Medical students at the University no longer will receive letter grades during the first two years of medical school. Beginning with the Class of 2007, a pass/fail grading system will be used to document students' achievements.
The third-year classes will retain the traditional grading system, while the fourth year consists of electives which traditionally have been graded with pass/fail marks, according to Beth Bailey, assistant dean of admissions at the Medical School.
At the end of their second year, the top 20 medical students will receive a "pass with distinction" commendation that will remain on their transcripts.
Faculty member Robert Bloodgood co-chaired the committee that implemented this change, along with Al Connors, who since has returned to work at Case Western Reserve University. Bloodgood named Case as a pioneering school in the pass/fail grading system.
The decision to switch to a pass/fail system grew out of concerns about the high levels of stress the students were under.
We wanted "to ease some of the stress of transitioning from college to medical school," Bailey said.
Medical school officials said this program will not adversely affect students' chances of getting into a good residency program. They said more important factors include National Board scores and the grades received in the clinical years of Medical School.
Fourth-year Medical students Becky Youkey and Amita Sudhir concurred with this assessment.
"The Boards are the great equalizer," Youkey said.
Both said they wished their class had the opportunity to be graded this way.
"The important thing is that the University has an accredited Medical School," Sudhir said. "The school should be held to high standards, and then the students will learn."
Donald Innes, chair of the curriculum committee at the Medical School, said he was optimistic about the pass/fail system.
"I hope that it does make [the students] more productive," Innes said. "I think that a happier student can learn easier if they're not stressed out."
Although little documentation currently exists proving that this change will reduce students' stress, Bloodgood and Jerry Short, a faculty member at the Curry School of Education, are conducting a study on the effects of the new grading system in hopes of writing a paper that will add to the literature about pass/fail grading systems.
"We may be wrong, we may find no difference between the two different classes," Bloodgood said.
The study he referred to will compare the Class of 2006, which still receives letter grades, and the Class of 2007, which will be the first class to graduate with the pass/fail system.
The study will examine three criteria of each graduating class. Through a survey distributed to the two classes for the next four semesters, the research team will compare the students' use of free time and levels of stress in the respective years. The classes' respective academic performances will be tracked as well.
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