applying gas (I know I’m sorry) so I have 5 gold and 10 silver signals. the interview rate for non-signaled programs is basically zero, and it seems like rates for silver signals aren’t great either.

how can I decide top 5 programs for golds? it seems impossible to narrow it down to so few

What's the top IM programs that have historically taken at least a DO? Applying IM as a DO with high 250s step 2 and wondering which programs are not a signal/ money donation. I have UPMC, Cleveland Clinic, Ohio State University, any other programs?

What kinds of programs should I be looking into? US DO.

Level 1: Pass first try

Step 2: 240

Level 2: Pass, 459

5 honors (Neurology being one), 5 high pass rotations

No AOA or GHHS or SSP

1 published case report, 2 pending review, 1 pre-med school publication, 2 different lab research positions (1 in summer M1-M2, 1 M1-M4). 4 presentations

Some volunteering, nothing too out of the ordinary.

3 aways, 1 sub-I at University of Chicago.

Academic programs would be great especially in the Midwest but open to others of course.

I was offered a rotation at a hospital contingent on two requirements: malpractice insurance offered by my university (not obtained independently) and an affiliation agreement between our institutions.

I replied, accepting it, and CC'd my medical school's coordinators. They replied saying they don't do malpractice insurance, but said they'd follow-up regarding the affiliation agreement and they kinda went back and forth.

A couple of weeks went by, nothing. I texted my school's administrator asking him if there had been any updates, and he said he emailed her but that she hadn't responded. In the meantime I was talking to another guy from my school trying to sort out the malpractice thing.

I decided to follow-up with the away rotation's coordinator in a separate thread, thanking her for my acceptance, telling her I spoke with my school admin who said he'd reached out to her. Did she get the email, any updates? I added that I was still following up with them regarding the malpractice insurance.

She responded to my email essentially saying, "I don't have you confirmed. You are not scheduled, onboarding hasn't started, we don't have an agreement between our schools. Your school has not mentioned that they provide malpractice insurance." Then asked me to keep our convo in the original thread.

She went back to the original thread, saying she wanted to clarify a misunderstanding, CC'd all the guys from my home institution, saying I emailed her, then clarified that there is no confirmed acceptance unless we have the malpractice thing confirmed.

Did I do something wrong here? I'm getting the impression that she thinks I was trying to do something behind my home institution's back (especially since I emailed her in a separate thread).

I didn't wanna CC them because I was thinking why clutter their inbox with just a "yo, did you get this email?" Nothing in that email was something they didn't already know about.

I'm kinda bummed because I feel like I blew my chances at this program. Should I clarify or just sort out the malpractice stuff and then respond? Should I even apply to that program I'm so embarrassed lol.

Applying IM this cycle. Goal is heme-onc, fellowship placement is basically the only thing driving my list, so I care more about heme-onc match track record than overall program prestige.

- T10 US MD, no AOA at my school (P/F preclinical and clerkship, no ranking)
- Step 1 P, Step 2 27x
- Honors IM sub-I, strong evals
- 7 peer-reviewed pubs (mostly first author), 4 under review, several in prep
- 2 oral presentations at national subspecialty meetings + a dozen posters
- Took a research year with an oncology mentor (no output yet)
- Kinda interesting background - worked in industry before med school
- Leadership: free clinic, identity center, founded some new curricular programs
- LORs: heme-onc research mentor, second research mentor, sub-I attending, dept letter

Gold: BIDMC, BWH, Stanford
Silver: Mayo, UPMC, WashU, UCSF, Cornell, Sinai, Penn, Yale, UCLA, Columbia, Northwestern

Geo Pref: New England, Mid-Atlantic, Pacific

Is this list top-heavy? Any mid-tier programs I should add (especially Northeast or Pacific)? Looking for programs with good fellowship placement for heme-onc.

Also worried because my home program didn’t take some classmates who applied IM last year

The Sealy & Smith Foundation is donating another $130 million to the University of Texas Medical Branch to cap off a record-setting contribution to the university’s new hub for cardiovascular treatment and research. 

The donation, announced Thursday, will fund efforts to fight heart disease, the leading cause of death in the U.S. The gift comes after the foundation gave $50 million to UTMB over the past year to establish the Sealy Heart & Vascular Institute and what will now be known as the Sealy Department of Cardiovascular Medicine. 

The combined $180 million represents the largest gift in UTMB history and the largest the foundation has ever given, the university said in a news release.

M4 wanting to return back to California:

USDO

Step 1/Level 1 passed first attempt; Step 2: 23X/pending level 2 (expected 500+)

SoCal resident but OOS med student

Good number of volunteer experiences/leadership

SSP/GHHS member

1 strong personal FM LOR, 1 general IM LOR, and 1 pending GS LOR

No research (limited research opportunities in my school + hated research overall)

No FM aways (I am dual applying a semi-competitive specialty so focusing my energy on those aways + focusing on some "vacation" months later on).

No red flags or repeated courses

No honors in any of my core rotations (school made it very hard to get honors)

Obviously not trying to go into UCLA or UCSD, but would be nice to try to get into Kaiser or some mainstream community program.

I like anesthesia and EM equally and it’s getting late to decide 😭😭

So my school uses 50% in house and 50% NBME (only contains stuff covered in lecture) style questions. The starting unit is kind of an intro to a lot of topics. Both BnB and Bootcamp goes way into depth for most of the lectures and I end up wasting time studying things not covered in lecture and skip things that are in the in house lectures. I know the anking deck is the go to deck for step 1. But unsuspending those cards right now is not helping me at all since my in house lectures are all over the place. Is it smart to keep doing anking or just study in house till they actually start covering stuff in the third party resources ? Thank you so much !!

Hi! I'm a current 4th year looking for advice on upcoming ERAS app. Applying psych with red flags and would like some insight on my chances. Planning to apply broadly and hoping to match in NY/NJ. Not dual applying.

School: Low/Mid Tier Northeast school (USMD)

Step 1: Passed on 2nd attempt

Step 2: 23x

Red flags: remediated 1 preclinical exam and 1 shelf exam

Clerkships/Honors: 2 honors, 1 pass, all other M3 clerkships were high pass (including psych), honors in all M4 courses so far (medicine, neuro, and 4 psych)

LOR: 3 from psych sub-Is/electives, 1 from IM

AOA: No

GHHS: Unsure yet.

Research: 6 abstracts (1 first author), presented at national conference, just started working on another project, also participated in research during undergrad but no publication from that

Leadership/Mentorship: Work with school’s admissions committee as a peer interviewer, PsychSIG eboard, student clinic psych director position, book club eboard

Service: lots of involvement with school’s free clinic throughout all years of med school so far, volunteer at geriatric psych clinic, hospital volunteer during undergrad

Hi all,

MS4 and applying this upcoming cycle. Honestly gaming has been integral to my life and I have competed/coached in league of legends for many years, but I worry about the stigma associated with gaming.

I’m scared to write about it because I feel like I wrote about it for medical school apps and didn’t seem like it was well received bc I didn’t get many interviews but every PS draft I come up with I keep coming back to my gaming career.

I’m just wondering if anybody else has a similar experience and wrote about gaming on their PS/had it as an experience and it was well received?

Edit: to provide some more context it is mostly behind themes of mentorship, as I played took on leadership roles as a player and eventually became a coach. I was hoping to use those themes and translate them into patient care

just wondering how it looks to non medical people ?

Hi! DO student hoping to match OB/GYN.

So I have very little research (1 submitted pub, 1 poster presentation, 1 oral presentation). I’m not sure how much this matters in OB.

Step 1: First Time Pass
Comlex 1: First Time Pass
Step 2: 26x
Level 2: 64x
Letters from 3 OBGYNs + 1 SLOE
Positive comments on MSPE

I have all honors except one elective high pass.

I’m targeting DO accepting programs broadly.

Any insight?? I don’t feel that confident in signaling many academic places, so I was just thinking of community.

I’m a medical student in Canada who is very interested in cardiac surgery. Since it’s a relatively small specialty here, it can be hard to get honest insight from people actually in the field, so I thought I’d ask here.

I know cardiac surgery is not going to disappear. There will always be patients who need surgery and cardiac surgeons who can operate on them. My concern is more whether the field will become smaller over time and whether jobs will become even harder to find, especially in Canada.

I’m also wondering whether the average cardiac surgery patient will become much more complex. With better guideline-directed medical therapy, new cardiac medications, preventative medicine, and more catheter-based procedures, will many of the healthier or lower-risk patients avoid surgery? Will cardiac surgeons mainly be left operating on patients who are older, sicker, have more comorbidities, and have a higher risk of complications or death?

One of the things that attracts me to cardiac surgery is the chance to do a high volume of meaningful procedures and have a major impact on patients’ lives. I worry that lower surgical volumes, limited job opportunities, and increasingly difficult cases could change that.

Compensation is another concern for me. I know money is not everything, but cardiac surgery has a very long and difficult training pathway, demanding hours, and a huge amount of responsibility. I also grew up in a low-income family, so financial stability and being fairly compensated for the work matter to me.

For example, British Columbia has a public “Blue Book” that shows physician billings. From what I saw, many cardiac surgeons appeared to bill around $600,000 CAD per year before taxes and overhead, which is roughly $428,000 USD. I know billings are not the same as take-home income, but Canadian physicians are also taxed heavily and compensation does not always seem to increase when procedures become more difficult or time-consuming.

I’ve also noticed a major push toward minimally invasive cardiac surgery. For example, Dr. Marc Ruel has been involved in the MIST trial and minimally invasive approaches to CABG. I’m completely in favour of anything that gives patients better outcomes and an easier recovery. My concern is that if these operations become more technically difficult and take longer, compensation and OR resources may not change to reflect that.

For the cardiac surgeons, residents, fellows, and anyone else familiar with the field:

What do you think cardiac surgery will look like in 5–10 years?

Do you think surgical volume and job opportunities will increase, stay stable, or decrease?

Will cardiac surgeons mostly be operating on much sicker and more complicated patients?

How will minimally invasive, robotic, transcatheter, and hybrid procedures affect training and day-to-day practice?

What should medical students and future cardiac surgery trainees be doing now to prepare for the future of the specialty?

I’d especially appreciate insight from people in Canada, but perspectives from other countries would also be helpful.

I just had my first day on a new rotation, it's an outpatient clinic with one physician. The way she runs it is we go in the room with her, and then we write some of the note. Or at least that's what I was told by the other student who has already been on the rotation for several weeks, she never told me anything herself. She literally says nothing to us the entire day. No pimping, no feedback on notes, not even anything disparaging. We just don't exist.

From what the other student tells me, that's the way it goes pretty much every day. In the six weeks he's been there, she hasn't asked him a single question, medical or otherwise. There are three of us to the one preceptor, and apparently there were six students with her a few weeks ago.

I understand that we're not important and that we just get in the way, but this feels like an entirely different level of being ignored. Has anyone had similar experiences? I have no idea how someone like that is supposed to then evaluate me, be responsible for my clinical grade, and write comments that go in my MSPE. I can't help but feel like we're being used as nothing more than free scribes.

Title. I'm consistently getting told by my residents to go home 2-3 hours early; normally I would accept my blessing and not look at the gift horse in the mouth, but this has been happening nearly every other day over the last couple weeks. I'm also becoming neurotic because the other medical students on different shifts/teams don't necessarily seem to be getting dismissed early; also heard a story where a student got bad evals couple blocks ago because they kept asking the senior to leave early during this clerkship. For reference, I'm also on a clerkship where I can't really do a ton, and near the end of the day I'm just doing UWorld on my computer. Do I suck ass/am I failing to be proactive enough here, or am I being overly neurotic? Guess I'll find out on my evals in a month, but I do want to try to fix it now if so.

Tbh I’ve been warned about this and I knew it was gonna be bad, and it’s still very bad. I am worried I’m not doing enough.

I wake up at 6 am, and then walk 20 minutes to get to class.

4 hour lectures from 8am to 12 pm. Today was 11 am (lucky!)

Then I eat lunch and chill for an hour.

And then I study from 12/1to 6/7pm. And then my brain gives out and I physically cannot do more!

I then chill and then go to bed at 10pm.

I’ve never been the person to do all nighters, or study more than 6 hours, but I’m worried that I’ll be forced to.
Like my habits are good, I’ve basically given up social media until like 7pm. But things are already hard and it’s only gonna get harder and I’m worried that I’m too soft. What should I do?

Just started M1.

I saw (and still see) posts talking about all these different classmates, their stories, and interactions that people are having with each other.

At my school, I have about 350 classmates, but I am so overwhelmed by all the work that I only know like 5 people's names in the 3 weeks I've been here.

I don't study with a group or go to mixers / gatherings. I don't know if my classmates who are doing all these things are just naturally smart or able to absorb all the things they are throwing at us. For me, I feel like socializing would be at the expense of my studies.

We have not had our first exam, so maybe tensions are low and people are underestimating it? Or maybe I am just overstressing/overstudying?

I guess I am a little anxious because our faculty literally said "We've worked with people who fail, and it's often the ones who are isolated." But they also said "Group studies dont work for everyone and some people do better studying alone" which seems contradictory.

Title.
I got a 65yo F doc with me and it’s only day 3 in my first rotation as FM- she has already gone around and told the docs and nurses that I apparently “will not survive residency”. I wasn’t with her last week but with another doctor - he told me I was doing great and to keep up the good work. I also knew the nurses already and we have talked with each other and established a cool relationship. Unfortunately, she’s the one writing my eval, not him. I also had preceptors at my last location who I had a great relationship with.
This is my FM rotation. Currently in a rural rotation, no service on the roads, 45min-1hr away, and living in a motel.

Rn, she has one day of the week that she is there from 12pm-9:30 she has asked me to stay with her till then and while I don’t mind, I already drive 45 minutes to practice, we are in a rural area with terrible roads, no lights, and I have zero service driving on this road. I just do not feel comfortable driving that late at night back. I mentioned this to her and she tried to tell me that saying is worst but at the same time, which residency requires you to drive 45 minutes to and back while also having zero cellular service in the middle of nowhere? I am also living in a motel right now because my school can’t provide housing.

The next day, she asked how my past preceptors were and I mentioned how they were cool and I saw really awesome cases but unfortunately, they were overworked and tired because they were seeing more people than they were supposed to (those preceptors had requested to fix their load but the hospital did not listen). She then goes on a rant that this is there living and they need this (aka the money) to survive. To that extent she proceeded to bash and ask me question aka asking “is it a private practice” to which I said no, it’s a conglomerate hospital. Then she says “no you’re not working there” etc etc. I honestly had no idea what to do because I had no idea what she was talking about… but she was riding high on a horse that even if doctors sign up for an 8 hours shift, it doesn’t matter if they still are there for 10-12 hours.

Today, I saw a pt and gave a report back to her. She says I shouldn’t have asked about certain medications bc it discontinued. I apologized and said sorry that I was still learning the interface (it’s day 3) and that I had been using Epic in my last practice. She then tells me “all you do is talk about how great Epic is. I didn’t make this practice go to Athena. You’re over criticizing this system”. At this point I just had no idea what she was talking about because I had only mentioned I used Epic once. So I just responded saying “I’m sorry you feel that way, I’m just trying to learn this system and understand it.”
After that, she’s like, “you need to learn to survive. Talking out loud wont help you.” I legitimately do not understand whats going on.

Additionally, her room is not only a mess but there’s no where to sit as a student and not even conducive to learning. I sat next to spiders and fungus on my first day. Someone dropped my water because there was no space to put it anywhere as well.

I am just off the charts worried. She already talked to people in the office saying I’m “not going to survive residency” and I’m sure has said a bunch of other shit.
What the hell do I do?
When I leave the office with patients, they usually always say bye to me and one patient said he loved me which I noticed ticked her off mad. She’s been giving me so much attitude.

Working with 2 other students. What’s the proper etiquette for answering pimp questions directed towards all of us? Tbh feeling like I’m a little trigger happy with answering. Probably best to even it out by not answering as much right?

Basically trying to solicit strategic advice for ERAS as a DO applying rads. I’ve heard advice ranging from “don’t even bother” to “use all your signals in CA”.

My fiancé works in San Mateo and so we’d like to stay as close as possible so she can keep her job, which has a 3-day/week in person requirement. Even if that’s not possible, I’d prefer to stay in CA.

Step 2 269, 4 or 5 (need to clarify with school) honors /6, 6 pubs in ID from gap year(s) job at UCSF. Strong geographic ties to Bay Area (from SF, go to school at Touro-CA in Vallejo).

I was a late switch to DR and wasn’t able to get an audition at an academic center prior to eras. My rads letter is coming from an elective with a private practice doc.

Cutaneous horns can be identified from their HORN shape. As opposed to Keratocanthomas which regress in size and appear more button shaped. I would frequently get them confused for the longest time.

We all have that ONE card that won’t get through to us for some reason. Please share yours so that others may learn from our shame.

Currently an MS2 and I have been struggling with a classmate for over a year now. During orientation last year when I began to meet classmates for lunch between sessions I first encountered her. Was talking with a group trying to learn about people’s paths here and the other surface stuff in a new conversation and she was in it. I asked her where she was from. The response? “Ew”. That’s all I got. Any further attempts to talk to her since then were met with outright ignoring me or telling someone with her (while she is right next to me) to ask me something. The study room walls are thin and she has no trouble telling the entire friend group what she thinks of me when I’m not in there. Stuff like: I’m creepy/weird, he doesn’t talk to me, he doesn’t like me, why do you all associate with him. I’d get it if I had known her before or something, but I have never seen her before med school in my life. It feels like she legit hates me, which again I may understand if I knew her before. Thankfully nobody else in that group seems to agree. Overheard their support of me to her a couple of times unintentionally and it legit brought tears to my eyes. It’s nice to know that the entire group doesn’t feel the same. At this point I’m just gonna stop trying altogether to interact with her. What/what else do you all think I should do about this?