- Joined
- Mar 28, 2018
- Messages
- 66
- Reaction score
- 57
I just wanted to sort of map out next steps in my life and I am weighing options and such. What should I should do when I don't match? Try to find a job and reapply? Give up? What happens if I find a way to survive the year and don't give up? medical school didn't go my way but I really like the specialty and I find myself far too happy when I work with my home program that I have to give it an earnest shot I wouldn't sleep at night if I bailed type of thing, even knowing I won't match. So the plan is to apply as broadly as my limited funds will allow. I'll give a brief app overview but yeah I definitely feel defeated the specialty is pretty cool I definitely recommend for whoever can pull it off. Not really asking what're my chances because it's obvious.
Application picture kinda long:
Subjective:
- 3rd year (just started) First-gen college African American, Foster kid since like 6 months so not much support, very happy to get to maybe do medicine but burned out from a rough clerkship year, mid-tier MD in top third for rankings when I applied haven't followed
- Volunteering: Community service mainly I did some logistics for my school's community service program, some ent community service with my home program, and some other things I can't think of right now.
- Research: Only 2 projects completed but I plan on taking on more once I take my step exams this December so I will have 2 years of a pretty free schedule to do this
- Other ECs: Head TA for a program focused on imparting evidenced study skills to medical students, medical student advisor, and TA for graduate students, I work on and off where I can to make needed money (uber, clinic, TA, tutoring)
- Narratives: Mid - bad except surgery nothing great because even on OBGYN where I had the best commentary something unfortunate happened to make that narrative bad -- I haven't read it yet'
- Evaluations: Can be good but occasionally not great, negative commentary (can probably find a comment within the same service that contradicts so I don't know anymore...) includes "quiet at first" "hard to read abilities" "Looked disinterested (on peds and I love working with kids and even begged to go see a patient with the resident who left me anyways after being told by the senior resident to take me and that I was interested)" Also got that2 one from an attending that hardly spoke to me on that service. ENT elective was probably the best if not top three evaluations but they were nice. All eval grades in 90s except for IM.
Only got performs like a resident once out of like 15 evals over the year despite my efforts.
Objective:
- Step exams: Will take both this December, unsure where I will score I tended to do very well on the pretest for NBME shelf exams but you will see what happens shortly but unfortunately even a good score won't help
Preclinical grades: I think I either passed them all or got 1 F on the transcript for not having 75% attendance they weren't clear but this isn't the worse thing passed all the actual courses
Clinical grades : Slowly watched my hopes and dreams die here. I made adjustments after adjustment. Reddit search after Reddit search. Even met with the academic coach whose only suggestion was that I get an extended time accomadation. To preface I went in saying I should take a leave of absence prior to clerkship but I honestly had no idea how'd it help so I said F it we ball. No balling was done... A myriad of health, financial, and eventually stress problems go on that have been difficult getting a handle on.
In chronological order:
Surgery: High pass (Missed Honors by 2-3%) Poor shelf performance barely passed.
Anesthesia: High pass (Missed Honors cut off by 0.4%) Never met the evaluator but he gave me a random poor score in a category I felt I performed well in but no need to get into it, I wasn't going to complain lol but had I'd know how this year go maybe I should have)
EM: High Pass (mainly mid evals) (also timed out on the exam that could've saved it because I lost time when the intern didn't know how to do a wound vac change :/ she just watched and said don't leave and I didn't have anyone to step in which sucked)
Let's start the end of my hopes and dreams... You were probably thinking salvageable at this point haha
Pediatrics: Pass (Time out on the exam ~ 20 questions only sped through maybe 10 so maybe 10 blank so barely passed) evals fine with great ones (bless their soul) and bad ones mentioned before
OBGYN: F lol. Caught me off guard, I didn't even know I failed because the grades didn't reflect it. They failed my OSCE which was easy but I was late and a little disoriented so it was a bit clumsy I actually appealed it as I felt I hit the checkmarks on the rubric fairly well despite this but it's unlikely to be successful. Again poor shelf performance is probably the only shelf I will say studying more would've led to a better performance all my personal problems got big here and then got professionalism points off for being 15 minutes late the OSCE. Sigh... Also did the assignments but found out later I uploaded them incorrectly. Yeah, I went mad during this clerkship. If the appeal fails I will be repeating 2 weeks taking away from step time, evaluations here were great, course director literally paused reading them. This will be the weirdest contradicting narrative ever probably because they require failures to be included.
IM: P or F (just finished I definitely passed borderline but they are discussing points being taken away which would put me in the F area)
Family Med: Pass (OSCE)
Psychiatry: Pass probably (Time out on the shelf and rushed through half so barely passed was projected to score at least a 90 on all pretests included form 5 which people score about an 82 usually havent had a bait and switch that hard since peds where my pretests were also good)
Neurology: Pending just started hopefully high pass since I have a masters degree in neuro but who knows... I'll probably fail the shelf
*It may be important to mention I have researched extensive timing strategies but they do not work for me* During the first third of the exam I average about 1 minute a question then something uncontrollable and weird happens no matter how much clock watching I do*
- Mid evals (below average 3-5% except surgery which was above average by 2%) (These are all in the 90s except IM)
Sub Is: Plan on doing 2-3 aways and home program. Not expecting too much of a problem here I performed well with the my home program the first time and I know the anatomy well. I can show up early and do the hours and list fairly easily and my program tends to be more rigorous compared to other programs according to other students. Plus hopefully my personal problems will be resolved and controlled at this point since I can take a break now.
Application picture kinda long:
Subjective:
- 3rd year (just started) First-gen college African American, Foster kid since like 6 months so not much support, very happy to get to maybe do medicine but burned out from a rough clerkship year, mid-tier MD in top third for rankings when I applied haven't followed
- Volunteering: Community service mainly I did some logistics for my school's community service program, some ent community service with my home program, and some other things I can't think of right now.
- Research: Only 2 projects completed but I plan on taking on more once I take my step exams this December so I will have 2 years of a pretty free schedule to do this
- Other ECs: Head TA for a program focused on imparting evidenced study skills to medical students, medical student advisor, and TA for graduate students, I work on and off where I can to make needed money (uber, clinic, TA, tutoring)
- Narratives: Mid - bad except surgery nothing great because even on OBGYN where I had the best commentary something unfortunate happened to make that narrative bad -- I haven't read it yet'
- Evaluations: Can be good but occasionally not great, negative commentary (can probably find a comment within the same service that contradicts so I don't know anymore...) includes "quiet at first" "hard to read abilities" "Looked disinterested (on peds and I love working with kids and even begged to go see a patient with the resident who left me anyways after being told by the senior resident to take me and that I was interested)" Also got that2 one from an attending that hardly spoke to me on that service. ENT elective was probably the best if not top three evaluations but they were nice. All eval grades in 90s except for IM.
Only got performs like a resident once out of like 15 evals over the year despite my efforts.
Objective:
- Step exams: Will take both this December, unsure where I will score I tended to do very well on the pretest for NBME shelf exams but you will see what happens shortly but unfortunately even a good score won't help
Preclinical grades: I think I either passed them all or got 1 F on the transcript for not having 75% attendance they weren't clear but this isn't the worse thing passed all the actual courses
Clinical grades : Slowly watched my hopes and dreams die here. I made adjustments after adjustment. Reddit search after Reddit search. Even met with the academic coach whose only suggestion was that I get an extended time accomadation. To preface I went in saying I should take a leave of absence prior to clerkship but I honestly had no idea how'd it help so I said F it we ball. No balling was done... A myriad of health, financial, and eventually stress problems go on that have been difficult getting a handle on.
In chronological order:
Surgery: High pass (Missed Honors by 2-3%) Poor shelf performance barely passed.
Anesthesia: High pass (Missed Honors cut off by 0.4%) Never met the evaluator but he gave me a random poor score in a category I felt I performed well in but no need to get into it, I wasn't going to complain lol but had I'd know how this year go maybe I should have)
EM: High Pass (mainly mid evals) (also timed out on the exam that could've saved it because I lost time when the intern didn't know how to do a wound vac change :/ she just watched and said don't leave and I didn't have anyone to step in which sucked)
Let's start the end of my hopes and dreams... You were probably thinking salvageable at this point haha
Pediatrics: Pass (Time out on the exam ~ 20 questions only sped through maybe 10 so maybe 10 blank so barely passed) evals fine with great ones (bless their soul) and bad ones mentioned before
OBGYN: F lol. Caught me off guard, I didn't even know I failed because the grades didn't reflect it. They failed my OSCE which was easy but I was late and a little disoriented so it was a bit clumsy I actually appealed it as I felt I hit the checkmarks on the rubric fairly well despite this but it's unlikely to be successful. Again poor shelf performance is probably the only shelf I will say studying more would've led to a better performance all my personal problems got big here and then got professionalism points off for being 15 minutes late the OSCE. Sigh... Also did the assignments but found out later I uploaded them incorrectly. Yeah, I went mad during this clerkship. If the appeal fails I will be repeating 2 weeks taking away from step time, evaluations here were great, course director literally paused reading them. This will be the weirdest contradicting narrative ever probably because they require failures to be included.
IM: P or F (just finished I definitely passed borderline but they are discussing points being taken away which would put me in the F area)
Family Med: Pass (OSCE)
Psychiatry: Pass probably (Time out on the shelf and rushed through half so barely passed was projected to score at least a 90 on all pretests included form 5 which people score about an 82 usually havent had a bait and switch that hard since peds where my pretests were also good)
Neurology: Pending just started hopefully high pass since I have a masters degree in neuro but who knows... I'll probably fail the shelf
*It may be important to mention I have researched extensive timing strategies but they do not work for me* During the first third of the exam I average about 1 minute a question then something uncontrollable and weird happens no matter how much clock watching I do*
- Mid evals (below average 3-5% except surgery which was above average by 2%) (These are all in the 90s except IM)
Sub Is: Plan on doing 2-3 aways and home program. Not expecting too much of a problem here I performed well with the my home program the first time and I know the anatomy well. I can show up early and do the hours and list fairly easily and my program tends to be more rigorous compared to other programs according to other students. Plus hopefully my personal problems will be resolved and controlled at this point since I can take a break now.
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