Applying Transitional Year only?

[IT_BAND]

Hey everyone. MS III here. I've been researching the difference between doing my PGY1 in preliminary surgery, preliminary medicine, and transitional year. From what I've found, doing a transitional year seems to be without a doubt the best option. Everyone who has done one seems to love it. And that is augmented by the fact that people in preliminary medicine and surgery programs seem in general to be very unhappy.

So the question is this: would it make sense to apply only to DR and transitional year programs, without any preliminary backups? Stats are DO student in the Southwest with a Step 1 of 235-245, COMLEX 1 >620, and even split of Honors and High Pass in clinicals. I am willing to apply broadly to Transitional Year programs (40-50 programs) in addition to my DR apps. Apps will preferentially go toward rural/Midwest programs. Will avoid CA/NY as those are always the most competitive.

Too risky to go all in on Transitional Year, or should I throw in some preliminary medicine apps even considering my willingness to cast a wide net?

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[Wantnosmoke24]

Hey everyone. MS III here. I've been researching the difference between doing my PGY1 in preliminary surgery, preliminary medicine, and transitional year. From what I've found, doing a transitional year seems to be without a doubt the best option. Everyone who has done one seems to love it. And that is augmented by the fact that people in preliminary medicine and surgery programs seem in general to be very unhappy.

So the question is this: would it make sense to apply only to DR and transitional year programs, without any preliminary backups? Stats are DO student in the Southwest with a Step 1 of 235-245, COMLEX 1 >620, and even split of Honors and High Pass in clinicals. I am willing to apply broadly to Transitional Year programs (40-50 programs) in addition to my DR apps. Apps will preferentially go toward rural/Midwest programs. Will avoid CA/NY as those are always the most competitive.

Too risky to go all in on Transitional Year, or should I throw in some preliminary medicine apps even considering my willingness to cast a wide net?

Apply backups. Your step 1 isn't high enough to apply to only TYs. TYs mostly go to Derm Rads Optho MD students with 245+. They are very competitive. But def give it a shot and apply broadly. Good luck.

 

[karling]

It's not this B&W. There are actually prelim medicine programs out there that are more chill than some TY programs. This is to say, try to do some research and find nice medicine prelims to apply to. Morristown and Lankenau are a couple I know of, but there are more. And some TYs (particularly the newer ones, from my personal experience on the interview trail) aren't that great.

Applying TY only will put you at risk of not matching into a PGY1 year and then having to SOAP into a surgery prelim that nobody wanted. Personal preference I suppose, but I'd rather do basically any medicine prelim than having to worry about scrambling into a terrible surgery year.

You should apply TY, absolutely, but you can't bank on landing one, and also realize that some of them are actually not cush at all.