The Power of Failure
One of the new NEXT exam proposals seem to be that final year practical exam marks will now have the potential to decide a candidate's entire future. At a time when USMLE is trying to reduce the stress on students by making step 1 pass/fail only (so that mugging up useless crap like which viruses are double stranded won't affect your future), the powers that be closer to home seem to be attempting to make things unnecessarily stressful. There is precious little merit in any practical exam. The only good thing about them is that it only matters if you pass or not. Some examiners will fail students based purely on personal issues. In some colleges, there are entire batches of students who passed after going to court to appeal their results. On the other side, many powerful parents also try to influence examiners just before such exams. As for me, I have good personal experience about how some examiners can go above and beyond their way in order to fail a student. For one of my