Advice during year off please

[eskimo]

Hello,

Here is the situation:
1) Will graduate this year from med school in europe
2) I am a US/European Union citizen
3) I applied this year for surgery in the US but was told by many places that I was just too late with the application, I got a couple of interviews, didn't match
4) I ultimately want to obtain surgical training in the US

Possible options during year off:
1) Do an intern year in the UK (already have a position if I want it) and apply for the US again
2) Do research in the US or UK and apply again
3) Try to see if there is still an open prelim surgery spot in the US
4) Do something else

Thanks for any input and advice

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[Winged Scapula]

Hmmm...

you seem to be late again. The match was over a month ago as was the scramble. There are not a lot of left-over Prelim positions at this point in time. What have you been doing to try and obtain one of those?

Options 1 and 3 are your best. If you can get a good Prelim position in the US, that would be preferable to anything else. An intern year in the UK is valuable although the training is quite different than in the US and you may or may not get credit for it if you get into a US program next year.

If you do not have US connections (ie, good recs from US faculty), you need to get some USCE and the best way to do that is with a US Prelim year. You ideally want a program that has a history of matching their Prelims into categorical positions and you need to understand that you cannot be BE/BC if you train at more than 3 different programs. So you do not want to end up doing multiple prelim years at different places.

Your other two options: "something else" and research would fall far below the above two IMHO.