Med School Changes Grading System To Improve Evaluation of Students

The Medical School Faculty will begin using a different grading system on next year's entering class.

The new system, which will not affect those currently in the Medical School, will be based on four rankings. "Excellent," "Satisfactory," "Marginal" and "Unsatisfactory." It replaces the present grading mechanism adopted in September 1970 which has three separate components.

Pre clinical courses are now graded on the basis of satisfactory of incomplete work while clinical courses off graded on the same system the College uses. A through F the faculty men last teaching an elective course has the prerogative to use either method.

The new grades, formally adopted at the Medical Faculty's December meeting will encourage the faculty members to make more extensive comments on students, Robert S. Blacklow '55, Assistant dean of the Faculty of Medicine, said yesterday. He said that both the faculty and students' agreed upon the importance of more than a simple letter of word in evaluating a students work.

Blacklow said the faculty felt that there was a need to recognize excellence while eliminating the quality in the present system where some courses are taught on the satisfactory incomplete basis while others are graded in the traditional manner.

The medical faculty has been discussing a new system of grades since last May. Blacklow said that the students made their own proposal earlier this year which was not adopted. A student faculty committee was later formed which devised the new system.

Blacklow said that while the system is neither what the students of faculty wanted it is a compromise and he expressed confidence in its operation.

Characterizing the grading controversy as nor that is common to all faculties and schools. Blacklow pointed to the fact that internship committees are looking for slightly different qualities than college admission committees, since an intern is a practicing doctor and not actually a student. More extensive evaluations than a letter grade, therefore, are more important for medical students, Blacklow said. Yale Medical School has not given grades for a number of years, he added.

Robert H. Ebert, dean of the Medical School, was unavailable for comment yesterday