IMG at University Program: Is Cards impossible?

[drcuma]

Hi,
In the 3rd year of med school at Ross now trying to work my options. Say I were to get into UCONN, Temple, UMASS, or similar university programs with Step 1/2 scores > 250, is cards still out of the question as an in house applicant? Is there anything i can do before residency (ie. during clerkships) to make myself more competitive. Seeming i wouldn't be up for Cards match until 2014/2015, should I even waste my time?

Any help is appreciated.
Thanks
dc

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[dragonfly99]

Just try to get into the best university IM program you can get in to (and/or an IM program that takes a lot of its own from "in house" for cardiology fellowship).

The other thing you can do is to start doing research (such as doing a 4th year research elective(s) somewhere if you can).

Don't put the cart before the horse though. Yes, there is some anti-IMG prejudice still out there, but part of the reason FMG and IMG's don't get in to cardiology fellowship as easily is that a lot of them don't get in to rigorous IM residencies that have a lot of sick ICU patients, etc. The only way to learn to manage those types of sick patients is to go to a program that is clinically busy and has a decent sized MICU and CCU. Cardiology is an invasive specialty where you take care of some people who are really sick, so you need experience taking care of sick hospital patients. Therefore, you don't want to hide away at some little community hospital that ships away its sick patients to some bigger university hospital. I realize that some FMG and IMG's don't have a lot of choices in terms of where they do IM residency. However, if you are a US citizen and have good board scores like you are saying, I would think you can get into a decent medicine residency. It may not be the cushiest one, but just try to get in the best one you can find.