US Medical students practice and advocate class NONATTENDANC

[october]

Appears to clearly be US enrolled med students clearly stating some do better when they skip classes. If you apply the same school attendance criteria imposed by State Licensure Boards on IMG's then many AMG's should also be ineligible for licensure.

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/show...61#post1873961




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Not everyone is capable of osmotically absorbing the mountains of minutae thrown at them during lecture. I sure wasn't, however, some students are able to do very well by going to lectures. I performed horribly on exams when I attended every lecture. I honored classes consistently once I realized that I was NOT getting the most out of my educational experience by sittting in class.
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I skipped ~80% of classes in M1 and M2 and did just fine, but then again my school had a transcript system in which lectures were typed out word for word and slides were available on the web.

Lectures were thus totally a waste of time
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Don't listen to anyone who tells you to attend lecture. Those people are auditory learners and they get a lot out of lecture. They don't know they are auditory because they learn visually as well so they think you are just lazy. IGNOREthose people. For people like us, missing class was imperative. Forget about getting an edge, missing class was vital to passing and doing well.

I go to a medical school that is very class intensive. We have classes from 8-5 everyday not including preceptor appointments etc.

I attended lecture in the beginning as well. I was scared to skip class. My friends and classmates would make me guilty if I missed class. They made fun of me for being a slacker. I was terrified that I would miss a few questions because the professor would only reveal details during class.

Okay let me tell you that fear is sooooooo overstated. The biggest illusion of medical school is the fear that you will miss information by skipping class. Don't get me wrong, if a professor begins to see that a certain class is meeting less than 50% in attendance, you can be assured that he will start testing over material that isn't in the notes. But rest assured, most of your big classes will meet 60-80% attendance.

My grades improved drastically. I had around a 79% overall average during my first quarter at AZCOM. After I started skipping class, my grades shot up. I had a 91% average in my second quarter. So yes, skipping class can help if you are like me in that you can't learn by listening to lecture.

Finally, don't listen to those who will try to guilt you into not skipping class. They are not you. They don't know how you learn. If they did, they probably would support your decision to attend class. Ignore the fear that you will miss data by skipping class. 90% of the time, you will find that the material you miss is so insignficant when your overall grade is concerned.
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[ActionPotential]

I agree with that post 100 percent. Forcing attendance is stupid and juvenile. If people benefit from it, by all means have at it. But making everyone go and setting an arbitrary minimum percentage is just plain dumb.

Truth be told, for a lot of people med school probably is not even necessary. If you just sat down with a Kaplan or First Aid Review (are they the same? my apologies if they are) book for the Step 1 exam for a few months or at most six-seven months you could ace the test no prob. At least most people could, I believe. There will always be those who need that process of lectures and asking dumb questions, and learning every minute detail to reinforce a certain common core of material, but most people i believe could just read review books and get through.

To me, the whole attendance ** has been the most frustrating part of med school. Especially since i go to a school that crams 150 people into a space designed for 60, IF that. One which doesn't have the facilties for half the size of our class and yet still religiously enforces the attendance mandate. Very frustrating. Not sure my choice would be the same were i to do it over again. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to go to an ultra cheap school like spartan which is nothing more than a usmle ticket, discounted to boot, which has no rules regulations, doesn't take attendance, where i could just plop down with a few step 1 prep books for two years and then ace that puppy.

[tampanian]

I agree with both of the previous posts. I have been saying those things since I started school three years ago. I am the type of student that if I was forced to sit through every class, I found that I would be struggling to find time to study and would consequently just be hoping to pass the test. Usually, I would get the notes and study without attending many classes (except for reviews). When I could do that, I was always aiming to honor the test. As I figured this out, my grades on tests improved from about a 75-78% in the first semester, to about an 85-88% in the fifth semester. Classes that I did attend regularly were those with professors that had a great method of delivery of the material such that I learned and retained a lot from their lectures. Fortunately, St. Matt’s did have a handful of professors of this caliber. As a matter of fact, one of the two best professors that I ever had teaches at St. Matt’s.

I would have a tough time advising a prospective student to use this method even though I know quite a few friends that it also worked well for. This is because I believe each student needs to find that unique method that works best for them, and let’s not forget, skipping class, at least as much as I did, is against school policy. Fortunately, for yours truly, I finished basic sciences just as attendance policy was becoming strongly enforced. I’m sure that for many, mandatory attendance is extremely helpful, but for me it is usually counterproductive…just give me the notes and let me go study!

The reality is that the accrediting bodies are requiring the schools to have an attendance policy. Even feeling as strongly as I do towards my personal preference of how to study, if having this policy will benefit my school as a whole than I feel it should exist and we should follow it. Unfortunately for many students, however, it’s a catch-22…the school improves while the student doesn’t necessarily.


Peace,

SMU-MS3