A change in attitude

[Arb]

That's not the case at all. There are clear guidelines on what they expect in an essay. Answering the question based on what you learn in class will only get you so many marks. Adding points that are related that you looked up yourself will give you extra marks (eg. clinical points). Off topic answers are not penalized...except the wasted time in writing it, nor are they rewarded. You will also gain marks for having a labeled diagram/graph. You can put in a diagram/graph to almost every question during an exam.

The only stupid criteria is that sentence structure, and organization is also taken into account (probably neatness as well).

Example: a gross anatomy question you write about
1. location
2. structure and function
3. relations to it
4. innervation, blood supply
5. embryology
6. clinical components
7. diagrams (labeled)

Something like that. It's more difficult than it seems and I'm just getting the hang of it but hopefully that helps. Sometimes you have no idea why you got a certain grade but it's like that everywhere. Truthfully, I hate essays and prefer short answers or MCQs.

Bear in mind that you won't just get essays for exams. So far I had many MCQs only exams (usually midterms). A recent 2nd year trauma class midterm had questions that were cases with the mechanisms of injuy, vitals, x-rays, etc. given and you had to match the diagnosis to it. It's a pretty cool course so for those first years at UCD, consider taking it next year.

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[deleted21609]

That's not the case at all. There are clear guidelines on what they expect in an essay.

It's not the case at all according to Arb. It is the case according to the several Irish medical school professors I discussed my essays with.

 

[Sage880]

Yes, I think I agree more with student.ie on this. Many times in pre-clinical years we used to joke the med school motto was latin for "where knowledge is severly punished".

Phys was the worst for it. The better I understood the subject, the worse I'd do on a test. Finally I gave up reading textbooks until after the exam and just memorized the buzz words on the class handouts. The trick is to just write all of those on the test and try to fill at least 2 books of fluff. I got an "A" on every exam after that with that strategy. I remember laughing my ass off after seeing I got an "A" in reproductive phys and I barely knew where babies came from. Yay buzzwords!

 

[Jocks]

That's not the case at all. There are clear guidelines on what they expect in an essay. Answering the question based on what you learn in class will only get you so many marks. Adding points that are related that you looked up yourself will give you extra marks (eg. clinical points). Off topic answers are not penalized...except the wasted time in writing it, nor are they rewarded. You will also gain marks for having a labeled diagram/graph. You can put in a diagram/graph to almost every question during an exam.

The only stupid criteria is that sentence structure, and organization is also taken into account (probably neatness as well).

Example: a gross anatomy question you write about
1. location
2. structure and function
3. relations to it
4. innervation, blood supply
5. embryology
6. clinical components
7. diagrams (labeled)

Something like that. It's more difficult than it seems and I'm just getting the hang of it but hopefully that helps. Sometimes you have no idea why you got a certain grade but it's like that everywhere. Truthfully, I hate essays and prefer short answers or MCQs.

Bear in mind that you won't just get essays for exams. So far I had many MCQs only exams (usually midterms). A recent 2nd year trauma class midterm had questions that were cases with the mechanisms of injuy, vitals, x-rays, etc. given and you had to match the diagnosis to it. It's a pretty cool course so for those first years at UCD, consider taking it next year.

Alright, I was going to stay out of this, but this thread is starting to get ridiculous...and more than a bit hostile.

Arb is correct in terms of how UCD grades. The TA's and Profs all repeatedly told us the criteria for essay questions, with an emphasis on drawing diagrams. And from what i've seen and heard the marks reflect this.

However....I have NO idea how UCC, Trinity, RCSI, etc. grade their papers so I'm not going to say that's how ALL Irish schools mark...I'm just going to say that's how MY school marks.

~Jocks

 

[Sage880]

I don't want to come across as hostile - my opinion of the marking scheme was that it was still fair and applied to everyone so it was just a matter of playing the game. But we're all still playing with the same rules. I didn't like the game but I do like getting good marks so I'll play it!

From what I've heard about UCD, I think they might be a better on the administrative side of things for students - although there are still complaints. I still imagine that the "medical culture" type problems are still there but I have never been to UCD so I don't know for sure.

But you're right, commenting on the testing, organization, etc of the schools has just become a bitch-fest but sometimes it helps to get it off your chest. The main problems are the points in the early posts but the last month or so has been a tiny bit better.

 

[Arb]

Like I said, things are constantly changing. I'm positive things are different from when you graduated from UCC (referring to student.ie). Even 4th and 5th years here have told me how things have gotten better and not just with the school, but the city of Dublin as well. I don't know if that's the case but I'm willing to keep an open mind about it. If I do poorly on my written exams, I'll be back and complain about it don't you worry!

 

[leorl]

Just to say that another thing to get used to is MCQs that have negative marking (ie. you get one wrong, you get a -1. So if a test has 50 q's and you get 25 right and 25 wrong, instead of getting a 50% on it you get a 0). That's something that north americans have a little trouble getting used to sometimes because then you have to answer strategically instead of guessing on everything.

 

[deleted21609]

Just to say that another thing to get used to is MCQs that have negative marking (ie. you get one wrong, you get a -1. So if a test has 50 q's and you get 25 right and 25 wrong, instead of getting a 50% on it you get a 0). That's something that north americans have a little trouble getting used to sometimes because then you have to answer strategically instead of guessing on everything.

I agree that the MCQ grading method is odd, but I disagree about the strategy. In my experience the "MCQs" were true/false so if you had 50 questions, know 25, and guess on 25, odds are you'll get 50%: 25 points for the ones you know, 12.5 points for the ones you guessed right, and -12.5 points for the ones you guessed wrong.
Many people look at it like this: I got 37 out of 50 right so that should be a 1H (74%) if only I hadn't guessed on 10 questions which gave me a pass 54% (+37 -10 with 5 neutral/skipped). That mistaken view was constantly discussed but just doesn't make sense. If you got 37 right, most of your answers were probably the ones you thought you knew, but sometimes you'd get those wrong and some of your guesses would be right. If you got 37 right, you probably knew around 27, guess 10 right and 10 wrong. I mean it won't work exactly like that of course but you are as likely to gain from guessing as you are to lose by guessing despite negative marking. (Actually I always took the view that answering all the questions was the way to go since a) you have nothing to lose statistically, and b) I was familiar with the material even if I didn't remenmber every answer so I thought that my familiarity would make the guesses into educated-guesses and make the odds >50%.
Anyway, I can't tell you how many times we disagreed about this stuff and how many times I explained it, but people didn't seem to get/believe that mathematically there is no advantage to skipping questions and therefore there is no need for stategy.
I know it seems like I always disagree with everything, but I'm not trying to. I just think there is a misunderstanding about negative marking that hurts some students. I mean, you shouldn't spend test time trying to decide which questions to answer and which to skip. You should focus on choosing the best answer for every question and not get distracted/ waste time with 'strategy'. Now if the have 4 choices instead of true/false, that's a differnet story...

 

[Sage880]

Yeah, I always thought the negative marking was just a stupid tax. Even with the harshest marking (+1 and -1) you should still be familiar enough with medicine in general to get your expected value > 0 for the questions you're guessing on in the long run.

We have +1, -1/2 for most of our true/false tests which would give you an expected value of 1/4 for questions that weren't even in English. Still, a lot of people in my class still leave some questions blank which is just giving away free marks!

 

[coolmamajama]

I spent three months at a med school in Ireland as an exchange student, and what struck me was how many, many times we just waited and waited for professors to turn up to lectures.

The wards were nothing to write home about either. I don't know the whole picture as I was only there for such a short time, but I was shocked at how no one even bothered to complain that professors just didn't turn up without informing the so-called administration. After my sixth (yes, sixth) such lecture - waiting around for 45 minutes - I gave up, didn't go to class and hung around the library instead.

 

[Arb]

Really? That must be rare.

 

[Unch]

This is indeed a known problem but one that is deefinitely being addressed. At UCC, it rubs both ways. While some clinicians don't show up for lectures, more than a few students have skipped in the past as well. If even a few student no-shows happen, word circulates that the students in that class "in general" aren't serious. Having a very international class doen't help either. There are, shall we say, cultural differences in attendance and sleep habits. Also important to bear in mind that many of the clinical lectures in hospitals are carved out of registrars'/consultants' busy schedules and while that's true everywhere, here it really is borrowed time (NAmerican clinicians in teaching hospitals have much more formal teaching expectations.

All this having been said, I have yet to experience a lecturer no-show and have had uniformly consistent and excellent clinical teaching.

 

[leorl]

With regards to MCQs and negative marking - some of ours were true / false, but they also recently started incorporating best of 5 with negative marking.

I'd definitely say that administrators know about the no-show problem as I don't know any class which really let it go. In my year it went overboard and people sent really nasty emails to the admin, which wasn't terribly helpful either.

 

[SeamusMcFly]

I am a resident in a pretty competitive US program and spent 6 years at the wonderful UCD. First off the teaching is poor to non existent in almost every subject there. The only good departments there are ENT, Opthalmology, Obstetrics and gynecology, pathology and anatomy. Everything else you will have to do yourself (for the USMLE), or you can pass the UCD exams knowing close to zero. The emphasis on clinical medicine is a joke and any idiot can pull that off.
Also for those of you applying for USMLE make sure you take into account the number of times UCD will screw up your application-for example my step 2 CK was returned 3 times. I know personally of a person who could not get their H1B visa due to UCD screwing up their application for ECFMG certification. They are now on a J1 due to this.
For those of you applying to the match I would advise applying to everywhere in your chosen specialty. UCD gives no help in matching-in fact the head of the school gets a secretary to write the deans letter, which she writes in extremely poor english. UCD doesn’t give a F*** where you end up.
The only good thing that can be said about UCD is that it was free being Irish(you get what you pay for-right?). If I was paying around 30k per year for that I probably would have burnt the place down.If I had the choice again I think RCSI would be a better bet, as they (from what I hear) give time off for USMLE and write a proper deans letter.I think the teaching is a bit better too.

 

[deleted21609]

I am a resident in a pretty competitive US program

Your status says attending. ?

 

[leorl]

with regards to that stuff, there can be delays. sounds obvious, but Make sure you hand in your applications for the USMLE with everything absolutely correct (ie. don't put MD candidate, put mbbcbao candidate). If you register for the exams more than 120 days before you intend on taking it, expect delays in receiving your scores as then the ECFMG have to contact the Irish school for re-verification, and of course the Irish schools put that off for a few weeks. However, you do want to apply early enough for the date you choose and leave enough time for the Irish office to sign/stamp the application so it could be a case of you ringing and going into the office repeatedly to check on them. This puts their backs up, but hey, it's your application. Write clearly time deadlines.

The dean's letter (MSPE) - see if you can get a copy of it first to proofread it and send corrected copy back to the international students' officer / secretary. Technically this means it's not waived but...whatever. I proofread and sent back some "helpful suggestions..."

ECFMG certification - there can be a problem sometimes, but most people end up pushing it ok. You have to be ECFMG certified by the time you start your residency (ie. July 1st), problem being that most schools won't issue the diploma needed for ECFMG cert until you actually graduate (mid-June). Keep pushing for them to have everything completely ready for the ECFMG app so that all they have to do when you graduate is pop in the diploma and fedex to the ECFMG. Some schools if they know you're starting your residency program on July 1st will be accomodating in trying to get it out beforehand. To my knowledge, I do not know anyone who has had to delay their residency program while waiting for ECFMG certification, but know it's been close. Also, some people who did internship in Ireland obviously would have their ECFMG certification before applying to programs (which some programs want as well).

 

[leorl]

Oh, and this recently happened to friends of mine. Do not take Step 2 CS before Step 1. Passing Step 1 is a prerequisite for Step 2 CS. They got back a letter saying that they'd passed all three parts of step 2, but these were nulled/void because step 1 had not been passed beforehand and so even registering for step 2 cs was "illegal."