244 Step 1. How important is it that I honor the Rads rotation?

[Decicco]

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I have decided in the midst of my 2 week radiology rotation that I may want to do it as a career. However, it may be too late for me to shoot for honors. Will this be a major detriment in my application if I just pass? It is early in M3, so my only other grade is a P in ob-gyn and I got mostly honors or near honors preclinically. I got a 244 on step 1. I've done non-rads bench research and have one first author case report.

Thank you for any advice!!

 

[PokerDoc]

Honestly, I don't know. But the majority of students don't do rads until 4th year, so I imagine it will be largely irrelevant since the rest of your app so far looks incredibly strong.

 

[Decicco]

Dear 154 viewers - please comment.
Love,
Decicco

 

[DrBowtie]

Just curious, what does it take to honor your rads rotation?

 

[Shifty B]

Of course, it will be better to honor the rotation than not. However, I by no means think it is a dealbreaker. There is very little you can do as a medical student in radiology that really distiguishes you because of the nature of the rotation. Just try to get along with people, help when you can, stay out of the way when you can't. You'll do fine.

 

[colbgw02]

Most PDs will care more about how you do on "core" clerkships, like medicine and surgery, than your radiology rotation. And don't worry about the pass in OB/GYN; the only people that will care about that are OB/GYNs. As mentioned above, very few schools even allow a radiology rotation during third year, and even fewer actually grade it beyond a simple pass/fail (i.e. showing up/not showing up). It won't hurt you, and if a PD were to overweight it, then you probably wouldn't want to be at that program anyway. Consider yourself lucky that you've discovered your field relatively early. There will be a significant percentage of applicants from your year that won't discover radiology until 10 or 11 months from now.

 

[Asp]

How hard is it to honor radiology at your school? At mine if you stayed the whole day you honor.

Most kids just skipped out at noon.

 

[Decicco]

How hard is it to honor radiology at your school? At mine if you stayed the whole day you honor.

Most kids just skipped out at noon.

It's mostly based on a 100-image test at the end of the two weeks. Top 10% honors, next 10% near honors.

 

[DrBowtie]

How hard is it to honor radiology at your school? At mine if you stayed the whole day you honor.

Most kids just skipped out at noon.

That was exactly how mine was.

It's mostly based on a 100-image test at the end of the two weeks. Top 10% honors, next 10% near honors.

That sucks. Sorry dude. Read Learning Radiology if your school doesn't have an accessible image bank

 

[UnderPar22]

I'm applying this year, so I can't really offer advice based on personal experience (yet), but from what I know talking with the PD at my home institution, rads grades do not matter (or basically any grades other than core clerkships for that matter). Honestly, rads rotations are not great for med students unless you have residents/attendings who are very proactive. Even then, as a med student there isn't much active learning going on. As others suggested, focus on your core clerkships and you'll be in good shape (in theory).

Also, if you're interested, I recommend getting involved in rads specific research in an area you might find interesting. I think it's awesome that you found rads so early (I wish I would have, but alas I did not find out until about several moths ago...). You have a great opportunity here to work closely with someone on a research project. Might not only yield a paper/presentation, but an excellent letter of recommendation. In my mind, it's much easier showing off your knowledge and work-ethic from a research perspective than it is observing someone in a dark room all day.

Best of luck.

 

[SxRx]

This might be more helpful than speculations by med students.
According to this 74% of the PDs felt that Honors in a Rad clerkship was important when deciding who to interview.

 

[Decicco]

This might be more helpful than speculations by med students.
According to this 74% of the PDs felt that Honors in a Rad clerkship was important when deciding who to interview.

One of the commenters above is an attending and others are rads residents. Also, I don't think that this survey likely is talking about the two week clerkship that I'm on as an M3 (which most schools don't even offer). This is different than the four week clerkship I'd complete as an M4 if I decide to go into rads.

 

[colbgw02]

This might be more helpful than speculations by med students.
According to this 74% of the PDs felt that Honors in a Rad clerkship was important when deciding who to interview.

I see 71%; the 74% is for "grades in clerkship in desired specialty". The OP was concerned about honoring his rotation, making the 71% more apt.

Besides, that number is meaningless without context. Right away, I notice that those numbers are among the lowest of the reasonable considerations (I'm throwing out things like "Step 3 Score" since I don't find them relevant).

I wonder how that survey was worded. That is, is there anything that prevents a program from responding with every single factor as important? Are they forced to only list a limited number of factors? Were the responses binary? If not, how were they aggregated?

Of what I've seen so far, honors in the clerkship is still of significant absolute value, but what we're after here is the relative importance. No one is suggesting that you can bomb your radiology clerkship and not worry about it. We're just saying that it's not a deal breaker, and - in the setting of an otherwise strong application - it's a non-factor. That is, it's relative importance is low.

 

[Decicco]

Thanks for the advice everyone. The rotation is over now and I honored that bitch. Typical SDN story, I know.

 

[sexyman]

Decicco I love the avatar-