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?
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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?
I don't know, but I think programs are mainly concerned about CS in FMGs. When American students fail CS, it is because we didn't study (most people pass by not studying, but some are unlucky.)
FMGs=Foreign medical graduates. The real reason CS was invented was weed out those with english difficulties, but they put it in a much more PC way (i.e. it tests clinical competency/interpersonal skills...which is nonsense, they judge interpersonal skills for real at your residency interview.)
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.
This would be impossible to do. Even if she could schedule it the day after finding out she failed, score reporting isn't like Step 2 CK, where you get your results in a month or less. CS scores take about two months, on average, to get back.
I wish they would make every program director go and take the exam, posing as a non-trad med student or IMG. A bunch of them would probably fail, and this test would be exposed for the worthless boondoggle that it is. At the very least, no one would base a ranking decision on it.
The person while not having the scores would be able to tell prospective program directors that the exam has been retaken and deficiencies have been corrected. As an academic physician, I want to know if a prospective person that we are going to rank, at least has made an effort get past this exam. At my two medical schools, a person can't graduate without passing scores on Step I and Step II (both parts).
Being a nontraditional medical student (or an FMG for that matter) is not an excuse for failing this exam as in my experience, both of these groups are quite capable of doing quite well on this exam. This exam needs preparation no matter the age or national origin of the examinee. Many medical students/IMG physicians make the grave mistake of not preparing properly.
I have taken these type of exams and I work extensively on the development of these types of exams for the medical students that I educate. The people who tend to believe that this exam is invalid are those who are not able to do well on it and not those of use who developed or utilize this exam. Perhaps you do protest too much.
This can't possibly true, since EVERY SINGLE MEDICAL STUDENT that I have talked to about this exam (~ 40-50) has said the same thing about this exam.
None of us found it useful. It does not mirror true day-to-day interactions with patients. The SPs that were used were too mechanical, and poor actors (at least at my site). I've never heard of an instance where they recommend that the doctor drape the patient for them, in order to be considered a "good doctor."
(And for the record, I DID pass it on the first try. And I still found the exam to be invalid.)
Furthermore, what all of us students complained about the most was the COST. Seriously, does it need to cost so much? While I understand that not every major US city can have a testing center, the cost of the exam on top of travel costs is just too much.
I don't think that your assumption is fair or valid. Just because you don't think that this is a useful exam for US medical grads does NOT mean that you did poorly on it.