deciding late - what to do?

[cnfuzzled]

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this is probably an all too common problem for medical students

i'm a third year about 1/3 of the way through - after having thought internal medicine was my calling in life for the longest time, i did internal medicine clerkship and preceptorship...- ended up not liking either. I recently shadowed an ophthalmologist and i'm absolutely enthralled by what they do. also, currently on surgery and love doing procedures. So having gone through nearly 3.5 years of med school tailoring my app towards internal medicine with research and one basic science 3rd author paper on nephrology stuff, i'm deciding to switch to optho..is it too late for me to be competitive? should i take a year off? If i decide not to take a year off, what can I do in the next 8-9 months before optho apps to boost myself?

my stats and numbers are competitive (258 from a top 20 US med school), but beyond that I have nothing in my past that shows that I'm interested in optho (no research, no interest group leadership, etc). any advice would be great!

 

[doozy]

You will be fine if you just start now. I was in your exact position except that I decided even later. I didn't decide until late third year. I just got involved with some research as soon as I decided. Programs will understand if you've shown commitment to internal medicine until now...they'll be able to extrapolate that you'll work hard in Ophtho from now on. Just make sure to contact your department and get involved so that you can say "I decided late but as soon as I made the choice you can see that I got involved and demonstrated commitment to the field via x, y, and z." Your stats are good. We have similar stats and things are going fine for me. Don't worry, just get involved as much as you can now! Programs understand that some people don't get any Ophtho exposure until 3rd year. Good luck!

 

[ophthope]

I agree with doozy. You should be fine, you aren't deciding late by deciding in your third year. MOST applicants decide their specialty around that time. SDN posters are a self-selected extremely biased group so reading this forum meticulously will give you a false impression that the only way to match Ophthalmology is to know you wanted to do Ophtho since undergrad. It simply isn't true. I'm on the interview trail right now and most people are like me; they really decided later in medical school just like most people do for other specialties.

Get in touch with your Ophthalmology department and try to help write a case report or help with some research. Everyone realizes how hard it is to actually have good, published research. There is a 'research requirement' during Ophthalmology residency and pretty much every program is very up front about it; you really don't have much time in residency to be doing research. What nobody tells you here is that it is the same for medical school. If you CAN do some research even in that environment it sets you apart. Don't be stressed, you've got time. Good luck.

 

[hareeese]

Just to tag along this piece, any information on how interviews are offered (what do they look for?)

I'm coming from a state school in the northeast with no ophtho residency program, with a 230 for step 1, and I was planning on going into internal med as well (lots of research experience, worked for big pharma for a year doing trials, but unfortunately no publications to show for it), and am now starting up an interest group at my school (and did a 2 week elective in ophtho with the dept. that we have). I also spent some time in North Africa running a smoking study and had some presentations off of that. Would it be worth it to a) spend a year to do ophtho research, b) take step 2 super early, or c) just apply anyway and see what happens? Any advice would help, thanks!

 

[ophthope]

Just to tag along this piece, any information on how interviews are offered (what do they look for?)

I'm coming from a state school in the northeast with no ophtho residency program, with a 230 for step 1, and I was planning on going into internal med as well (lots of research experience, worked for big pharma for a year doing trials, but unfortunately no publications to show for it), and am now starting up an interest group at my school (and did a 2 week elective in ophtho with the dept. that we have). I also spent some time in North Africa running a smoking study and had some presentations off of that. Would it be worth it to a) spend a year to do ophtho research, b) take step 2 super early, or c) just apply anyway and see what happens? Any advice would help, thanks!

Your Step 1 score is below average for a matched applicant - I'd say take Step 2 early and rock it. It sucks, everyone including program directors knows it sucks, but it's the way you screen the 500-ish applicants to your 4 resident/year program to figure out who the heck to interview.

Not having a home program may hurt you too - do away rotations at programs you'd like to match. Work hard, make a good impression - it should help you make a connection with the people there and increase your chances at matching although be aware that some programs do not consider this when ranking.

I'm not sure what a research year would do for you. Others can comment here, but I don't like research personally so I did the bare minimum (a few case presentations, an attempted-to-publish case report) in my fourth year - you'll most likely have to find those opportunities at other places doing away rotations. Sometimes private ophthos have something researchy going on, but not often. You have enough things in your background to concoct an interesting narrative for a personal statement, just make sure you have a good story about how you became interested in Ophthalmology.