Your thoughts: does P/F really matter?

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schpilkes

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I was wondering whether having a P/F grading system has much impact on the med school environment and your ability to lead a "balanced" life?
Does having an H/P/F system change things all that much?
Hoping to get some additional perspective as I decide between med schools. Thanks!
 
Originally posted by schpilkes
I was wondering whether having a P/F grading system has much impact on the med school environment and your ability to lead a "balanced" life?
Does having an H/P/F system change things all that much?
Hoping to get some additional perspective as I decide between med schools. Thanks!
Click to expand...

I think that p/f encourages slacking
 
Yes, it's does make life a lot easier. In order to get a 90% on the tests, you have to memorize the intricate details of stuff that you will never have to know again (The replication mechanism of the polio virus, etc, etc) So instead, you can shoot for an 85% percent (with 70% being passing) and study from board review books so that you are learning only the most important stuff and stuff that will most likely be on the boards.

Also, there is one school that I won't mention that has a HP/P/F system, with pass being 70%. They have their class averages of 87% and known as a gunner school. My belief is that everybody is trying to get the cutoff for honors and studying harder for it, be it at lunch or every other moment of the day.

Basically, I'm trying to say that if you know you are going to get an 80+ on a test, you are not stressed out before the test trying to get the extra 10%. Some people don't do anything else and are slacking. Other people do review books and take the extra time to beat in to your head the most important knowledge.
 
PS All the top schools are also moving to a P/F system.
 
Originally posted by idq1i
I think that p/f encourages slacking
Click to expand...

I think that pass/fail grading system is great, depending on the type of student you are. Those who are inclined to be slackers, can fall behind. But then there are those students who study like crazy whether they're getting graded or not.

Personally I feel that the p/f system takes away a lot of unnecessary stress from medical education. You can adjust your studying to your interests and your learning style instead of memorizing every enzyme in some random pathway, "just in case it might be on the exam" <-- All of you must have had this happen to you in Cell Bio &Bio Chem undergrad, and it sucked.

Also I think that the "BIG CONCEPTS" are much more important than all the little details that you're gonna forget a few days after the exam anyway.

Sure Pass/Fail can lead to slacking, but even when I want to ease up sometimes I realize how important it is to learn as much as possible, and have many late nights/early mornings studying -- I feel it's kind of a responsibility I have to my future patients.
 
One of our deans told us that the biggest disadvantage of pass fail is that all of those students who would have been top scorers in your class no longer are as competetive when it comes time to apply for residency because their transcript doesn't reflect it. This results in an overall less competetive residency match list then a school that uses grades and ranking. Of course if you are barely passing, then the pass fail system works in your favor.
 
Pass/Fail is the great. Like most of you have said before it takes away a lot of the unecessary stress involved in memorizing minute details and also makes for a smooth transition into med school life. Furthermore, your grades in the first year or two of med school are relatively insignificant (in terms of matching) compared with USMLE scores, 3rd year grades and evaluations, and letters of recommendation.
 
Originally posted by ckent
One of our deans told us that the biggest disadvantage of pass fail is that all of those students who would have been top scorers in your class no longer are as competetive when it comes time to apply for residency because their transcript doesn't reflect it. This results in an overall less competetive residency match list then a school that uses grades and ranking. Of course if you are barely passing, then the pass fail system works in your favor.
Click to expand...

Not sure I would agree. Pass/Fail makes it so that the board scores are a lot more important, so the top students need to score high on the boards in order seperate themselves from the other students. But the basic science scores are so low in how residencies grade people that not having grades for them would make to much of a difference. From what I've read on here, the most important things are in order: Board scores, 3rd year grades (which most p/f schools have), recommendations, first 2 year scores, other stuff.
 
In regards to P/F systems diminishing the competitiveness of applicants in the Match, I disagree to a certain extent. Take a look at the Stanford and Harvard match lists. Both are P/F, and graduates from these schools consistently match at some of the most competitive residency programs in the country. So, the P/F disadvantage mentioned in a previous post is not entirely true. But what the hell do I know? I'm just a worthless pre-med schmuck.
 
99% of medschools, even ones who have P/F preclinical yrs, grade/rank their students during 3rd yr rotations. yale & hms included. stanford i'm not sure
 
Originally posted by chef
99% of medschools, even ones who have P/F preclinical yrs, grade/rank their students during 3rd yr rotations. yale & hms included. stanford i'm not sure
Click to expand...

I think it's higher than 99%. The only school the pretends it doesn't is UCLA, but they still have "optional" grades on their third year rotations which they use to rank all of their students. But the OP is referring to the first two years, or if he wasn't, he is now.


Hey Chef, as someone who went to a school that is P/F to H/P/F, did you find the grades to be more stressfull??
 
I appreciate all the insight and opinions!
 
bump...

can anyone else provide more insights about P/F vs. grades?
 
We're H/P/F here at GW, with Honors being >= 89.5%, and Passing being >=69.5%. As you can imagine, people here either really do kill themselves to get over that 89.5 barrier, or blow it off completely if they're not within striking distance.

Example:
A buddy of mine found that he would have to get a 102% on the final to honor Histo, but that he only needed a 44% to just pass. He justified not studying for the Histo final by rationalizing that he had a decent shot of honoring his other classes, so why spend time studying for Histo when he was virtually guaranteed a "P"? He ended up getting a 55% in Histo, and of course passed.

Now, in that case, would he have been better off going to a simply P/F school? I think so. He would've had no reason to not study for all classes equally. Not that Histo is the most important aspect of medical education, but you never know if that could come back to haunt him on the boards.

HamOn
 
i know that here at einstein, the faculty finally got rid of honors in the second year (it has always been only p/f for first year) because last year things got completely out of hand with people being as cut-throat and gunner as possible. now of course there are those who need honors to stoke their already inflated ego's but really, when honors is in the picture the worst traits in everybody comes out. and that is not to mention the unequal distribution of material that happens when things get competitive. what i mean by that is that here at einstein we have test sequestration, but inevitably there are ways that people have gotten hold of previous tests and facts tests on previous exams and with honors in the picture, only a handful of students will have access to this material, so in the end there is no honor in the honor grading system because there will always be an unequal playing field. finally it just got so bad that the administration decided to end giving honors.

now i cannot say from personal experience if things are better or worse, but i can say that without honors there is a very free flow of information. we routinely have emails that go out to the entire class with very lengthy study guides prepared by various students. this is something that has always happened in first year, but it definitely didn't ever happen during the second year.

well, this has gotten lengthy, but my point is that p/f is not at all for slackers like one of the posters seemed to say. it encourages an environment of learning and community. and of course third year is the year that really matters and that is and most likely always will be graded in the traditional way.
 
Originally posted by schpilkes
I was wondering whether having a P/F grading system has much impact on the med school environment and your ability to lead a "balanced" life?
Does having an H/P/F system change things all that much?
Click to expand...

Penn switches from P/F to H/P/F and I hate it. I think it's a gigantic negative mark on my school and my sense from the last time we had a class meeting is that it's going to go away sometime in the future.

I will agree that P/F promotes slacking... I mean, if we don't learn some trivial detail that we'll just forget in two weeks, WE'LL JUST BE TERRIBLE DOCTORS! H/P/F has brought out all the closet gunners. The funniest part I think are that the exams just like to trip you up. How do you establish a curve in a class (any med school) of highly motivated geniuses? Well, just quiz them on trivial details and give a bunch of tricky questions that are either designed to throw you or have multiple answers that could be argued for.

I don't believe the honors grade is important at all for our futures either. I don't buy that residency directors are going to care about pre-clinical grades at all. But, why should the people in my class believe me? Hell, why should I believe me? What do I know anyways? So everyone's nervous about it.

Sorry, just a rant. But, this is the nature of the beast.
 
Originally posted by Neuronix
I don't believe the honors grade is important at all for our futures either. I don't buy that residency directors are going to care about pre-clinical grades at all. But, why should the people in my class believe me?
Click to expand...

It's being scared of the unknown that drives paranoia. Residency directors don't care much about pre-clinical grades.
 
I am an MS IV. The truth about P/F is that there is no true P/F in any school I know of, unless the school doesn't having a ranking system. No matter if its P/F or H/P/F, in the end, all the percentage from every class you took in the first two years get added up to produce your "rank". So, while you might have a "P", a high percentage on that "P" compared with some one who barely passed will ultimately show up on your rank, making P/F system pointless. At least, this is how my school does it.

Stressing out about grading system is unnecessary. The real quesiton is, does the school you go to have a ranking system. The second question is how does the school rank you.
 
Isnt P/F misleading since most schools keep secret rankings anyway for AOA?
 
Exactly my point. On your Dean's list, you will be categorized into different portions ("superior student", "Excellent student",... all the way down to the mediocre statement of "good student'). These categories are based on your... class ranking! Therefore, P/F system is pointless - everyone will still gun for that extra 0.5% on a test.
 
Originally posted by Gleevec
Isnt P/F misleading since most schools keep secret rankings anyway for AOA?
Click to expand...

Exactly... this is why some schools have stuck with letter grades.

However, even with letter grades... it's like PASS/FAIL.

At Hopkins, during the preclinical years, ~75% will receive a B. Only 10-15% will receive an A, and less than 5% receive Cs with a few getting Ds and Fs.

Even with letter grades, it is essentially FAIL/PASS/HIGH PASS/HONORS
 
Just an update for interested parties:

The Hopkins grading scheme changed to H/HP/P/F two years ago for all four years.

This is probably not a significant change, since the distribution of grades is similar to the old system, but the admissions office has noted an increase in the number of applicants since Hopkins turned away from letter grades.

Cheers,

doepug
MS IV, Johns Hopkins
 
different schools have different methods of selecting for AOA and preparing your dean's letter.
at my school, pre-clinical grades are just a minor component of many things that include clinical grades, step 1, research, community service, leadership,to get AOA and a strong letter.
i find pass/fail to be fantastic. and it was an important component in deciding which school i wanted to attend.

in addition, not everyone in h/p/f systems are gunning to make AOA. there are plenty of people in the middle of the curve and below who realize they have no chance of honoring a class. instead what you have is the people who are in the upper quartile who have anxious ridden lives trying to cram the most trivial of details to make the cut-off.
 
Originally posted by Gleevec
Isnt P/F misleading since most schools keep secret rankings anyway for AOA?
Click to expand...

Yes, that's pretty accurate. But fact is, only 16% of the people get AOA, so it shouldn't stress most people out, where as grades would stress out most people because everybody has a chance to get that H on their record.

As for the deans letter, all deans letter bakes the class down to quarters or fifths (bad spelling). How they o this is very objective. I can't speak for other P/f schools, but at mine the first two years arn't taken into account for this ranking. I know UCSF (Guess I will speak for other schools) a P/F school, they use solely the third year grades and then tweak it based on research and stuff like that.


So really it's a matter of what get's reported to the residencies. At graded schools, each moment matters and is reported, so you struggle for every test. At P/F, eventually you will be broken down as a class, but you know that the difference between an 89.5 and 90.5 isn't going to make a mark on your transcript and most likely won't affect where you are on your deans letter.
 
I've heard that UCSF is purely pass-fail the 1st 2 years. There's no internal rankings at all. Is this true, or am I mistakened?
 
Originally posted by medhopeful08
I've heard that UCSF is purely pass-fail the 1st 2 years. There's no internal rankings at all. Is this true, or am I mistakened?
Click to expand...

From UCSF's deans website it says that they base the first rankings on 3rd year grades, and tweak it based on that. It does lead me to believe that the first year grades are taken into account in the tweaking, but Whatcha is the person you should be asking. Or someone from UCSF needs to ask the dean if the grades are taken into account at all. Someone (souljah1) did this a year ago, and the answer he said the dean gave him I thought was an avvoidance of the question.
 
I'm a first-year at a school where we're graded H/P/F, and I couldn't be happier with the system. No one is killing themselves with memorizing minutiae, and there is plenty of cooperation between class members. "Honors" is sort of seen as something nice to get, if you happen to have taken the class as an undergrad or have a particular interest in immunology, for example, and is a nice reward for people who choose to work a little harder. But it's not something to "gun" for, and I think most people don't give a crap about whether or not they honor anything.

That said, it does definitely push me to be a better student; if a reasonable amount of effort can get me an Honors, I'll give it, and if I'm learning 20% more information by doing so, I think that's a positive thing.
 
I'm an MSI at a school with H/HP/P/F where H= top 12% and HP=next 20% (might have those numbers wrong!). I absolutely LOVE it and am so glad I'm at a school that has it. I never realized how important it would be to me. My roommate goes to another school where they have letter grades and they stress out so much there. I don't think it encourages slacking, I just don't think it necessitates being ultra-hardcore and studying every single detail you are going to forget. I prepare for my exams but don't stress too much. I think overall it is a better experience because I do enjoy learning it and get to sleep enough to remember it all.
 
Its interesting to know that there are schools where grades from the first two years don't factor into class ranking. I should have gone to a school with that system and saved me some major headaches in the first two years. If your school only has P/F and don't include grades from the first two years into your ranking, that could be a perfect system...but this will mean your Step 1 is more important. If your class has H/P/F, most will still gun for that "H" because it will show up on your transcript, no matter how the ranking is made. In a sense, my curriculum, H/P/F with everything included into your rank, is malignant compared to the kind of program you are talking about. It was designed by a former dean who has since "left" our institution.
 
I think that once you have decided on medicine as a career path, you ought to be studying because you want to learn the material, not because you want to get a slightly higher grade on some test.

And I think grades are counter-productive at some schools, simply because of the high caliber of students they attract-- there are diminishing returns in terms of the usefulness of categorizing them into groups.
 
Originally posted by Neuronix
How's that different from grades again? It looks like A/B/C/F with a well defined curve to me. Sure there's no D, but neither is there in alot of grad schools.
Click to expand...

It's not different from grades that are based on a curve, except P doesn't carry the stigma of a "C" since most people are used to associating C with 70-79%, where as P could be given to people with scores in the 90s or above.
 
My 0.2$:

I kinda wish we had H/P/F, instead of straight pass-fail---that's a little bit different than this H/HP/P/F pseudo grades business but close enough to P/F so that you are not killing yourself if you don't want to. I feel like I'm still working really hard and the 9~% I get on exams aren't any different than someone who's pulling 75%.

please no flames...it would just be nice for those of us who don't feel compelled to spend all our free time and free brain cells at the bar to have a little compensation for our effort.

~doc
 
How's my fine Nubian princess doing??
 
JALBY! I've missed you!!! How's studying for the boards going?
The weather has me regretting my decision to forgo sunny SoCal to come to Chicago, but I love NU...

~doc
 
You could transfer. There is always room for fine nubian princesses here. But I'm doing good. It was 75 degrees today 🙂. Studying is going good. I have only 24 more days of new school then it is all boards all the time.
 
i go to a school that is h/p/f.
whether or not you are going to get stressed out about getting honors depends on what kind of person you are. for me, it doesn't really matter too much that it is h/p/f rather than p/f. however, for those people who are striving for honors, i'd imagine it puts extra stress on them. i was hoping to honor physio this year, and i definitely felt the pressure while studying for/taking the last exam. i guess it would suck if i felt that way about every class. but hey, i don't, so it doesn't really matter 🙂.
in the end, schools will know how you did b/c of the ranking system. so if you missed honors by one point, they will still see you did well.
some people in my class definitely don't have the attitude i have, and i probably would not have this attitude if i'd not taken several years off before going to med school or if i were interested in a competitive specialty.
if you are a super-competitive person who would prefer not to be, it might be best to go to a school that is p/f. however, i don't think there is a big enough difference between p/f or h/p/f to use it as a major criteria for choosing a school.
 
Case is P/F school. Does anyone know if it has an internal ranking system?
 
nope, case doesn't have rank. any of the deans will happily tell you this and will also tell you that they catch some flack for it from residency directors. nonetheless, everybody seems to match fine. the first 2 yrs are truly p/f, where only the students and one administrator (not a dean) see the % scores. 3rd yr transists to h/hp/p/f grading, aoa is selected based on the clinicals plus usmle and extracurriculars. at the end of the show there is no ranking, but of course the dean's letter does give some form of excellent/good/whatever.
 
P/F, H/P/F, letter grades... It doesn't matter. Anyway you slice it, school SUCKS. 🙁
 
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