Did you match after failing Step 2?

[Roxy211]

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I am actually a close friend of a med student and came here looking for experiences and advice. My friend was a sharp student, who goes to a top state medical school (MD program) in the USA. Unfortunately, she is a 27 year old bright women, and has had a lot of stress in her life- her mother passed her last year of undergrad and this September her father passed. She passed her step 1 on first try and all of her shelves. The step 2 was taken one month before her father died- she failed, then took it month after her father died and failed- she is taking it a third and final time- apparently if she doesnt pass this time- she will be kicked out of medical school!! Of course the stress is piling on her, I didnt want to ask her more questions- but worst case scenario she failed it again- what would you be able to do career wise? I am praying that she passes and if she thinks positively I am sure she will- I mean shes soo bright and so pateint- she is a wonderful person and would be a great doctor plus shes gotten this far and even got into a top medical school.

If she does pass this third and final time- will she be able to match? she said she is interested in pysch or internal...Any advice or stories you have heard will help! I am just dont know too much about the internal processes, what happens when you fail step 2, protocols and matching etc. so if you guys can tell me more about what can potentially happen in this case it would be very helpful.

Thank you all.

 

[atomi]

If she is coming from a top MD school and can graduate and pass all steps, she should be able to get a residency somewhere in something even with 2 step 2 failures. It probably won't be a very good residency, but it's do-able. If she did well on her shelves, she should be able to pass step 2. A failure to pass step 2 at this point would be due to a lack of studying. She should not take this exam until she is consistently scoring well on practice assessments. Like a 30 point margin.

 

[evilbooyaa]

If she is still not truly over her father's passing (and it's affecting her studying ability), she should take a LOA for a year to straighten her affairs. Sounds like she shouldn't have taken the exam the second time around so close around the time of her father's passing.

She should think very hard to make sure she is not rushing a 3rd attempt at this exam. 2 failures are bad enough just in terms of finding a residency to take you, but usually a 3rd step failure is an auto-dismissal from the school.