How bad is it if....

[Pansit]

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...you fail a course in Medical school (took reevaluation exam and passed easily)...is it a residency killer?...I am just wondering because I hit a 7 exam 2 week period and did horrible on one of the exams and now I am a little unsure of the future...my plans are to go into internal medicine so I am not sure if its a big issue for that...current plan now is to ace the boards but if I just get average (which is a higher likelihood because "acing" the boards is easier said than done) what are my chances?...

 

[Law2Doc]

...you fail a course in Medical school (took reevaluation exam and passed easily)...is it a residency killer?...I am just wondering because I hit a 7 exam 2 week period and did horrible on one of the exams and now I am a little unsure of the future...my plans are to go into internal medicine so I am not sure if its a big issue for that...current plan now is to ace the boards but if I just get average (which is a higher likelihood because "acing" the boards is easier said than done) what are my chances?...

Are we talking early med school or later? And are you in US allo? I'd say that if you have decent Step 1 scores and do well in rotations at a US allo school you should have a good shot at someplace in IM, as it's not the most competitive of paths. Some of the top places expect you to have been more stellar throughout med school, but again, the concentration is going to be on rotations and boards, not on basic science years.

 

[Winged Scapula]

I'm confused...

did you fail an entire course or a single exam (which you retook and passed)? The latter is, obviously, much less egregious, then failing an entire course and having to retake the course.

My second question is: what will appear on your transcript? Usually failing an exam and passing a second one doesn't appear on your transcript. So unless it does or this is mentioned in your Dean's letter, no one will know about it.

Finally, as L2D notes, basic science coursework is generally not as important as doing well in your clinical years and IM is not horribly competitive at most programs where even a course failure during the first two years will doom your application.