Winter 2021 LC Thread—I Want Sous Vide

I guess Trump’s score must have been pretty damn high then (assuming he took it himself).

So I am one of those “professional educators” now… which is weird but hey it’s true. It’s pretty typical to get hundreds of applications for like 10-20 spots, so you set a cut off value to make your work less. After that, if a candidate is roughly the same as another one, the one with the step score gets ranked higher.

This is a busy ass pdf, but there is data on that kind of thing.

This

doesn’t sound the same at all as this

Yes Trump is a good example. I’m sure his SAT was not reflective of his intelligence.

I’m not going to play some definitional game, but you’re cutting out of that post the minimum score you need, which for competitive specialities is extremely high. You’re also severely underestimating how different med student applicants are. They’re all kind of the same after awhile, with a few exceptions.

This data isn’t really proof. I’m gonna assume the ones with the highest scores are the most desirable specialties. But if you look at number of research experiences, those same specialties also rank near the top. All of these desirable traits are likely correlated with each other. The smart kid who wants to be a plastic surgeon, probably has good test scores, good grades and spends a lot of time doing research.

Wait are you saying that his SAT didn’t suck? We’ll never know, but I’d be shocked if it didn’t.

I don’t know man, I think you’re playing the definitional game pretty well. If you’re gonna say that specialties have a cutoff and they don’t consider anyone above that, and that qualifies as ‘largely’, so chessmate, then that’s pretty elite.

And if that’s what you meant, then I guess I don’t disagree.

But I don’t see the difference between that and a pass/fail system. With that system, presumably the fails don’t get considered. In this system, every program just gets to choose their own line for pass/fail. If they want to draw it lower, they could.

You’re not accounting for how people with 30th%tile steps don’t even apply for things like derm. You generally don’t attempt to build a derm application if you score that low.

Step 1 was, by far, the single most important factor in residency applications. For dermatology, a grand total of 25 people matched into derm with a step 1 score less than national average (out of 312).

Furthermore, you can reference Chart 6 (which shows that people who do better on step 1 matching better in every. single. speciality and Chart 8 (which is for research experiences and shows some specialties with near zero).

Well first of all there’s still a fail line for Step 1 at which point you don’t advance until you do pass it.

Second step 1 was a massive influence on whether or not you match and what specialty you can apply to.

That is a massive, massive effect.

We do know, and you guessed wrong. He did it the super rich way:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/07/trumps-niece-fills-out-picture-trump-cheater/%3FoutputType%3Damp

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Yeah, I’ve heard about that. I even had a relevant disclaimer on exactly that:

The PDF is kind of long, so to save me some time. Is there a chart there on med school grades somewhere?

Med school grades aren’t standardized, and don’t really exist at many places. There’s no such thing as a med school gpa or whatever.

No, I’m thinking about that as well. Although the data presented doesn’t address that.

What you’re not accounting for is that all these things are correlated. Let’s say that hypothetically residency programs were blinded to Step scores and they just went by AOA status (I guess that is the closest thing we’re going to get to grades). And if tied they went based on quality and quantity of research. Then they pick applicants and look at who matched. Then only after that they look at step scores. You’re probably going to see graphs of step scores very similar (but not the same) to the ones shown in the PDF. And in this case, they didn’t even look at them at all.

TLDR version: Correlation <> Causation

Man, if anything that seems like all the more reason to have something standardized.

No standard test, no grades. How the fuck are you supposed to decide? Honestly might as well lottery at that point.

This is just made up. Not sure how to address such a wild assertion.

The correlation is not causation is just not informed. I actually sit on these committees. I actually talk a lot of with programs about what they’re doing and what they’re planing to do with the step 1 change. I know a lot more about this than you do.

There is a standardized test involved, it’s just not going to be moronic step 1 anymore, which covers only the first two years of medical school and has zero clinical content in it… that’s the stuff about treating patients.

You can also decide based on audition rotations, standardized letters of evaluation, and etc. We heavily prioritized people who worked in our ER for a month or two that everyone liked.

The school that doesn’t even do grades, finds standardized tests to be useless. Quelle Surprise!

Everyone knows.

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Wait, WAT? Step one performance is not correlated with medical school grades (such as they are)? Really?

This is all really confusing. So, you’re telling me you’re one of these enlightened individuals who belives that step one is useless. But you’re the only one smart enough to see this. There aren’t others like you. And if you’re making the decisions and you know it’s useless, then why do you even use it now? Just because they submit it doesn’t mean you have to use it.

Yeah, if there is a better test that’s great. I’ve got no problem with that. I’m against the idea of eliminating standardized tests altogether.

No one is saying to get rid of these other factors. Definitely not me. I wasn’t seriously suggesting a lottery. That was hyperbole. What if you like more of them than you had spots? Why just throw out another factor that might inform your decision?

Forum not showing up well for itself when this isn’t the main point of discussion about standardized testing.

You want a more just, equitable world? Throw that shit in the trash imo.

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