What percent of your class fails?

[D.O.noHarm]

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I'm currently an OMSII in good academic standing at my school. I've had a few close calls but nothing serious and thankfully I have passed all my classes to date. However, the same can not be said for a large portion of my classmates. Any given class we will have 15-40/230 students failing each class individually. In totality, we have well over 20% of our class re-mediating something. The failures go all the way up to our SGA which are some of the best students in our class. This is a well established DO school with national recognition. If you talk to the students here, we all think it's excessive but a lot of them just shrug their shoulders and say "I guess that's med school." I'm trying to gauge if it's like this at other schools?

I feel terrible for my classmates that have failed. We are only given 1-2 months of 'dedicated study period' for boards and their remediation exams are scheduled for 2 weeks before boards.

Are other schools the same way?

 

[QualityProcess]

first of all, 1-2 months dedicated is plenty, not "only."

We could have an entire forum dedicated to the many reasons students fail. Weren't dedicated enough. Shouldn't have been admitted in the first place. Prioritized boards over their winter semester courses because grades "don't matter" and everyone thinks they can break 260 if they just had one more week on top of their 5 weeks dedicated.

there are exceptions (grandma died, etc... I feel bad for these students) but in most cases the problem is in the failing students' syntax... it's explained not as "I failed rheum/neuro/endocrine," it's "the administration is savage" and a med school "fails too many students."

 

[Goro]

I'd say 5% in bad year. Most of these will take LOA and come back stronger the following year. But some people remediate and go on.

NYITCOM lost 10% of one Class each year for four consecutive years not too long ago.

I'd say that your school has an abnormally high number of failing students, especially for an established school.

I'm currently an OMSII in good academic standing at my school. I've had a few close calls but nothing serious and thankfully I have passed all my classes to date. However, the same can not be said for a large portion of my classmates. Any given class we will have 15-40/230 students failing each class individually. In totality, we have well over 20% of our class re-mediating something. The failures go all the way up to our SGA which are some of the best students in our class. This is a well established DO school with national recognition. If you talk to the students here, we all think it's excessive but a lot of them just shrug their shoulders and say "I guess that's med school." I'm trying to gauge if it's like this at other schools?

I feel terrible for my classmates that have failed. We are only given 1-2 months of 'dedicated study period' for boards and their remediation exams are scheduled for 2 weeks before boards.

Are other schools the same way?

 

[D.O.noHarm]

first of all, 1-2 months dedicated is plenty, not "only."

We could have an entire forum dedicated to the many reasons students fail. Weren't dedicated enough. Shouldn't have been admitted in the first place. Prioritized boards over their winter semester courses because grades "don't matter" and everyone thinks they can break 260 if they just had one more week on top of their 5 weeks dedicated.

there are exceptions (grandma died, etc... I feel bad for these students) but in most cases the problem is in the failing students' syntax... it's explained not as "I failed rheum/neuro/endocrine," it's "the administration is savage" and a med school "fails too many students."

More than 20% of students failing any given class is not due to personal exceptions and there comes a point when it becomes excessive beyond the student's control. I understand some students don't work to their fullest potential in some cases but med school is not a weed out program. If over 10% of the class fails any given class than I believe it is the schools responsibility to review their presentation and testing of the material just as much so as it is that student's responsibility to retool their approach. In fact, I know 2 schools in my state where the admin does this. It seems the level of failures at my school is excessive and I'm wondering if this, "just med school."

 

[Drrrrrr. Celty]

Essentially the 6 year graduation rate among all US medical schools is somewhere between a 92-95%. Though if we don't consider the people who drop out in their first two months the number probably is closer to 95%. I won't be surprised if 10% of people in my class have remediated at least 1 class either.

I think all medical school is designed excessive. It's about melding you I guess.

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

I've been wondering that at mine. It seems like everyone is doing pretty well but I don't know we've only gone through three classes. The last class we got through supposedly gets a lot of people each year but I don't know any numbers.

 

[yanks26dmb]

I'd guess we lost 6-7% first year. Maybe half of these were by choice. We'll see what happens this year, but I don't expect us to lose too many more.

 

[JustPlainBill]

We were told TCOM was between 8-10% failure rate and it was usually outside factors that did it. We had one girl that made it through the week of orientation and bailed at lunch the first day -- the school did a "cursory review of medically essential general chemistry" in one hour and followed it by a "cursory review of medically essential organic chemistry" in the next hour; According to her friends, she decided that after being in those 2 classes, she didn't want to spend the rest of her life at that speed and bailed. We lost one who everyone expected to be at the top of the class during Neuro -- great grades, MCAT, smoke biochem/cell biology, MSS ate his lunch and Neuro did him in -- it was really the practical exams that got inside his head -- he had trouble telling the difference between a nerve and vein.

We had another one who was completing a Ph.D, starting med school and being a full time mommy to a preK child --- she tried to remediate but it didn't go well -- she's now happily working for a pharm company and doing well. Had another one fail 2 classes and have to repeat, did well during repeat and into second year but failed the COMLEX Level 1 twice and was never heard from again....had another who passed second year, had some issues in 3rd, was sent back to second to repeat a few classes, evidently had not taken boards, failed them and was never heard from again.....

In my case, I drove 1.5 hours each way during my first run through first year, had poor prep and failed the last class by 3 questions -- repeated the year AFTER moving across the street from the school, never failed anything after that and am a practicing attending right now.

Get your life set before you start medical school -- if you're in a needy relationship, end it --- you've been selected out of, on average, 150 people applying for your seat --

 

[Goro]

So true!!!!! But I'd say that even a 10%+ attrition rate is a sigh of either poor teaching, and/or poor admissions selectivity. This is why I have such a low opinion of LUCOM.

More than 20% of students failing any given class is not due to personal exceptions and there comes a point when it becomes excessive beyond the student's control.

To follow up on my learned colleague, the #1 reason my schools loses students to LOA, dismissal or withdrawal is to life issues. It's rare that a student doesn't "get" medical school. The top loss reasons are:

1) mental health issues
2) physical health issues
3) outside issues (mom gets cancer; person's spouse or SO is stepping out), complicated by poor coping skills
4) poor work ethic
5) poor time mgt skills.

We were told TCOM was between 8-10% failure rate and it was usually outside factors that did it. We had one girl that made it through the week of orientation and bailed at lunch the first day -- the school did a "cursory review of medically essential general chemistry" in one hour and followed it by a "cursory review of medically essential organic chemistry" in the next hour; According to her friends, she decided that after being in those 2 classes, she didn't want to spend the rest of her life at that speed and bailed. We lost one who everyone expected to be at the top of the class during Neuro -- great grades, MCAT, smoke biochem/cell biology, MSS ate his lunch and Neuro did him in -- it was really the practical exams that got inside his head -- he had trouble telling the difference between a nerve and vein.

We had another one who was completing a Ph.D, starting med school and being a full time mommy to a preK child --- she tried to remediate but it didn't go well -- she's now happily working for a pharm company and doing well. Had another one fail 2 classes and have to repeat, did well during repeat and into second year but failed the COMLEX Level 1 twice and was never heard from again....had another who passed second year, had some issues in 3rd, was sent back to second to repeat a few classes, evidently had not taken boards, failed them and was never heard from again.....

In my case, I drove 1.5 hours each way during my first run through first year, had poor prep and failed the last class by 3 questions -- repeated the year AFTER moving across the street from the school, never failed anything after that and am a practicing attending right now.

Get your life set before you start medical school -- if you're in a needy relationship, end it --- you've been selected out of, on average, 150 people applying for your seat --

 

[JustPlainBill]

So true!!!!! But I'd say that even a 10%+ attrition rate is a sigh of either poor teaching, and/or poor admissions selectivity. This is why I have such a low opinion of LUCOM.



To follow up on my learned colleague, the #1 reason my schools loses students to LOA, dismissal or withdrawal is to life issues. It's rare that a student doesn't "get" medical school. The top loss reasons are:

1) mental health issues
2) physical health issues
3) outside issues (mom gets cancer; person's spouse or SO is stepping out), complicated by poor coping skills
4) poor work ethic
5) poor time mgt skills.

"learned colleague"? -- Jeez, Goro, didn't know we were getting formal here -- guess I'll have to pull the suspenders up over the wife-beater T-Shirt a la Santino Corleone.....but then again, you probably weren't talking about me with the red, fur lined gym shorts, flip flops, and hat with the ear muffs pulled up, were you?

 

[jojo58]

So far we've lost 5/110 people (4.5%). We are still in semester I, OMS I. My school doesnt have the best reputation but it beats the carib schools I suppose.

 

[oOKawaiiOo]

A hand full of students in my class. Of course it's only the 1st semester. I'm not too sure about the details about their situation, but I wish them the best.

 

[ortnakas]

My class lost four students and gained one from the class above us between OMS-I and OMS-II. Of the four, three repeated first year and did fine. As far as individual class failures, I don't think there were ever more than a half dozen out of 112 or so, and the vast majority of those successfully remediated at the end of the year and didn't have to do the full repeat.

 

[Drrrrrr. Celty]

My class lost four students and gained one from the class above us between OMS-I and OMS-II. Of the four, three repeated first year and did fine. As far as individual class failures, I don't think there were ever more than a half dozen out of 112 or so, and the vast majority of those successfully remediated at the end of the year and didn't have to do the full repeat.

Your school does have an almost 98% 6 year graduation rate tho. Draconian or not they know how to run the school.

 

[DrBowtie]

Your school does have an almost 98% 6 year graduation rate tho. Draconian or not they know how to run the school.

Or everyone gets a trophy.

 

[CajunMedic]

My class is in 3rd year. We're down 15 percent from when we started, 98 out of our original 116. I can think of only 2 that were not academic: 1 left in the 1st week to go to pharmacy school and the other wanted to go back to their family in CA.

 

[Goro]

Was this unique to your Class????

My class is in 3rd year. We're down 15 percent from when we started, 98 out of our original 116. I can think of only 2 that were not academic: 1 left in the 1st week to go to pharmacy school and the other wanted to go back to their family in CA.

 

[CajunMedic]

Was this unique to your Class????

I'm not sure, I've heard my class is an anomaly with losses and COMLEX scores, but nothing from a reliable source.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

 

[DetectiveAlonzo]

So far we've lost 5/110 people (4.5%). We are still in semester I, OMS I. My school doesnt have the best reputation but it beats the carib schools I suppose.

Anything beats the Caribbean schools my guy... even a place like Liberty.

 

[Mad Jack]

http://www.aacom.org/docs/default-source/data-and-trends/2013-com-attrition.pdf?sfvrsn=2

Most recent data I know of on the subject. Attrition varies widely by school.

Notice how the average in, say, third year, was 3.37%, but one school had as high as 15.12% remediating third year. That's insane.

 

[DocWinter]

I expect 10-12% of my original class will not graduate in 2018. Remediation from anatomy or molecular medicine from 1st semester is the #1 reason. A few with personal/life issues and a couple that have not been successful on boards.

Once you get out of 1st year survival rates (should) be very high. And if you get 8 weeks for board study be thankful, that's above the average and if you maintained a B through school should be more than sufficient.

 

[hallowmann]

There was one class in first year that 20% of my class failed and almost all remediated successfully. Beyond that its more like 5% fail most of the hardest classes and I'm sure some of those are people that failed in the past.

We've lost about 8-9% of the class. I'd say about half are still in med school, just a year behind, and the other half aren't around anymore. I don't personally know of anyone that is repeating 3rd year (they may exist, but from what I remember it takes a lot to do that), but I know of people that are off schedule and graduating late because of failing boards or a rotation in 3rd year.