No honors from top-tier school

[chahn85]

I am a MS3 from one of the top 5 medical schools. Grading system at my school is honors/pass/fail, and only 20% of students are allowed to get honors in each of the clerkships. I ended up in the 80% for all of my 3rd year clerkships, meaning I just passed all of them with no honors. Would this greatly hurt my chances of interviewing/matching at a top-tier neurology program (My top choices are UCSF, Stanford, UCLA.)? If so, what should I do to strengthen my application during my 4th year?
I scored 237 on Step 1 and have some research experience with a poster presentation.
Any kind of advice would be welcome.

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[Thama]

Honors in neuro and sometimes IM are looked for pretty consistently from what I've seen. The rest of your app sounds very good so if you do a neuro sub-I early and kill it then I would expect you to get looks from most everywhere. Even without that honors the weight of your med school might mean you get interviews whereever you want.

 

[Elipsis]

Just my opinion, but the short answer to your question is no. The caliber of your education will be a major asset and you should get one of your top choices. If you're not in school in California you should do an away at one of those places to demonstrate that you're interested moving to the west coast.

 

[deleted102545]

I don't think you'll have trouble at least getting interviews to top programs due to your medical school, above average step 1 score, and research with a poster presentation. Honors would be nice but not critical from what I've seen. Neuro isn't that competitive! People say that it's getting more competitive every year but I'm not really seeing that so you should be fine.

Good luck with everything!

 

[Jubears09]

I echo all the above, but also want to emphasize that if you really want to nip this (relatively minor) weakness, just do an early SubI in neuro (and if possible medicine) before your transcript gets sent out. Those are the two most important grades and programs will value performance in a more recent, presumably more intense rotation more.

 

[chahn85]

Thanks for the replies! I feel much better now.