What defines competitive clinical grades?

[Thesimplelifeofamyloid]

Obviously the more honors the better, but what do you think is the magic threshold for being considered competitive by PDs? 2, 4 5, all honors grades?
Are grades at DOs schools viewed the same way as grades at MD schools?
Lets also assume that honors grades at a institution aren't given out like candy.

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[Redpancreas]

There’s definitely no threshold. I would imagine it be something like this but there’s so many exceptions. Tier 1>2>>3.

Tier 1:
All honors

Tier 2
Honors in your field
HP in your field with honors in another related field.

Tier 3:
No honors in your field. HP in some other fields.

I have no idea how DO grades are affected, but there’s absolutely some overall bias in terms of ranking.

 

[Lawpy]

I think it's impossible to say especially since there are schools with P/F clinical grading.

But as a rough rule

All honors >= nearly all honors + 1 HP >> some honors >>>> no honors

 

[jdp207]

There's no objective criteria other than more honors is more gooder. Whether your grades are competitive or not is dependent on what the other applicants grades are. However I want to emphasize that we shouldn't let this fact get in the way of the SDN past time of creating tiers based on arbitrary cut offs and then arguing about them.

 

[Dantes]

It's difficult to say. There's some schools where only 20% of the clerkship cohort qualifies for honors, which could be like 3 people. Whereas other places it's 50% or more.

 

[Mad Jack]

Yeah, my school limited honors to 10% of the class, but they provided this extensive report that showed exactly where you fell in the class overall. Most PDs probably don't even look at the supplement so it's like, "why does this guy have no honors?"

 

[Thesimplelifeofamyloid]

I think it's impossible to say especially since there are schools with P/F clinical grading.

But as a rough rule

All honors >= nearly all honors + 1 HP >> some honors >>>> no honors

There’s definitely no threshold. I would imagine it be something like this but there’s so many exceptions. Tier 1>2>>3.

Tier 1:
All honors

Tier 2
Honors in your field
HP in your field with honors in another related field.

Tier 3:
No honors in your field. HP in some other fields.

I have no idea how DO grades are affected, but there’s absolutely some overall bias in terms of ranking.

Thanks for your input. So in general, 4-5 honors out of 6 core clerkships seems to be enough to be competitive enough? I was talking to an upperclassman at my school and they suggested this number.

 

[Redpancreas]

Thanks for your input. So in general, 4-5 honors out of 6 core clerkships seems to be enough to be competitive enough? I was talking to an upperclassman at my school and they suggested this number.

Are you trolling? Dude, why are you so fixated on finding a threshold?! Honors = Good.

 

[efle]

MSPEs have a histogram showing how rare your grade is, there's no magic number because every school is different

 

[Gilakend]

Heavily depends on the school and if the PD knows how the school grades. My school is known to grade hard, know many people who matched into different competitive surg specialties this year with no honors. The majority of people I talked to had 0-2. At others schools, I've heard of people with 1/2 honors or more (but not all honors) being told they have below-average clinical grades for surg subspecialties.

 

[aldol16]

The rule is simple: the more the better. There's no magic number that classifies a great med student from an okay one. Focus on getting as many as you can - that's all you can really do.

 

[Dral]

Honestly when I review apps I try to look at the comments since grading methods are so different among schools. Obv more honors is the goal, but my thought is that a good conscientious learner will be exposed in comments.

I can’t say everyone handles it that way, but we typically can get an idea from your app how you compare to your cohort (as others have mentioned). If out of 200 students at a school, only 10 get honors on a rotation and you get a pass and your reviewer/letter comments are good, I’m going to take that into favorable consideration…despite not earning honors.

 

[Redpancreas]

Honestly when I review apps I try to look at the comments since grading methods are so different among schools. Obv more honors is the goal, but my thought is that a good conscientious learner will be exposed in comments.

I can’t say everyone handles it that way, but we typically can get an idea from your app how you compare to your cohort. If out of 200 students at a school, only 10 get honors on a rotation and you get a pass and your reviewer/letter comments are good, I’m going to take that into favorable consideration…despite not earning honors.

I know you're faculty for a competitive field somewhere, but for clinical grades at my school, that approach may fall short. Our MSPEs are curated (positively) by faculty and we are given the liberty to request omissions/edits and often reach out to faculty to add XYZ quotes to MSPEs if they are willing to. One time a faculty member told me I was the best medical student he worked with in person, but then didn't write it in the MSPE so in effort to self-aggrandize, I emailed him before MSPE edits were due and he happily put in that addendum.

The point there is I don't think the comments reveal too much at the schools that do a lot of editing to the MSPE. That said, I think faculty/PDs like yourself adapt to how your feeder schools grade which is why regional familiarity (and this preference) exists.

 

[Dral]

I know you're faculty for a competitive field somewhere, but for clinical grades at my school, that approach may fall short. Our MSPEs are curated (positively) by faculty and we are given the liberty to request omissions/edits and often reach out to faculty to add XYZ quotes to MSPEs if they are willing to. One time a faculty member told me I was the best medical student he worked with in person, but then didn't write it in the MSPE so in effort to self-aggrandize, I emailed him before MSPE edits were due and he happily put in that addendum.

The point there is I don't think the comments reveal too much at the schools that do a lot of editing to the MSPE. That said, I think faculty/PDs like yourself adapt to how your feeder schools grade which is why regional familiarity (and this preference) exists.

Absolutely to your final point. We do tend to draw from certain schools (and candidates from certain schools seem to tend to accept our interview invites). Again, yet another example of how clinical grades have no real great standardization and we as faculty do the best we can with the (hopeful) understanding that it sometimes seems almost like comparing apples to oranges.