So I'm a 4th year gearing up for residency applications and am kind of struggling with figuring out which residency programs I should apply to, or which ones I even have a chance at. What I've done so far is go through all of Freida and look at which programs take DOs, if they have minimum board requirements, if they're heavily regionally biased, and if they've taken candidates from my school. I also looked at what percent of non-DOs were USMD vs. IMGs, as I figured I'd have a better shot at a place with 10% DOs and 90% IMGs than a place with 10% DOs and 90% USMDs (I figure the latter would be more competitive?). I'm planning on applying to around 60-70 ACGME programs initially (along with AOA programs), and I'm trying to figure out if there's some way to decide which ones I should apply to other than the ones that take a ton of DO students (not many).
My stats:
DO student
Preclinical: Bottom 10% of class (GPA tanked second year when curriculum changed)
COMLEX Level 1: <450 (didn't take Step)
COMLEX Level 2: Awaiting score, probably <500, not taking Step 2
Clinical grades: All P in a H/P/F system, grades are 100% determined by national shelf percentile (typically landed around 40th percentile nationally except for psych which was 75th percentile and IM which was 10th percentile).
Clinical Class rank: ~20th percentile
Clinical comments: Mostly glowing, no negative comments (I'm confident I'd have mostly honors if clinical comments were included as part of clinical grades...). Very strong comments from my psych and FM rotations.
LORs: 2 Psych letters (one Subi), two from other psych-relevant fields. I know 2 of them are pretty outstanding (was told by the authors) and the other two are supposedly strong.
No research in medical school, in a few clubs and decent volunteering, but not really anything psych related because I didn't think I'd go psych until halfway through 3rd year (thought I'd do FM)
Red Flags: Had to remediate my neuro block. I can explain why this happened and I crushed the remediation exam, but I'm worried this alone will kill my chances at many places.
General positives: I did both my 3rd year electives in psych and am doing several more psych rotations 4th year. I have neuro rotations set up to try and address that weakness in my app and am legitimately very passionate about entering this field.
In a nutshell, I'm a really hard working and enthusiastic student who is a terrible test-taker (thus why I didn't take USMLEs) and had a slip-up in a pre-clinical class important to psych. I also have limited research/psych ECs because I realized I'm really passionate about it so late.
So my question is, what's my next step? I'm applying AOA and ACGME, but I'd like to forgo the AOA match if I get enough interviews on the ACGME side as there aren't many AOA psych programs left and many are in the few places I don't want to end up. I realize I can't be picky and am okay ending up almost anywhere geographically or in terms of type of institution, but I'd like to try and stay within commuting distance of a decent sized city if possible. Am I on the right track? How else do I narrow down which programs I actually have a shot at getting an interview at without just shot-gunning every program in Freida? Am I making any stupid assumptions?
All help is greatly appreciated!
My stats:
DO student
Preclinical: Bottom 10% of class (GPA tanked second year when curriculum changed)
COMLEX Level 1: <450 (didn't take Step)
COMLEX Level 2: Awaiting score, probably <500, not taking Step 2
Clinical grades: All P in a H/P/F system, grades are 100% determined by national shelf percentile (typically landed around 40th percentile nationally except for psych which was 75th percentile and IM which was 10th percentile).
Clinical Class rank: ~20th percentile
Clinical comments: Mostly glowing, no negative comments (I'm confident I'd have mostly honors if clinical comments were included as part of clinical grades...). Very strong comments from my psych and FM rotations.
LORs: 2 Psych letters (one Subi), two from other psych-relevant fields. I know 2 of them are pretty outstanding (was told by the authors) and the other two are supposedly strong.
No research in medical school, in a few clubs and decent volunteering, but not really anything psych related because I didn't think I'd go psych until halfway through 3rd year (thought I'd do FM)
Red Flags: Had to remediate my neuro block. I can explain why this happened and I crushed the remediation exam, but I'm worried this alone will kill my chances at many places.
General positives: I did both my 3rd year electives in psych and am doing several more psych rotations 4th year. I have neuro rotations set up to try and address that weakness in my app and am legitimately very passionate about entering this field.
In a nutshell, I'm a really hard working and enthusiastic student who is a terrible test-taker (thus why I didn't take USMLEs) and had a slip-up in a pre-clinical class important to psych. I also have limited research/psych ECs because I realized I'm really passionate about it so late.
So my question is, what's my next step? I'm applying AOA and ACGME, but I'd like to forgo the AOA match if I get enough interviews on the ACGME side as there aren't many AOA psych programs left and many are in the few places I don't want to end up. I realize I can't be picky and am okay ending up almost anywhere geographically or in terms of type of institution, but I'd like to try and stay within commuting distance of a decent sized city if possible. Am I on the right track? How else do I narrow down which programs I actually have a shot at getting an interview at without just shot-gunning every program in Freida? Am I making any stupid assumptions?
All help is greatly appreciated!