Thread: AUA has NEW grading system

So just a heads up to all of you that like to keep up to date on the Caribbean med schools. As you know, AUA recently received approval from the Cali state board. With that the administration has opted to model the new grading system based on U.S. med schools. It is now PASS, FAIL, and HONORS. 70% and above is a pass. Below is a fail. Students who finish in the top 10% of each class are deemed pass with honors.

Enjoy!

I'm wondering if they will keep an 'in house' GPA for loan purposes? For example, you have a 'P' on your transcript, but your 74% is also maintained by the registrar for loan purposes ????

Does this apply to students still on the 3 semester curriculum at all? What about for when we get into clinical rotations? Can someone else also confirm this or shed some light on this?

Or if all prior grades will be converted to H/P/F ???

for clinical rotations, how is it going to be graded? This is only for basic sciences?

I'm presuming this is only for those in the new curriculum (new Med 1's). I'm sure they'll find a way to calculate the GPA for the loan.

All they have to do is convert everything to Z-scores. They obviously have all the raw scores from the tests and can just do statistical analysis to convert the raw scores. Institutions that use z scores usually have more than just honors, pass, fail...they have some gradient of E(exceptional), H(Honors), S(satisfactory)--what 70% of people get b/c the range is usually really big, M(Marginal), F(Failure). While these may seem highly generic on your grade report utilizing z -scores the school can still do ranks of the class b/c they have the raw numbers. So they can ranks of #1 thru #150 and can still put in the Deans letter x student was in the top 10% etc...This system is also used in clinical b/c clinical grades are based on the evaluation being a certain % and the Shelf Exam and for certain rotations OSCE a certain %. So, though your clinical grade is E,H,S, etc...there is a numerical correlatio to rank the students which they have. Pure GPA scores for med schools which it seems like what they did before. That's not the standard for US med schools.

So is this new system going to make those students with Cs and low B feel smart as those with B and low As. I can see this making people more cocky. It seems like an uplifting system with a unncessary pat on the back system. American school use a pass fail system like how Ivy league schools don't really give lower than ** because those students are at the top of their gaming. About 95% of he people in American Medical schools pass the Step on their first time. Even AUC, SGU, and Ross use a GPA system even though they have similar passing rates, but their GPA system gives students a better idea of how their doing and how to prepare for the boards. Also, it clearly shows the people on residency boards how good the students were. This new system will merly mask the poor performance of students to residency boards looking at AUA. It's not like AUA has passing scores any where close to that of AUC, SGU, and Ross........ Very bad idea. The GPA system should be used to give students a really check. I mean if someone is getting a 2.6 or even a 3.1 at AUA they know hey need to study hard for the boards. Now i will be like oh i'm passing, w/e i'm just like the rest of my class.