Competitive Specialty Matching

[Kpap]

With the new change in Step 1 being Pass/Fail, how will this change the way medical students can match into competitive specialties (neurosurgery/dermatology/etc) at competitive locations (UCSF/Harvards/JHU/etc.)

Will students from a medical school outside of the "top 10" be able to match into these programs, and if so, what does an ideal application look like for those who are competing for these programs in terms of grades, recommendations, clinical rotations, and others?

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[slowthai]

As long as step 2 is still in play, not much should change, with the caveat that I'm not too sure how securing away rotations will pan out with everyone and their mother with an ortho dream lining up to rotate because they weren't self-selected out of pursuing the field with an uncompetitive step 1 score.

Putting that aside, there are only so many people in the top 10. They can't all take up all of these spots.

An ideal app will look similarly to how it looks now:

Baller step 2
AOA*
Research out the wazoo
Honors for every single third year rotation
Killer LORs
Smashed away rotations, if the specialty requires aways

For the people outside of the T10-20, all of these will matter more.

*AOA isn't at all necessary to match into these fields, but it does give you a boost and can make up for deficiencies in your app. Only exception would be top tier IM; there seems to be almost a de facto requirement for it if you don't come from a top tier school

My opinion? People from all tiers of schools will get brave and start throwing apps at these fields that they wouldn't otherwise with a scored step. Due to this, match rates will skyrocket to the ground. Sounds alarming, but what can you do but try your best and hope that it falls in your favor?

 

[longhaul3]

Only 40% of applicants who matched in neurosurgery this year came from top 40 NIH-funded schools. If it were evenly distributed, that would work out to 100 med schools. There really aren't that many more than 100 med schools. The top 10 schools only graduate about 2000 people a year out of the 20k who enter the match. They can't take all the spots. There will always be people who match in competitive specialties from every tier of school. (DOs are an exception because there is an a priori bias against them.)

 

[operaman]

I think it will be easier than most would suspect. People vastly overestimate the power of a high step 1; the people leaping from a low tier Med school to a top program have a lot more than just a killer step score.

Posters above have already hit the key points. I would add that personal calls from your faculty may also grow in importance. This was helpful to me even in the step 1 era and opened up some programs that may not have interviewed me otherwise. You can also leverage your own connections; I had 2 top programs that didn’t offer me an interview until I emailed faculty I knew there and asked for their intercession.