ok, so i am trying to be a supportive friend to a 4th year friend of mine who just found out that she failed step 2CS. what happens to her now? do the the residency programs that she is applying to find out? anyone have any clue?
If she had her USMLE transcripts attached to ERAS, her score will be sent to the programs that she applied to automatically. They may or may not choose to download it but it will appear in their mailboxes. Some programs will automatically download, others choose to download at specific intervals.
What happens to her depends on her medical school. Some medical schools will not allow graduation without a passing score on both parts of USMLE Step II. She needs to speak with her dean and above all, she needs to get busy and get this exam passed.
In any event, if she has residency interviews she should not mention this unless asked. If asked, she should state that she will retake the exam and pass it.
If she applied to my program and everything else was otherwise competitive, I would tell her that she needs to pass this exam by the time we submit our rank lists or we won't rank her. This means that she needs to have taken and passed this exam by the third week in January. I don't know what other residency programs would say or how they would feel about this.
As a word of warning to other folks out there:
One strategy is to take Step IIs after the program rank date so that you don't risk a failure ending up on your transcript. The only problem with this is that if your Step I score isn't stellar (for your specialty), you may need that Step II score to make you look better.