One of my UTSW-bound friends was courteous enough to send me an e-mail he received regarding the details of this change:

On February 2, 2009, the Faculty Council of UT Southwestern Medical Center unanimously adopted a new grading system for the medical school after several months of study and input from both faculty and students.  Both students and faculty alike agreed that the medical school grading system must find a balance between providing meaningful information for residency program applications and the inevitable stress inherent in any grading system.

The new grading system will be effective beginning in July 2009 as is as follows:

The first half of the first year will be Pass/Fail.  Students will be provided feedback about performance on examinations so that each student can be aware of how well he/she is mastering the material, but the final grade will be either Pass or Fail.  This change will allow students to make the transition into the new environment of medical school more gracefully.

Beginning with the second half of the first year and continuing through the clinical rotations of the third year, students will be graded using a letter grade system (A, B+, B, C, & F).  The numeric cutoffs for grades will be publicized at the beginning of each course.  Having grades awarded in this manner rather than a “normative” basis (grading curve) should eliminate any perception among students that they are competing with each other for grades.  This change should encourage students to focus on the mastery of material and the collegiality essential in the care of patients.

The fourth year will continue to be graded on a Pass/Fail system.

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Here’s a brief summary outlining the differences between the two medical schools:

(Information gathered from school websites and US news)

Now personally, I prefer Baylor Med over UT Southwestern for several reasons.

• BCM is situated in the world’s largest medical center providing far more opportunities for medical students to pursue internships close to their campus.
• Being a Houstonian myself, BCM is “right around the corner.” I’ll be able to visit mommy and daddy often.
• Having graduated early from both high school and college, the accelerated 18 month core science curriculum (6 months shorter than competing medical schools) is very appealing to me.
• The fact that BCM students can take their core clinical clerkships/electives in any order makes far more sense than having to wait till the end of medical school to “try out” the rotation that you were originally interested in. By that time, residency applications should be virtually complete.

How do you weigh the differences between Baylor Med and UT Southwestern?

First and foremost, I was very pleased that unlike UTSA and UTMB, neither one of my interviews had to be rescheduled at UTSW. In fact, both my interviewers thought I may reschedule due to the hurricane. Anyways, the day began at 9:00 AM with registration and a brief Powerpoint presentation about the school and Parkland Hospital. Looking around the room, I’d say about 70-80 people were interviewing with me. Then, the interviews rolled around from 10:00 to 11:00. At UTSW, one of the interviewers has read an applicant’s entire application (MCAT, GPA, extracurriculars, personal statement, rec. letter, etc.) while the other interviewer has just read the personal statement.

My first interview (which happened to be the blind interview) was with an assistant dean (ob/gyn by training). Naturally, we joked about the hurricane at first. He inquired about my family’s safety back home, told me a bit about himself, and then started the actual interview by asking me to “tell him about myself.” After describing my experiences in education, business, technology, and my interest in neurosurgery, he asked where I feel I’ll be in the year 2025. Since he was the blind interviewer, I had to draw upon some of the things I outlined in my application to describe the “moment” in which I realized that medicine was indeed what I wanted to commit the rest of my life to. We discussed research opportunities, why I graduated early from high school and college, extracurricular/leadership involvement, urban medicine, translational research, and other topics which I happened to integrate into my responses. Overall, it was a really well balanced “conversation” that we had.

My second interview was with an M.D./Ph.D. pediatrician. She was an extremely sweet and welcoming lady who also inquired about my family’s safety in light of Hurricane Ike. Come to find out, we had a lot in common. For those who didn’t know, I wanted to pursue an M.D./Ph.D. joint degree from an early age, but after realizing that neurosurgery training inherently posesseed a great deal of research, spending more time earning a Ph.D. would be useless. She completely agreed. Also (remember, she had read my entire application thoroughly), she kept describing me as one of the most “inquisitive” applicants who she has met. I was flattered having her appreciate my undergraduate accomplishments (awards, GPA, MCAT, leadership, etc.) and tried to remain as humble as possible in acknowledging the hard work that went into each. The funny thing is that I don’t remember her asking me any specific questions (again, she had already read my entire app). Just like the first interview, the second interview was definitely more of a conversation than anything. We talked about translational medicine, stem cell ethics, politics, etc. I’m sorry that I don’t have any specific questions, but that was just the nature of both my interviews at UTSW.

After the two interviews, I went downstairs to wait for the UTSW tour (given by 4th year students) to begin. Come to find out, my second interview must have run late or something, because the other applicants had already left. This was really a blessing in disguise. Three 4th year students (who were waiting to give tours)  waited for other students to join me before we all embarked on our tour; however, no one came. Instead of touring the campus, I just sat with them and asked all sorts of questions about campus life. Where did they live? Why did they choose UTSW? How does grading work? How do residency applications compare to medical school applications? What was their biggest regret in medical school? Etc. etc. I feel this was exponentially better than touring facilities which I already know are top notch.

Next… lunchtime! After chomping down a turkey sandwich, white chocolate macadamia nut cookie, and double chocolate chip cookie (hey, I was hungry ), I was very pleased to run into an HBU alumnus, Sidra. She took away from her precious study time just to share what she has learned about UTSW with me. The student panel started, but instead of attending that, Sidra (MS2) and her MS1 friend continued to give me a private student panel session. Between their commentary and the insight provided by the three MS4 students in the morning, I feel extremely informed about the UTSW campus and Dallas life.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Now, my last interview looms ahead. The interview to my dream school. Baylor College of Medicine… next Friday… September 19th… for all the marbles. Here I go.

My first interview was scheduled to begin at 1:15 PM, but I arrived at the secretary’s office by 12:50 PM. This is where I ran into trouble. My interviewer had called in sick earlier this morning, so after finally calming myself down, I feared one thing – time. Come to find out, this was indeed a problem. It took half an hour to reschedule my interview with another doctor (who happened to be across the campus), so my first interview ended up actually starting around 1:35 PM. This pushed my second interview (scheduled for 2:15 PM) back even further. Throughout all this mess, the interviewers I did have were very understanding and reassured me that it wasn’t my fault.

My first interview was with a previous member of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) who now ran an infectious disease department at UTMB. Since she was my rescheduled interviewer, she had no idea she would have to interview me until ten minutes before the event. Consequently, she hadn’t read over my application at all (it was still sitting on her printer). UTMB conducts “blind” interviews which basically eliminates any type of academic bias since the interviewer is not aware of our GPA or MCAT score. This allows them to analyze our personalities to assess how compatible of a “match” the campus and the student are for each other. Anyways, some of the things we discussed:

• Why do I want to be a doctor?
• Biggest obstacle I’ll face in medical school?
• My biggest flaw?
• How do friends describe me?
• Why should UTMB pick me?

We also discussed a lot about her research and medicine in general. Infectious disease is a really interesting field (especially with UTMB’s Galveston Laboratory opening later this year), so I enjoyed discussing current issues regarding the field.

My second interviewer seemed even more nervous than me. His fingers were shaking uncontrollably causing him to drop his page of questions numerous times throughout the duration of the interview. He works as a medical physicist in radiology, so we had a lot to discuss regarding cancer in the brain and noninvasive treatment methods.

Some issues we discussed:

• Based on your application, you could have easily gone to graduate school and pursued research. Why did you choose medicine?
• How would you tell the parents of a four year old terminally ill patient that their son/daughter is going to die?
• If a patient asked to be euthanized, how would you handle it?
• What’s a hospice?
• How should we go about handling the current state of Medicare/Medicaid?
• Where do you see yourself in fifteen years?
• What’s the biggest obstacle you’ll face in medical school?

Last but not least, I received an interview invitation from the University of Texas Southwestern medical school in Dallas scheduled for September 13th. Looking forward to it!