Who goes to an undergrad without grades?

[Cegar]

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For example: The Evergreen State College, Reed College, New College of Florida, Bennington College.

These colleges (and a few others) do not give out traditional grades. The professors write evaluations for each student.

I'm curious, how have people who attended a school like this faired?

 

[HumidBeing]

My sister went to UCSC when evaluations were done narrative style instead of graded. She never intended to head to med school, but had no problems getting accepted into top grad schools for her area of interest.

 

[Cardiac]

I've heard of a bunch of people going through Brown and coming out with an Ivy League Degree but no grades. All Pass/Fail.

 

[RapplixGmed]

A surgeon I know did his undergrad at Reed and got into Stanford.

 

[Phosphorus]

.

 

[searun]

I don't know how they've faired, but if I had a degree from any school that didn't follow a standard grading system, I would feel like my degree was worthless.

Make sure that you avoid all of the medical schools with pass/fail grading systems. Otherwise you are going to have a worthless MD degree.

 

[jeebs]

I attended the Evergreen State College and there have been both pros and cons. The pros are that my faculty knows me very well- due to the different structure of the classes and the small faculty to student ratio. So- when it comes time for faculty to write about me- usually about three to four pages at the end of a year long program: it is an in depth evaluation not only of my performance academically, but also my performance working with others, problem solving skills etc. Grad/Med schools usually appreciate the well rounded view of students that they get. On the con side- for med schools that rate you on an equation using GPA, MCAT and X- I am SOL. Also, AMCAS never forwarded my narrative evaluations to the schools with my AMCAS app. So, they recieved the typical AMCAS app but where the grades should have been listed it was just NE for narrative evaluation and schools had no idea of knowing how well I did or didn't do. I didn't find out about this until Dec. Sooooooo....to make a long story short- I think it is a little bit of a liability applying for medical school- but grad schools usually love the narrative eval.

 

[justareedie]

Fun fact: Reed actually does give traditional grades; they're just withheld from students unless specifically requested. A formal transcript will show the grades, but professors don't mark them on returned papers--instead, they give extensive comments and discussion.

 

[DrLuv]

..

 

[Cegar]

I'm currently a pre-med student at The Evergreen State College, and I know that greeners do get into med school, even if they have an upward battle. There is a list of about 20 schools that have accepted our alum, which is pretty good considering there's probably only around 5-10 students that apply each year. UW seems to be a greener's best shot, and they seem to be very open to our curriculum. I have heard horror stories though, about schools that reject you solely based on your non-trad transcript. But who wants to attend a stiff school like that anyway?

My advise to someone in my situation would be to score higher than average on the MCAT and apply broadly. I hear lots of Greeners end up in DO schools because they score low on their MCAT. Schools often assume that eval-based schools don't give tests, which of course isn't exactly true.

Hope that helps, I know how nerve-racking it can be in this situation...

Nice. I love Evergreen. Especially your kayaks. Or rather, the areas you have in which to kayak.

 

[Perrotfish]

Make sure that you avoid all of the medical schools with pass/fail grading systems. Otherwise you are going to have a worthless MD degree.

Are there any truely pass/fail medical schools? My impressions was that medical schools schools were only pass/fail for the first two years (acknowledging that those grades are generally disregareded in residency selection anyway) with grades/rankings in third year that really do affect where you get a residency.

 

[lord_jeebus]

Are there any truely pass/fail medical schools? My impressions was that medical schools schools were only pass/fail for the first two years (acknowledging that those grades are generally disregareded in residency selection anyway) with grades/rankings in third year that really do affect where you get a residency.

I know that Stanford is one. +/- grading all four years.

 

[illixir]

Are there any truely pass/fail medical schools? My impressions was that medical schools schools were only pass/fail for the first two years (acknowledging that those grades are generally disregareded in residency selection anyway) with grades/rankings in third year that really do affect where you get a residency.

There are hardly any that do pass/fail for clinicals but there are a few. I believe Cleveland Clinic is for all four years and Yale too I think.