This is just a spot where I will be posting relevant news articles surrounding education, admissions, medical education, and higher education in general.
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/harvard-gonna-harvard
I thought that this was an incredibly important and relevant article to use as my first blog post on this site. A quick summary of the article is that some medical schools, Harvard included and are only accepting courses that are Pass/Fail if the student doesn’t have the choice to take it for a letter grade. This is causing a lot of outrage because of the inequity this poses. Many students had to return home to really difficult situations because COVID-19 and are living in circumstances that are very different to what they were used to on their college campus. Access to internet and wifi connection could also be limited for these students, thus adding another obstacle on to this already incredibly challenging situation the world is facing.
I really believe the nature of the question of accepting P/F goes a lot deeper than this though. Yes, comparing P/F to letter grades will be a challenge, but should we be looking into a more equitable process in general? Where grades and MCATs aren’t used as metrics? I think we should and it’s a question that I really hope to send more time focusing on in my career.