Med schools offerring re-writes to those who failed?

[Guest uptownyeung]

I was just wondering if this is a rather common practice across Canada (maybe a strictly Canadian/British phenomenon?)...A friend of mine in the States is having to repeat the entire Gross Anatomy course this summer (which he just failed), but I'm under the impression that in Canada there are at least a handful of schools that are giving their students the option of re-writing the exam if they were only a few marks short...any ideas? or maybe they all do?? Do they also say on your transcripts if you failed the first time? I am pretty sure they do that in the States, which understandbly wouldn't be looked upon too favourably when the match rolls around I guess..

[Guest CaesarCornelius]

Hey

 

At DAL if you fail a course (ie: anatomy, physiology, etc) you have to write another test in the summer. You don't take the course again, but you have meetings with the unit head to see what areas you were weak in and plan how to study.

 

If you fail two units in one year you have to repeat the whole year.

 

CC

[Guest thelaze]

I think that's exactly how U of T works too (at least for pre-clerkship AFAIK). Re-writes of failed material in the summer and re-doing the year if two courses are failed.

[Guest aneliz]

Same at UWO...you are allowed to write supplemental exams in the summer for a failed course....2 fails = repeat the year...3 fails in the program = turfed (ie not eligible to continue...)

[Guest uptownyeung]

Yeah I think they all probably have similar mechanisms...also, to my knowledge, a lot of the american schools do in fact indicate the previous failed attempt at an exam but it doesn't seem to the case in Canada. But how could this be happening if all Canadian medical schools are also accredited by the LCME in the US???

 

(how is passing mark at your school determined? curve? or set at 70%?)

[Guest aneliz]

Pass is a 60%...at UWO....although anything <65% will get you a 'fireside chat' with the associate dean.

[Guest summervirus]

The UofA is similar to UofT and UWO. The pass mark is a little bit different for each block and is based on some statistical thing called the angoff. It usually is between 55-60%. Like UWO, you don't want to be a borderline pass because you end up getting to chat with the associate dean.

[Guest haloo]

U of Manitoba is also the same in the preclerkship years. If you fail one of the three blocks that year, rewrite in summer. Fail two and repeat the year.

[Guest MiniMedGirl]

sorry Haloo,

 

At the U of Manitoba, it's fail TWO blocks (of the three) in a year and you can still rewrite in the summer, fail THREE...and you are toast and have to redo the year again. Ditto for failing a remedial exam.

[Guest wassabi101]

Same at Ottawa as U of Manitoba! I'm not sure however on whether the failed mark always stays on your transcript- I would think so (like it would in undergrad).

 

Cheers,

wassabi

[Guest MiniMedGirl]

Since U of M is pass/fail, it doesn't really show up as a mark, but only as the beautiful letter "P". If you have to redo an exam, whatever you get on the remedial, "P" or (eeek!) an "F", THAT is the mark that stays on your transcript. So basically, you have 2 tries to pass the exam and if you CAN'T then...well...your transcript will reflect that.

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hi there,

 

Thanks for the information on exam re-writes. Given this topic, one question that's sprung to mind is the frequency of the phenomenon of medical students doing poorly on exams. Does it happen often? What proportion of various medical school classes per year end up in hot exam water, on average? :rolleyes

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen

[Guest moo]

P/F at our school is 70% or two SDs below the mean, whichever is lower. THis usually works out to be about 60-65%. You can retake after failing one or two exams, cutoff usually is 1.5 SDs below the mean for the retake. Fail three out of 8 or 7 exams throughout the year and you repeat.

 

How many fail per exam? I'd say for our class, 3-5 fail each exam out of 170 people. People who you never thought would fail do fail exams from time to time. My friend, who had an MCAT high enough to get into Wash U (in the high 30s) failed an anatomy practical last year and had to remediate over the summer. I've known other people who've failed various exams, so it's definitely not a hidden phenomenon. Despite this, however, very few people actually fail out. My year though is an anomoly. Fifteen (!) people have failed out between years 1 and 2 (will have to repeat). That's a lot for a med school and the deans at our school are trying to maybe set the P/F line to a flat 60%, like in most other schools but there is major resistence from the brass up top. And everytime someone fails out, the mean of the exams go up, SD narrows, and it gets harder to pass. It hardly seems fair. Means have been hitting the mid 80s on the last few exams of this year, but thank God that most of my friends and I have all survived it.

[Guest aneliz]

At UWO you can fail individual exams as long as you don't fail an entire course...if you fail a course, you have supplemental work/exams to do in the summer.

 

In our class, nobody failed an entire course (ie nobody required remedial work) in first year. Not sure about 2nd year yet becaus we don't get 'the call' until Friday. (Admin calls you to tell you if you failed and have supps to do!) That said, I would guess that there are usually ~3-5 people that fail any given exam...but it is usually not the same people every time...so last year, nobody actually ended up failing a course.

[Guest MiniMedGirl]

At U of M no one has failed any first year exam (blocks 1,2 or 3) in recent memory (last 4-5 years) although people in block 3 (the first truly hard exam) have come close (interesting how the lowest mark in block 3 tends to be the same as the pass mark (60%). Coincidence? or not?)

 

in 2nd year, the block exams get harder and block 5 in particular (msk/neuro/optho) being 4 months long being the killer. if there is any exam a student will fail it wouldhave to be this one. generally, 1-5 people fail block 5 and/or block 6 exam (block 6 being the shortest block: 8 weeks with OSCE smack in the middle which means things kind of get crammed in or burnout has set in long before).

 

The mean tends to be around 72-76% for all blocks, just that the spread gets wider as the blocks progress (whether this is due to apathy and/or honing of study skills is up for debate)

[Guest cutieyellow]

Wow for the means being 72-76%

 

Means here are anywhere from 83-90%. In one of last year's classes, it was 92% !!! It's insane. Then again, we still function on a GPA-scale, thus probably why there's still so much competition.

 

CY

[Guest aneliz]

Means at UWO are usually in the mid-low 70's....and not because people don't work... they set the meds exams to have a normal distribution like any other courses at UWO. So there are also people that get 90's and people that fail....

[Guest kosmo14]

Our means tend to be in the mid to high 70's with some classes being low 80's. We also function on a marks based system and there is plenty of competition, but our profs. set our exams so that they are tough enough to generally keep the mean below an 80.

[Guest ManitobaMed]

It sounds as though UWO and U of M are pretty similar in their approach to grading. Our school aims for a low-mid 70s average and will actually make sections harder in subsequent years if averages are higher than expected. (And, according to some of the section heads, even averages in the 70s are too high -- even though our pass mark is a 60. :rolleyes )