How much does an LOA during the third year affect?

[War of Arts]

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I took my level 1 in July and there was an adverse testing condition that pretty much ruined the last two sections of the mine. It took NBOME a month to investigate and they offered me to retake the exam with no penalty. I am currently on my third-year rotation now and I feel I have forgot pretty much everything for that exam. My school says I can take a one-month LOA during my next third-year elective to retake that exam. Will this look bad on me? I passed my step 1

 

[Osminog]

It won’t look good, but you have a very good explanation for it. And it’s still a much better option than taking it right away without a LOA and then failing.

 

[War of Arts]

It won’t look good, but you have a very good explanation for it. And it’s still a much better option than taking it right away without a LOA and then failing.

I don't know what this will look like on the residency application. Is there any way I can put the NBOME decision letter in EARS or something so that programs will know what happened to me? Because this BS is entirely NBOME's fault and they acknowledge the problem with an apology to me

 

[Osminog]

I don't know what this will look like on the residency application. Is there any way I can put the NBOME decision letter in EARS or something so that programs will know what happened to me? Because this BS is entirely NBOME's fault and they acknowledge the problem with an apology to me

You have to report that you took a LOA, but there’s room to write an explanation.

 

[AlbinoHawk DO]

They can offer you a study time rotation if they wanted. You're also not required to report an LOA of less than 4 weeks, so you could potentially tell them to offer you 25 days. I would negotiate with the school before accepting

 

[SharonShares]

You have to report that you took a LOA, but there’s room to write an explanation.

You could use this for a topic in your essay. It would definitely be interesting and could show how you overcome adversity.

 

[BoneWizard]

If you have to take an LOA to study, do it but ask if they can include something in your MSPE to explain that the LOA was because the NBOME messed up your exam day and you had to retake it.

 

[War of Arts]

Hey all, I ended up not taking any time off because the clinical people didn't allow it, although the preclinical director said I could. Either way, it turned out I still passed my Level 1 retake. Now my question is if residency programs care about the time I took the board exam. Because they will see I took it late (in the middle of this semester rather being during the summer after M2, NBOME told me the voided exam wouldn't show up anywhere so no one would know it). Do I need to report anything in this case?

 

[BoneWizard]

No. No one will care when you took COMLEX. There are schools that don't schedule students to take their first board exam until after 3rd year.