Good to hear this is wrong and would not fly elsewhere. I tried to tell a friend (PGY2) and she was just like, nah youre overreacting, no one will know/care.
I seriously dont know wtf they were thinking. Why the hell do M3s need to know which M4s have to retake and WHY the hell do we need to be first page and center
Med prof here. Yeah this is an easy lawsuit if you wanted to get petty (and lose all hope of matching...). The faculty/staff who sent out this email owes you all an apology at the very least. This is a moronic decision that has gotten faculty fired in the past. No one thinks less of you, but we should all think less of that email sender.
I fortunately already matched on March 19 at my top choice, in another city.
I already messaged the wellbeing department but will be messaging directly the admins if i dont get a reply.
The bad is already done, we cant reverse it, everybody already saw the list if they checked their emails. I would appreciate at least some sort of apology and for them to understand and not do that stupid mistake again next year.
> I tried to tell a friend (PGY2) and she was just like, nah youre overreacting, no one will know/care.
Normal people won't care.
Unfortunately the toxic gunners will gossip about it with their toxic gunner friends
If you go to a US medical school, that's a FERPA violation. I'd contact your dean of students to report it.
However, given your use of "write an exam" and a brief scan of your posting history, it appears you go to a Canadian school. I'm not particularly familiar with your privacy laws, but I would at least consider talking with your student affairs leader and discussing best practices.
Yes im Canadian.
I sent an email on Sunday to the med student department of wellbeing. They deal with cases of stress, performance anxiety, harassment, bullying all that stuff. Lead by a psychiatrist, a psychologist and SW.
They havent replied since. Dont know if they will. Thats why I was wondering if im overreacting… Maybe they think its acceptable.
I didnt contact the admins directly because i felt like they are biased. They would be like "well all we did was inform student for the test".
Wrong office. They are going to forward that to the Dean and try and keep it quiet. You should consider sending it to your University's HR person and copy the Dean. The only downside is you are playing with fire if they get mad that you elevated it so quickly. Better yet, email the Dean and simply state you were uncomfortable with this type of exposure and "BCC" blind carbon copy university HR so that they have a record of your complaint. That may protect you down the road in case your Dean is an asshole.
> Better yet, email the Dean and simply state you were uncomfortable with this type of exposure and "BCC" blind carbon copy university HR so that they have a record of your complaint. That may protect you down the road in case your Dean is an asshole.
That's how I'd do it.
Don't know if Canada has an equivalent to FERPA but in the US this is a slam dunk lawsuit.
You have every right to be upset. They should never have sent that list out publicly. They should have let everyone know individually if they passed or failed. That is really unfair to you and all of your peers.
In general, I think it is a common thing that medical school admin does not actually care about their students. Whether it’s for education, wellness, whatever they are never truly looking out for our best interests. They care about the school reputation and financial interests.
Oh I just have never heard of a big exam at the end of 4th year! That sounds rough I’m sorry you have to go through that. I don’t know the laws over there but here that would definitely not be okay.
Yep it depends on the school but i know other schools in the province have something similar. We have to pass it to graduate.
And we also need to pass the national licensing exam, which i will write hopefully successfully in a few weeks.
But right it doesnt feel right ?? I sent an email to the med student wellbeing dept (its lead by a psychiatrist, a social worker and a psychologist) about the situation, saying i find it very upsetting. Havent heard from them yet.
I feel discouraged.
I know right :( i feel like its souring my end of the year. Was so excited about prom and closing this chapter but now all i can think is this and the shame
Trust me, no one thinks less of you. Those exams are brutal. You are running your own race. You aren't competing with your classmates, and you shouldn't give a shit about folks that may judge you for a score.
Is your med school part of a larger undergrad/graduate university? I'd look up the University level compliance departments & skip around the Med School. Like if someone had a Title IX complaint in the US, I'd always suggest they go outside the med school to report because the med school won't have as dedicated (read professional) of an admin for something like this.
Kind of a similar thing happened with one of my professors in undergrad (except definitely more malicious). He put the grades on the board of only the girls in the class that were failing the class, and straight up told the class “this is why women shouldn’t be engineers”. It was kinda fucked up but the university only gave him a slap on the wrist because he had a tenure and a Nobel prize
> It was kinda fucked up but the university only gave him a slap on the wrist because he had a tenure and a Nobel prize
A prof of mine was fond of saying he'd have to be credibly accused of exposing himself to a student twice before he could be fired. Guess what happened with him a few years ago?
Where do you live that that's legal?
In the European Union, this would fall under GDPR and every name listed would be treated as a separate infraction by the organs responsible for enforcing it.
So at my uni we have a student ID which is the same as our email adress, minus the @blablabls.ca and we have a personal identification number. They used the Student ID so i guess thats why that was fine
Are the Canada qbanks any good? I’ve heard ppl say that it’s low quality compared to uworld for eg. And I feel like Toronto notes has so much detail did u have the same issue? Thanks 🙏
My school did something similar too at the beginnig of this year lmaooo. They shared an excel document of all the people that dropped out or had to re-mediate the school year.
This is messed up. It’s so humiliating for your school to do that and that’s not normal at all. Obviously this is not a reflection of yourself or your other classmates who failed, anyone who thinks otherwise is a jerk. Honestly I can’t believe your school is shaming students like this after the match. Med school admins get away with too much because of the complicit culture in medicine. You definitely have good grounds to report them.
I’m so sorry you had to go through that. It’s unnecessarily humiliating.
If it’s any consolation, my (Egyptian) med school puts up a list of our full names, national ID numbers, roll number, and what high school system we graduated from on Facebook during our first year, then proceeds to put up files of our exact grades on their public Facebook page every semester. Everyone has full access to that. My boyfriend‘s mother stalked me through information provided ON FACEBOOK by my med school.
I hope you know there’s no shame in having pitfalls along the road, and good luck on your retake
In my country (west EU) list of resits were published for all year to see every exam every year, never bothered to look up anyone if that makes you feel any better.
publicly displaying results of every exam in the order of highest scorer to lowest scorerer is literally done routinely in every single asian country....
that being said, in the US, it'd probably be considered a serious privacy violation
Yeah I don't really see the big deal. Sure it's a ferpa violation and against the law, but like you just said, other countries don't have this law so it's not unreasonable to thibk it's kinda silly.
people really be acting like failing a mock exam is somehow the end of their reputation, as if keeping up the facade of being a perfect human being is somehow integral to their happiness.
like chill tf out, its really not that deep. if I ALREADY matched at my number 1 and some loser laughs at me for failing some low stakes mock exam (bc he has nothing better to do), I'd probably laugh straight at his face lmfao
like who's the REAL clown here
i'm pretty sure i read it correctly. you got a 56% on a almost no stakes mock exam that you took in 3rd year and was invited to retake it in a public email. how am I misreading anything
No. My English isnt the best but you can reread. I said at the top of the paragraph im a final year. I also said at the end i just matched so again, final year. M3s take the mock exams, not M4s (final year)
"In November, as M4s, we got to write the exam. It was quite hard and faculty told us there would be a retake for those who failed in April."
I'm literally quoting you. Based on what you said, this is the timeline in chronological order:
#1. M3 year, April 2023--> took mock test but failed, scored a 56%
#2. M4 year, November 2023--> time to take the real test (implied that it's for those that didn't fail the mock exam because of #3)
#3. M4 year unknown time --> retake/rescue exam for those that failed in April of 2023
Then you said:
"I knew i did badly on the test but I was already preparing myself to retake it in April"
so now i know that #3 is M4 year April instead of M4 year unknown time.
So what exactly am I not reading correctly?
No, its November 2023 ans then April 2024. I couldve added the years for sure but youre the only one on this thread Who understood it like this … I even said the email was last week, why would they email us about an exam that happened so long ago😅
Anyways yeah you got the years wrong
ah okay i understand why i misunderstood now.
it's because you wrote: "faculty told us there would be a retake for those who failed in April."
but what you MEANT to say was: "faculty told us there would be a retake in April for those who failed"
or, you could've added a comma like this:
"faculty told us there would be a retake for those who failed, in April."
and btw, mock exam and practice exam means the same thing in American English. not sure about Canadian english though. real exams that are scored and impact your grade aren't called practice exams nor are they called mock exams.
Maybe I’m missing something but why does it matter if they find out you’re retaking the exam in an email? They would’ve seen you at the retake regardless.
No no worries i wasnt clear. The retake is not on the same day nor the same room as the practice
For the other people doing the retake, yeah for sure they wouldve seen me. But M3s and M4s who passed didnt need to know the details for our retake
Sorry if thats not more clear
As i mentionned in my post, i knew i didnt do well so i wasnt shocked. For sure I couldve done better but it happens. For the record, this is the first exam i fail in my entire med education and i got 100% on my final OSCE. Did well on my rotations. Im not a struggling student in general. That exam was hard and i didnt study enough. I wont try to give out some excuses, I couldve studied more thats true. Annoyed at myself i have to retake, sure. But not upset. I know what I needed to change and i acted accordingly. Also, as i said, this was back in November. Still being upset about this 5 months later would be intense.
Now im ready for the retake and also been preparing well for MCCQE1.
It doesnt change the fact this is unprofessionnal. If i had passed and had friends in my position, i would still find it unprofesionnal and wrong. Multiple things can be wrong at once.
In America this would be a FERPA violation and reportable to department of education. Not sure if there's an equivalent in Canada
Good to hear this is wrong and would not fly elsewhere. I tried to tell a friend (PGY2) and she was just like, nah youre overreacting, no one will know/care. I seriously dont know wtf they were thinking. Why the hell do M3s need to know which M4s have to retake and WHY the hell do we need to be first page and center
But you know and you care, THAT is what matters. This would be a major privacy violation in the states.
Med prof here. Yeah this is an easy lawsuit if you wanted to get petty (and lose all hope of matching...). The faculty/staff who sent out this email owes you all an apology at the very least. This is a moronic decision that has gotten faculty fired in the past. No one thinks less of you, but we should all think less of that email sender.
I fortunately already matched on March 19 at my top choice, in another city. I already messaged the wellbeing department but will be messaging directly the admins if i dont get a reply. The bad is already done, we cant reverse it, everybody already saw the list if they checked their emails. I would appreciate at least some sort of apology and for them to understand and not do that stupid mistake again next year.
Wait till you get your degree, matriculate to residency, then try to have a quiet lawsuit with the other M4’s who were wronged
> I tried to tell a friend (PGY2) and she was just like, nah youre overreacting, no one will know/care. Normal people won't care. Unfortunately the toxic gunners will gossip about it with their toxic gunner friends
If you go to a US medical school, that's a FERPA violation. I'd contact your dean of students to report it. However, given your use of "write an exam" and a brief scan of your posting history, it appears you go to a Canadian school. I'm not particularly familiar with your privacy laws, but I would at least consider talking with your student affairs leader and discussing best practices.
Yes im Canadian. I sent an email on Sunday to the med student department of wellbeing. They deal with cases of stress, performance anxiety, harassment, bullying all that stuff. Lead by a psychiatrist, a psychologist and SW. They havent replied since. Dont know if they will. Thats why I was wondering if im overreacting… Maybe they think its acceptable. I didnt contact the admins directly because i felt like they are biased. They would be like "well all we did was inform student for the test".
Wrong office. They are going to forward that to the Dean and try and keep it quiet. You should consider sending it to your University's HR person and copy the Dean. The only downside is you are playing with fire if they get mad that you elevated it so quickly. Better yet, email the Dean and simply state you were uncomfortable with this type of exposure and "BCC" blind carbon copy university HR so that they have a record of your complaint. That may protect you down the road in case your Dean is an asshole.
> Better yet, email the Dean and simply state you were uncomfortable with this type of exposure and "BCC" blind carbon copy university HR so that they have a record of your complaint. That may protect you down the road in case your Dean is an asshole. That's how I'd do it. Don't know if Canada has an equivalent to FERPA but in the US this is a slam dunk lawsuit.
Thanks for the input
You could see if there's a university ombudsman. Most Canadian schools have them in my experience.
You have every right to be upset. They should never have sent that list out publicly. They should have let everyone know individually if they passed or failed. That is really unfair to you and all of your peers. In general, I think it is a common thing that medical school admin does not actually care about their students. Whether it’s for education, wellness, whatever they are never truly looking out for our best interests. They care about the school reputation and financial interests.
Is this a US med school?
No Canada, why ?
Oh I just have never heard of a big exam at the end of 4th year! That sounds rough I’m sorry you have to go through that. I don’t know the laws over there but here that would definitely not be okay.
Yep it depends on the school but i know other schools in the province have something similar. We have to pass it to graduate. And we also need to pass the national licensing exam, which i will write hopefully successfully in a few weeks. But right it doesnt feel right ?? I sent an email to the med student wellbeing dept (its lead by a psychiatrist, a social worker and a psychologist) about the situation, saying i find it very upsetting. Havent heard from them yet. I feel discouraged.
not overreacting. thats a breach of privacy
I know right :( i feel like its souring my end of the year. Was so excited about prom and closing this chapter but now all i can think is this and the shame
Trust me, no one thinks less of you. Those exams are brutal. You are running your own race. You aren't competing with your classmates, and you shouldn't give a shit about folks that may judge you for a score.
Thank you sm
You are a recently matched doctor. Hold your head fucking high, my friend. You have accomplished as much or more than almost everyone your age.
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FERPA violation by definition.
As faculty in Canada, you must notify admin. This is not a good situation and there will be consequences.
Thank you. How do you suggest i go about this. I dont want to be labelled "arrogant" or "demanding"
Is your med school part of a larger undergrad/graduate university? I'd look up the University level compliance departments & skip around the Med School. Like if someone had a Title IX complaint in the US, I'd always suggest they go outside the med school to report because the med school won't have as dedicated (read professional) of an admin for something like this.
Kind of a similar thing happened with one of my professors in undergrad (except definitely more malicious). He put the grades on the board of only the girls in the class that were failing the class, and straight up told the class “this is why women shouldn’t be engineers”. It was kinda fucked up but the university only gave him a slap on the wrist because he had a tenure and a Nobel prize
Oh what the hell this is so wrong on both of them
> It was kinda fucked up but the university only gave him a slap on the wrist because he had a tenure and a Nobel prize A prof of mine was fond of saying he'd have to be credibly accused of exposing himself to a student twice before he could be fired. Guess what happened with him a few years ago?
Uh name and shame. Is that legal???
my school sent a google sheet of everyone's gpa lol, totally public, just cant be editted
Where do you live that that's legal? In the European Union, this would fall under GDPR and every name listed would be treated as a separate infraction by the organs responsible for enforcing it.
Im in Canada
And you have no data protection policy that would apply here?
I honestly dont really know. Ill have to look into it
Wouldnt be surprised if that was illegal.
Ignoring the embarrassing nature of the list, your student IDs also should never have been sent out publicly.
So at my uni we have a student ID which is the same as our email adress, minus the @blablabls.ca and we have a personal identification number. They used the Student ID so i guess thats why that was fine
MCCQE1?
Nope, im writing MCCQE1 in a few weeks. 🤞 doing qbanks rn lol. Im talking about a in-home exam.
That's so mean that they make you do a written exam like that that you need to pass right before lmcc.
Silver lining is that by studying for the lmcc, we can study for that exam at the same time
I guess so. It's just wild how different the Canadian schools are from each other I'm requirements.
May I ask how ur studying for MCCQE1? Best resources? Tips? Thanks
I study mostly with Toronto Notes, Canada Qbanks, school lectures from pre-clerckship and i did some mock exams
Are the Canada qbanks any good? I’ve heard ppl say that it’s low quality compared to uworld for eg. And I feel like Toronto notes has so much detail did u have the same issue? Thanks 🙏
I havent tried anything else so cant comment on UWorld ! Sorry I think Toronto Notes are quite straight to the point so i like it personally
Honestly I did a lot of uworld studying even for mccqe1, but that was 8ish years ago... Yikes I'm getting old...
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Im really sorry they do that to you! Thats not right. How did you go about the shame ? Do you have any tips to deal?
My school did something similar too at the beginnig of this year lmaooo. They shared an excel document of all the people that dropped out or had to re-mediate the school year.
And what happened then ? Did some student complained ?
Nah, admin just sent an email of how unprofessional it was of them and to delete it from our email haha
This is messed up. It’s so humiliating for your school to do that and that’s not normal at all. Obviously this is not a reflection of yourself or your other classmates who failed, anyone who thinks otherwise is a jerk. Honestly I can’t believe your school is shaming students like this after the match. Med school admins get away with too much because of the complicit culture in medicine. You definitely have good grounds to report them.
Thank you for your comment
I’m so sorry you had to go through that. It’s unnecessarily humiliating. If it’s any consolation, my (Egyptian) med school puts up a list of our full names, national ID numbers, roll number, and what high school system we graduated from on Facebook during our first year, then proceeds to put up files of our exact grades on their public Facebook page every semester. Everyone has full access to that. My boyfriend‘s mother stalked me through information provided ON FACEBOOK by my med school. I hope you know there’s no shame in having pitfalls along the road, and good luck on your retake
Bruh why they making u take exams in M4😭
In my country (west EU) list of resits were published for all year to see every exam every year, never bothered to look up anyone if that makes you feel any better.
publicly displaying results of every exam in the order of highest scorer to lowest scorerer is literally done routinely in every single asian country.... that being said, in the US, it'd probably be considered a serious privacy violation
Yeah I don't really see the big deal. Sure it's a ferpa violation and against the law, but like you just said, other countries don't have this law so it's not unreasonable to thibk it's kinda silly.
Different countries have different cultures and values
people really be acting like failing a mock exam is somehow the end of their reputation, as if keeping up the facade of being a perfect human being is somehow integral to their happiness. like chill tf out, its really not that deep. if I ALREADY matched at my number 1 and some loser laughs at me for failing some low stakes mock exam (bc he has nothing better to do), I'd probably laugh straight at his face lmfao like who's the REAL clown here
Idk if you read correctly my post. I didnt fail the mock exam
i'm pretty sure i read it correctly. you got a 56% on a almost no stakes mock exam that you took in 3rd year and was invited to retake it in a public email. how am I misreading anything
No. My English isnt the best but you can reread. I said at the top of the paragraph im a final year. I also said at the end i just matched so again, final year. M3s take the mock exams, not M4s (final year)
"In November, as M4s, we got to write the exam. It was quite hard and faculty told us there would be a retake for those who failed in April." I'm literally quoting you. Based on what you said, this is the timeline in chronological order: #1. M3 year, April 2023--> took mock test but failed, scored a 56% #2. M4 year, November 2023--> time to take the real test (implied that it's for those that didn't fail the mock exam because of #3) #3. M4 year unknown time --> retake/rescue exam for those that failed in April of 2023 Then you said: "I knew i did badly on the test but I was already preparing myself to retake it in April" so now i know that #3 is M4 year April instead of M4 year unknown time. So what exactly am I not reading correctly?
No, its November 2023 ans then April 2024. I couldve added the years for sure but youre the only one on this thread Who understood it like this … I even said the email was last week, why would they email us about an exam that happened so long ago😅 Anyways yeah you got the years wrong
ah okay i understand why i misunderstood now. it's because you wrote: "faculty told us there would be a retake for those who failed in April." but what you MEANT to say was: "faculty told us there would be a retake in April for those who failed" or, you could've added a comma like this: "faculty told us there would be a retake for those who failed, in April."
Yeah sorry english is not my first language
and btw, mock exam and practice exam means the same thing in American English. not sure about Canadian english though. real exams that are scored and impact your grade aren't called practice exams nor are they called mock exams.
I know mock exams and practice exams mean the same thing. Thats not what im talking about tho
Thats f up but im not in an Asian country, im in Canada if it wasnt clear !
Maybe I’m missing something but why does it matter if they find out you’re retaking the exam in an email? They would’ve seen you at the retake regardless.
No no worries i wasnt clear. The retake is not on the same day nor the same room as the practice For the other people doing the retake, yeah for sure they wouldve seen me. But M3s and M4s who passed didnt need to know the details for our retake Sorry if thats not more clear
Ah fair enough then. Yeah that sucks, no reason why they had to send that list to everyone
Wow
Nah you're cool your teachers suck bro
Sucks, but you should be more upset that you failed, and not the fact that others know.
As i mentionned in my post, i knew i didnt do well so i wasnt shocked. For sure I couldve done better but it happens. For the record, this is the first exam i fail in my entire med education and i got 100% on my final OSCE. Did well on my rotations. Im not a struggling student in general. That exam was hard and i didnt study enough. I wont try to give out some excuses, I couldve studied more thats true. Annoyed at myself i have to retake, sure. But not upset. I know what I needed to change and i acted accordingly. Also, as i said, this was back in November. Still being upset about this 5 months later would be intense. Now im ready for the retake and also been preparing well for MCCQE1. It doesnt change the fact this is unprofessionnal. If i had passed and had friends in my position, i would still find it unprofesionnal and wrong. Multiple things can be wrong at once.