How would you prioritize if pre-clinical honors only matter for Dean's Letter?

[2gunornot2gun]

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My school doesn't rank and does AOA after match; the only place pre-clinical honors shows up is a single line on a two page dean's letter.

The overwhelming opinion at my school is that "the first two years grades don't matter at all". Is this the right idea if I want to be competitive as I can?

How would you prioritize grades/boards/research in my situation? Is it worth spending more time studying from review books over the minutiae in lectures?

 

[Valadi]

They're almost one in the same. Do well in your classes while annotating the board review books and you accomplish both.

If it's between research 1 day a week and studying that day, I'd say do research ONLY IF you have a definite pub that will come out of it.

 

[Phyozo]

My school doesn't rank and does AOA after match; the only place pre-clinical honors shows up is a single line on a two page dean's letter.

The overwhelming opinion at my school is that "the first two years grades don't matter at all". Is this the right idea if I want to be competitive as I can?

How would you prioritize grades/boards/research in my situation? Is it worth spending more time studying from review books over the minutiae in lectures?

The problem is that you have no other metric with which to base your performance off of the first couple of years. Start studying hard sometime in your 2nd year for step1 since that will matter. Otherwise, I wouldn't sweat the pre-clinical grades. Spend some time having fun...relax...you're about to loose all your free time after MS2 year.