Just a quick question: do clerkship grades only matter as much if they can get you to AOA or does every honor really add something to your application... ie does it really make a difference if you honored one vs. honored three cores? - especially looking at the importance of clerkship grades at very competitive anesthesia residencies (MGH, BW, UCSF ect.).
Clerkship grades for residency application
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PD's say they matter, and if you're talking about very competitive places probably more so. Then again different schools grade in different ways, so as someone said on another thread, your deans letter should help elucidate that.
I've heard some programs use AOA as a filter for applicants...
At the end of the day, your objective indicators (standardized test scores) may carry more weight but they're going to look at everything and in "tie-break" situations and for more competitive places every little bit will help. It's a gestalt package of excellence you want to display as an applicant, so why cut any corners?
Definitely.. i understand the point - wasn't sure there was enough AOA members applying to anesthesia to use it as an actual filter.. but i guess if almost 10% of anesthesia applicants are AOA ...
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It couldn't hurt you to honor or high pass the clerkship area you plan to spend a career in.
Definitely going to try... I guess i was just curious if AOA was a huge factor into getting into highly competitive programs, or if in general decent clerkship grades could suffice... obviously now i understand how important AOA is.
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I think it just depends on your career goals. If you want a top tier research institution, AOA is going to help. If you're looking for a solid clinical program, then AOA isn't necessary with good scores/decent clerkship grades. Just remember AOA is less than 15% of the grads, maybe even less than that IIRC. Not everyone can or will be AOA despite being stellar med students.
But with any residency application, be it FM or anesthesia, you should do well in that particular clerkship for sure.
I guess i was being cryptic throughout my whole line of questions and answers, so sorry, i don't mean to be - one we don't have anesthesia rotations in our school third year and no elective time until 4th year so i won't have the chance to do anesthesia as a core rotation. Only third year grades in our school count for AOA (4th year grades don't count) so that's why, although i agree it is important i shine in that rotation, i didn't mention it in my previous posts. And lasts, the whole deal with aoa is i keep telling myself it isn't a big deal in case i don't get it. we were notified that we were nominated but we don't find out for another 4 months (they wait for all third year grades to come out).. talk about a horrible wait time. So until then I've been hoping to tell myself that by doing good enough to even be considered will be a benefit to me... even though of course i'm praying down inside that it works out and i get it.
