Is Pod School Pass/No Pass?

[doublefault]

Or are they letter grade?

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[GypsyHummus]

At Kent, it is letter grades.

The Boards as I understand them, are pass fail.

 

[doublefault]

At Kent, it is letter grades.

The Boards as I understand them, are pass fail.

Do you know about other schools?

 

[bobtheweazel]

Courses are graded, not pass/fail. Podiatry boards are pass/fail, not graded. At Temple our grades are what they are, like they're not rounded to a letter grade. For instance I got a 97 in general anatomy and a 91 in biochemistry and that's exactly how it transfered onto the final grades section of my Temple portal. There's no like A or A+ or whatever. I would be surprised if Kent does round to a letter grade because that would make it very difficult to differentiate students when it comes to class rank or applying to residency. If half of the class gets rounded to an A all the time and end up with a 4.0 GPA how would they calculate class rank? I keep bringing up class rank because residency programs use it as a criteria to select only certain ranked students. Our upperclassmen said the top 50% of their class (class size 100) all have 90+ averages, so imagine how minimal the difference is between two different ranks when you have 50 people with 90+ averages. If the classes were rounded to a letter grade there would be so many rank ties it would make your head spin. Maybe Kent does do that, if so I'd be curious to know how much of an impact that has on their ranking system.

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[bobtheweazel]

 

[dr.phoot]

View attachment 213069

^^^ O lawd....

 

[SLCpod]

Make sure to look at the thread on general pod school information. It is very well organized and will answer most of your questions.

https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/one-stop-shop-for-podiatry-information.968522/

 

[captgreg87]

Courses at DMU are graded on the standard 4.0 GPA scale with a letter grade for each class, pretty much the standard at what most undergrad institutions are like. Our grades however do round to the nearest letter grade. For example, an 89.6 would be an A-. I can see where Bob is coming from based on if over 50% of his classmates have 90+ averages, however I can say first hand our program at DMU is about as balanced as it gets, and you could easily separate by class rank.

 

[Geo16]

View attachment 213069

Thanks Bernie Sanders! I bought your book too!

 

[dorsiflexor]

Scholl is also letter grade and rounded up. But I second what captgreg said you can easily assign class rank among our class of 99.

I think historically the average graduating GPA is about a 3.0.

 

[doctor in da makin]

At Kent, it is letter grades.

The Boards as I understand them, are pass fail.

When exactly do podiatry students take their board exams? There's two steps, correct?

 

[GypsyHummus]

When exactly do podiatry students take their board exams? There's two steps, correct?

Me thinks there is three. One I know is during or after 2nd year.

 

[bobtheweazel]

Three steps. The first two you take while in school. The third you either take while in school or in residency depending on the state you wanna do residency in. If the state doesn't have a training medical resident license then you pretty much need to knock out all three steps before you begin residency so that you can get your full license before you start residency.

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[doctor in da makin]

Three steps. The first two you take while in school. The third you either take while in school or in residency depending on the state you wanna do residency in. If the state doesn't have a training medical resident license then you pretty much need to knock out all three steps before you begin residency so that you can get your full license before you start residency.

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Do you know what year in podiatry you would take these first 2 board exams?

 

[Weirdy]

Do you know what year in podiatry you would take these first 2 board exams?

Most of the schools I interviewed at said 1st board is after 2nd year.

 

[ldsrmdude]

Do you know what year in podiatry you would take these first 2 board exams?

Yep, part 1 is 2nd year, and part 2 is 4th year.

 

[Weirdy]

Yep, part 1 is 2nd year, and part 2 is 4th year.

Is part 2 the clinical skills one? Or am I getting something mixed up?

 

[SLCpod]

Is part 2 the clinical skills one? Or am I getting something mixed up?

There are two parts to part 2. Go here for all the details about each exam: http://www.apmle.com

 

[J29622]

I go to KSUCPM and they DO round the letter grades, meaning a 89.6 would likely net you an A and a 89 would only net you a B.

 

[TimmyTurner]

BUSPM has a strict no rounding policy. The whole-letter grade only system is a double edged sword. If you're really struggling and scrape by with an 80.1, you get the same grade as someone who is a gunner but just fell short at 89.7. I've had it work for me and against me in the same semester. Just missed an A in an easy stats class, and barely made a B in Gross anatomy.

In a perfect world.... Our classes are pass/fail and our boards are percentile based, so we are ranked against the rest of the students at other schools. That would require an overhaul of our Boards, which are really haphazard in both content and delivery. Right now, the boards are minimum competency. You never even know your score, unless you fail. I'd guess a chunk of students who fail part 1 boards are actually quite competent, they just don't make extensive exam preparations since the juice is not worth the squeeze- whether you get 100% or pass by one question, it makes no difference. Also- the exam is not uniform in content delivery. You might get a ton of radiology questions, your classmate might get disproportionate anatomy questions, and another classmate may get a bunch of Physio questions. I'm of the opinion this isn't fair or ideal, because when you're studying, you're focusing on high yield topics. However, those high yields are only a probability. You may be particularly weak in one subject area, but if your exam has a lot of questions about that subject, you may fail. That fail is not representative of the overall knowledge base- another student who is equally weak in that subject area may not get as much of that subject and pass.

TL;DR- IMO, Our board exam is haphazard, and our classes should be pass/fail.