I know how you feel....in a way

+1

School has a pretty high-tech computer system where they are capable of restricting things just to a word processor, no internet, etc. On Windows XP computers.

 

Despite being terrified, I managed to squeak by with credit for four semesters of college French (from four years of high school French, starting with a junior high teacher who didn't speak French so that we just memorized vocabulary and grammar, followed by three more struggling years from excellent teachers in senior high school, but by then it was too late and the damage was done.)

However, my score was so marginal that it was suggested strongly that I should not try to become a French major. I then completed a modern French lit course for nonmajors and was done with the language requirement.

It's funny, because I've since lived at times in French-speaking places and I've used a little French in my job.

This is awfully early...unless it's one of those "if you don't know this, please drop the course NOW" tests.

That was going to be my next hypothesis.

 

SATs are a breeze compared with the other future tests you might come across later, like MCAT, LSAT, GMAT, etc. And even more depending upon the career path you find yourself on.

Any of you who don't think standardized tests are good for anything ever have to be on an admissions committee?

The only good for those tests is to have some threshold to cut off the interviews. We even do it for our applicant residents in our residency program. There is only so much information you can look at, all letters of recommendation are "the best I have ever seen" and all essays (personal statements) are essentially the same.

At least when you have a standardized test score cut-off, you know they can take a standardized test and get a good score..... which is good since for us the tests don't ever stop.

And these are the stressful tests folks.... when your patient is crashing.....

 

Wow - this sounds just like my kids:

Mommy: Time to get off the computer and get ready for bed
Kid: Oh man, now I am NEVER going to get to play again...

You could have just stopped with saying "I'll pass." Adding the histrionics does not nothing to change the thread membership's general perceptions of your posts.

 

No it's not - my students finish week 2 tomorrow.

 

Good. Keep it up! Let me know if you have anything to do next?

 

How do you find standardized patients to do standardized testing of prospective residents?

 

Morning to The Lounge™ from GNV. Three days to EZE.



What is stressful about high school? There is college, graduate school, maybe a doctorate, and then work and life.

There are a number of Institutes of Higher Education that have dropped using the SAT as a measurement for admissions.

+1 ^



+1

How was your weekend trip?

 

Actually many medical schools do have "standardized patients" for evaluation of patient encounters. They are actors who are trained to a particular script and disease state. The "patient" and observer evaluate the "doctor" doing the evaluation.... including obtaining adequate information, bedside manner and examination parameters.

We don't do that for residency, as we have direct observation of patient/resident encounters but that is after we pick them.

We have 4 residents slots a year. We get ~300 applications for those 4 spots (a desirable location/residency) and have to weed down the list of applicants. We do this by the test scores. Occasionally there will be an an excellent applicant with a special situation that did not make the test cut-off level, but that is a rarity.

Our interview process is then whittled down to ~ 50 invited interviewees. ~32 of those come to the interview. The interview is designed to get an idea of the personality/fit of the applicant into the program. Basically "can we work with this person for the next 5 years". The successful applicants must work really closely with the other residents in the program for the next 5 years so we actively have the other residents participate in the selection process.

Sometimes the highest test scorers are not the type of person we want in our program, and are ranked low on the final list.

 

In this era of grade inflation, how else can you compare students from different schools without tools like ACT or SAT?

Of course you realize the SAT score is not simply a sliding score of 80% right = 660 for example. You raw score is converted to a scaled score, where you are penalized for incorrect answers. That takes out the benefit from guessing. It's essentially a gigantic curved grading scale.

Look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT

In some areas, perhaps. What about math?

In any case, have you ever scored essays? I have been on the teaching side, and I'll say it ain't easy.

The SATs have become politicized in our era beyond belief. They were always intended to be a tool to provide a standardized measurement across class and region.

The testing does have some interesting idiosyncrasies. Back in my day, Tennessee had one of the highest average SAT scores in the nation. The state wasn't all that smart. It just reflected that the state university systems all required the ACT. So most of the students took the ACT. The only students taking the SAT were those going out of state, or going to private schools. In general, that sample consisted of higher achieving students than those going to the state university systems.

David

 

Patch Adams should be a required part of the curriculum as well watching the http://www.patchadams.com/.

 

One of the biggest challenges is to get the residents to talk to patients using terms the patients can understand. We are legally required to tell so much information now, that it is easy to forget that our patients usually don't know medical terms...

That said, I am not sure I agree with Patch Adams political views, especially because most people don't think that being sick is humorous in any way. It is important to have a sense of humor about things, in appropriate circumstances. My patients' (little kids who need surgery) parents don't think anything about their little Suzy's upcoming operation is funny in the least and would react by walking out the door if their doctor was a clown, literally or figuratively.

 

I wanted to say it, so I said it.

Way too many things. Being a junior, thinking about college, the future, and taking harder classes. Also have drivers ed, will eventually be working, etc.

 

Completely uneventful except for no sleep Friday night / Saturday. Four flights - all involving ATL - with no delays. Confirming all four flights into F at the time of booking helped. The last two flights have yet to credit but combined with the BNA promo, the RDM / MQM increase are both good - it's essentially segment running on steroids.

 

I would never want to inject politics into a hospital setting, no pun intended. Humor yes, even just a little bit. I had one MD who is more research oriented then patient oriented. Office visits got to the point where I told the MD that I was taking my business to another MD at a different hospital because I felt the MD was not interested in my complaint, just the research. I based my comment on the number of surveys I received in a short period of time.