Totally going to depend on the place you rotate. Most allopathic schools grade on the H, HP, P system. AOA schools are highly variable with their grading systems. Unfortunately no grading scale is perfect, and even if everyone was on the honors, HP, pass system, how each rotation determines to get out those grades going to be variable. I don't think you can answer your above questions, because every different program is going to decide how they weigh post shift evaluations (if they do them), whether or not they do an exam at the end, etc. This is why put on a lot of weight into the overall grade on an EM rotation. I think the sloe rank is a better marker, because its a standardized ranking. Sure it still subjective, but overall I think its the best marker of student performance, the question is simple, where are you anticipating ranking this student.
Thank you so much for your efforts to answer questions for us. As a follow up... if I believe for the most part I haven't blown away my residents/attendings with my patient presentations, procedures and therefore expect to be average... should I start planning for backup specialties now? I know CDEM states that middle 1/3 people do get ranked but realistically, should I have backups just in case? Just for reference my step 1 and step 2 scores are also essentially average