some fourth years have recently told me that this year some derm programs wouldn't even interview applicants who have below a 260.. is this true?? a 250 won't even cut it anymore?
some fourth years have recently told me that this year some derm programs wouldn't even interview applicants who have below a 260.. is this true?? a 250 won't even cut it anymore?
You know, I understand that derm is competitive and has one of the highest board averages but I know a lot of people who have matched with scores of 230-240. I think fields like plastics, ENT, ortho, and rads have more of an emphasis on ridiculously high board scores than fields like derm.
You know, I understand that derm is competitive and has one of the highest board averages but I know a lot of people who have matched with scores of 230-240. I think fields like plastics, ENT, ortho, and rads have more of an emphasis on ridiculously high board scores than fields like derm.
There's no question that people who match into derm have some of the highest board scores. But the purpose of my earlier post was to show that you do not need ridiculously high board scores to match derm. A solid board score (230-240) with great extracurriculars will give you a good shot of matching. I know for a fact that everyone who has matched into derm from my school within the last 2 years did NOT have a step I score >245 (our school nominates junior and senior AOA almost strictly on board scores so it's easy to figure out based on AOA status). Furthermore, two of the co-applicants in my current class are not AOA and therefore did not have out-of-this-world board scores but still managed double digit interviews and will most likely match. They did, however, have solid research and great LORs. All this to say, derm is not all about numbers. If you have a solid score and a well rounded application, you'll have a great shot at matching.
There's no question that people who match into derm have some of the highest board scores. But the purpose of my earlier post was to show that you do not need ridiculously high board scores to match derm. A solid board score (230-240) with great extracurriculars will give you a good shot of matching. I know for a fact that everyone who has matched into derm from my school within the last 2 years did NOT have a step I score >245 (our school nominates junior and senior AOA almost strictly on board scores so it's easy to figure out based on AOA status). Furthermore, two of the co-applicants in my current class are not AOA and therefore did not have out-of-this-world board scores but still managed double digit interviews and will most likely match. They did, however, have solid research and great LORs. All this to say, derm is not all about numbers. If you have a solid score and a well rounded application, you'll have a great shot at matching.
I think it's less competitive this year, as we've seen more people w/ lower board scores applying. That's just my sense.
How do you figure? I sincerely hope so but I feel like less competitive is still pretty damn competitive haha.
I summed the distributions of everybody who applied to the match in 2009 to give the distribution of scores and percentiles for step 1, which nbme unhelpfully did not provide for us in our score reports. Just giving a mean and sd is unconvincing for assuming normality so I didn't want to rely on that for calculating percentiles. The lower end of the curve is truncated but it should give you guys a rough idea based on real data. Keep in mind the percentiles are for people applying for the match and not for people taking the test.