The Alpert Medical School MD Curriculum Committee passed a motion last month to grade all preclinical courses the entirety of the first two years of medical study solely Satisfactory/No Credit, beginning with the MD class of 2017.

The schools previous policy graded all preclinical courses S/NC but also allowed students to earn honors distinction in select courses following their first semester.

Med School administrators and students said there has long been widespread interest in eliminating honors grading for preclinical classes.

Med School Student Senate members of the class of 2017 raised the issue to the rest of the Student Senate, which unanimously voted for the change prior to the motions adoption by the MDCC. A survey of first-year medical students found that 65 percent of students favored the change, wrote Dan Ebner MD17, Class of 2017 MDCC student representative, in an email to The Herald.

This strong student support prompted Luba Dumenco, chair of the subcommittee on years one and two of the MDCC, to conduct extensive research on the issue, which showed that solely S/NC preclinical grades are very common. The majority of the U.S. News and World Reports top 20 medical schools have pass/fail grades without honors for preclinical classes.

A 2011 Mayo Clinic College of Medicine study designed to evaluate the effects of grading on preclinical medical students concluded that the way students are evaluated has a greater impact than other aspects of curriculum structure on their well-being. Curricular reform intended to enhance student well-being should incorporate pass/fail grading.

A 2011 University of Massachusetts study reached a similar conclusion.

I went into this in a very unbiased fashion, Dumenco said. Increasingly, as people saw the data, they became more interested in it, and thats because the data were strong.

But some expressed doubt about the extent of the studies conclusions.

I dont think the absence of honors would have affected my stress levels tremendously during years one and two, wrote Greg Elia MD15 in an email to The Herald, though he added that he supported the change on the whole.

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Med school tweaks grading system