Failed STEP 1, fell in love with surgery during clerkship.

[meeed]

I am currently an MS3 at a very middle of the road USMD school with a home gen surg program, though I am at a satellite campus, which also has it's own general surgery residency program. Due to honestly self induced factors I failed STEP 1. I retook it about 1.5 months later and passed. I was obviously crushed, but dealt with it knowing that I would feel content doing IM/EM or similar and was reassured by faculty that most folks from my school who fail STEP do indeed match.

(Un)fortunately and unexpectedly I immediately fell in love with surgery during my rotation. Have found myself coming in early, looking forward to Mondays, losing track of time in OR, enjoying the consults/floor work and also receiving the most positive feedback I've encountered so far during clerkship, and I think I could find folks here who could advocate for me.

Obviously I understand that ortho/nsgy etc would be out of reach, but would general surgery be doable? I am willing to put in the work to maximize my STEP 2 score/research and genuinely do what it takes to get there, but I guess my question is, is there a path there? I understand there are chances to matching to a prelim year, but would the fail in the end prevent me from doing surgical residency? I am just not sure if there is any other path I could take in medicine that wouldn't feel like a huge compromise now that I've experienced surgery.

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[ThoracicGuy]

I am currently an MS3 at a very middle of the road USMD school with a home gen surg program, though I am at a satellite campus, which also has it's own general surgery residency program. Due to honestly self induced factors I failed STEP 1. I retook it about 1.5 months later and passed. I was obviously crushed, but dealt with it knowing that I would feel content doing IM/EM or similar and was reassured by faculty that most folks from my school who fail STEP do indeed match.

(Un)fortunately and unexpectedly I immediately fell in love with surgery during my rotation. Have found myself coming in early, looking forward to Mondays, losing track of time in OR, enjoying the consults/floor work and also receiving the most positive feedback I've encountered so far during clerkship, and I think I could find folks here who could advocate for me.

Obviously I understand that ortho/nsgy etc would be out of reach, but would general surgery be doable? I am willing to put in the work to maximize my STEP 2 score/research and genuinely do what it takes to get there, but I guess my question is, is there a path there? I understand there are chances to matching to a prelim year, but would the fail in the end prevent me from doing surgical residency? I am just not sure if there is any other path I could take in medicine that wouldn't feel like a huge compromise now that I've experienced surgery.

A Step 1 fail will hurt, for sure, but I think you can still possibly recover, particularly if you do well on Step 2. Have you talked with your local PD and let them know about your interests and situation? Would be worthwhile having someone that would go to bat for you and your local program could be a landing spot for you if the people there like you.

 

[onamission!]

Op- for what it’s worth, a medical school classmate of mine failed step one, retook and passed, and also wanted surgery. They did everything you mentioned to recover, landed an away rotation at a very average surgery program, did well there, and ultimately matched there. The key I think for them was having people vouch for them, write them good letters, being a model student at this away rotation, and not missing another step the rest of medical school. Will it be hard, yes. Impossible? No.
Also don’t waste money on programs that outright refuse to interview step failure students, it will take some work on your part to figure out who those programs are.