'm answering the darn question. That's not gunning, that's reading.

7) Grading scale has little to do with competition within the class (unless it was a true curve where grades are awarded to X% of the class regardless of raw[# correct] scores). Studies have shown the P/F makes students feel subjectively less stressed out, but that average exam grades don't change. People will still want to be the best they can be (and yes, better than the rest if possible).

8) Even without grades or internal ranking, everyone still knows who the rockstars are.

 

[EthylMethylMan]

I've interviewed at around 7 US allopathic medical schools, and the students at all of them insisted that their student body was very close-knit and teamwork-focused. I feel like gunning isn't as big a thing as it was years ago. Maybe you'd see it in top-ten schools, but at your average mid-to-low-tier med school it probably doesn't really happen.

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

Try "oh hey guys, I made this presentation for rounds and I thought I would let you know 10 minutes before rounds." Or "oh hey guys, I saw your patients this morning and figured I would present them if you don't mind."

k

What does this behavior accomplish? Does it give the a$$holes a higher grade for that rotation? Also, is it only possible for a few to achieve an honors grade (or whatever) during a given rotation?