clinical grades!!!

[wishfuldoc2012]

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So, I've done pretty well in my first two years of med school with a 3.86 preclinical GPA with a step 1 of 245. However, I ended up with mostly B's for my clinical grades so far.. FM, peds, and most importantly, Medicine!! I ended up with an A in surgery and still have a few more rotations left. I've done well on all shelf exams, but the clinical evals somehow end up as B's and therefore my final grades as B's (since our school counts evals and shelf grades equally.. we have to get an A in each to get an A overall).The comments, though, are generally very good from my attendings and residents. In terms of research, I have one ophtho publication and 3 other projects I've done that may or may not be published by the time I interview.

Perhaps I'm little paranoid, but how much will my clinical grades affect my application? How bad would this look to directors? I'm getting more and more nervous each day about my decision to apply for ophtho. I'm looking for an honest opinion so that I can determine if I should consider another field. My clinical grades are probably the biggest weakness in my application. Any advice/comments would be appreciated!

 

[speyeder]

There is no uniform standard for how clinical grades are distributed and I think program directors are cognizant of this. Your pre-clinical grades and Step 1 are competitive and you have ophtho research under your belt. Just work hard to get good letters and apply to a good mix of programs and you should do fine.

 

[JMK2005]

I didn't know med schools still had clinical grades. Since there are a lot of honors/pass/fail schools, it would be hard to compare grades. Since everyone has a step one score, that should trump your clinical grades.

I wouldn't worry about the grades.

 

[ILikeEyeballs]

This question was addressed recently in this thread:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=803673