Are those classmates really strong candidates like >250s Step 1 and Step 2 type of folks? My group of friends outside of the one guy has very few interviews. It's extremely frustrating.
DO with below average on both steps, bottom half class rank that applied EM. Location: Midwest (lived in the same midwest state my whole life so no "connections" to any other locations). No red flags. 1 eSLOE, 1 Sub specialty SLOE, 1 OSLOE.
15 II's:
- 7 university, 8 community.
- 2 are from programs I rotated at, 4 IIs are from former DO programs, 1 from my home state
- Geographic distribution: 4 Midwest, 4 south/southeast, 3 Northeast, 1 East coast, 3 North/upper-midwest?
- 2 Rejections (1 from a huge reach program)
Things I did that may have helped:
- Networking: Of the places i didnt audition, half were programs I either met with via EMRA residency fair or had reached out and talked with residents over the summer, or attended zoom stuff etc. Legit had faculty at a program i applied like a random twitter comment of mine and then got an invite from them like 2 hours later (probably total coincidence but still lol)
- unique PS/ECs/leadership. Multiple years of ER experience before med school.
- Also i'm assuming my SLOE was good based on general feedback I got but unsure what it is exactly. I hit it off with basically everybody i interacted with on my rotations luckily.
- I believe i applied very strategically (in terms of being a below average DO): Applied to about 50% community and 50% Uni/County. Of the community programs I'd say roughly half were former DO programs. I dont think I applied to a single program that didn't have at least 1 DO in each PGY class.
Feeling very fortunate and will def be dropping II's if Im lucky enough to get more. Still lots of programs that still haven't sent out interviews