I really hate this. I had reservations about posting on SDN but i finally gave in and made an account.
Seriously, what can we as students do about this? Do I email EMRA to cancel my membership? Should we all do that? Who provides oversight to the AAMC? This might be free this cycle, but rest assured it is going to be a future cash-cow for them. Not to mention all the test-prep $100/month courses that will pop up just to further prepare us for the interview trail. Keep in mind that it costs $80 just to upload a USMLE transcript... it was $60 last year. What could possibly cause electronic upload of a number score to cost 80$? That's $80 for step 1 and $80 for each part of step 2. DOs have to pay that, plus COMLEX scores.
The AAMC says this is still in research phase. If I don't want to participate as a research subject, can I opt out? Why are law firms not all over this kind of stuff? Isn't there any grounds for a class-action lawsuit? (before the discrimination suits start when white guys are the only ones to get high scores on this?) I can't apply to EM programs if I don't participate as a research subject... that should have been mentioned to me before I started med school specifically to become an EM doc. Although with all this nonsense, I am seriously considering going into another field now. SLOEs and away rotations are one thing, but now this? One of the things EM physicians pride themselves in is the ability to make important decisions with limited information. I guess that's not the case. How bad were previous match outcomes that they feel the need to add this to the process? O
r is it just "academic EM docs" at pretentious programs that are having trouble making these kind of decisions? If you go to the SAEM site about this nonsense and google the physicians at the bottom who are "collaborating" with the AAMC, you'll see they are by and large representative of the pretentious pseudo EM programs that are typically implicated in this sort of thing.
Emergency Medicine Standardized Video Interview Luckily I wasn't interested in any of theses programs except UT Southwestern... definitely won't be applying there anymore. I can't even imagine what the culture is like at places like this. How about, go see a patient every once in a while instead of sitting around trying to drum up fake research for your stupid CV. Since personality and humanism and all that stuff is going to contribute to the score you receive for this, does this mean that Mass General and Vanderbilt are now going to all of a sudden start taking DOs? If the program directors and leaders of the EM community really truly care about us students and our perpetual financial abuse, why don't programs drop out of the match all together? Seriously? Why do they need ERAS? New programs that begin mid-cycle do without it. We are adults- we can sign contracts. I can send a CV and board scores, free from the AAMC money racket, and come interview. There will be no shortage of well qualified applicants. I really think we need to boycott the overly-academic quackery that is infiltrating EM and start really seeking out leaders in EM who don't subscribe to this nonsense. And, we students need to find some legal representation for this perpetual increasing cost of medical education.