Is It A Big Deal To Have To Remediate A 'Non-Academic'/'Non-Core' Course?

[Detective SnowBucket]

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Looking at >moderately competitive specialties, are you going to have to do some major work in other areas of your residency app if you fail a non-core course? I am dreading biostats (runs as a concurrent separate course in M1).

 

[aSagacious]

Don't plan on remediating any courses. If you feel weak in a subject, try that much harder.

To your point, no it wouldn't be a deal breaker. Everything is cumulative. But no reason to give a tiebreaker to the other applicants.

 

[Taddy Mason]

How is biostats “non-academic/non-core”? It’s on every Step exam, and ummm, kind of important to know....

 

[TelemarketingEnigma]

What is it about biostats that makes you dread it (assuming you haven't started yet)?

 

[Detective SnowBucket]

What is it about biostats that makes you dread it (assuming you haven't started yet)?

I have started it, it ran through winter into this spring block. I have never been good at biostats and this course only has 1 test and 1 project and maybe another minor grade worth less than 5%

 

[TelemarketingEnigma]

have you had any indication of how you're doing so far? Any particular types of issues you might be able to seek help with? I will say that biostats is pretty well represented on step and seems to be a stumbling block for a lot of people (when it could be easy points!) so I wouldn't blow it off as "non academic". I think it's worth putting the work in now to get a good grasp of what you'll need to know moving forward.

 

[Taddy Mason]

IMO, the OME biostats section is pretty solid and worth checking out if this is an area in which you’re struggling.

 

[Prehealth1011]

Don't fail anything, period. Don't give the residency programs an excuse to filter you out

 

[longhaul3]

Failing the course itself is not really a big deal. The attitude of "is it a big deal if I fail this class that I don't like" is a big yikes.

Just work harder and pass the class. Everything you do from here on out to match in a competitive specialty will be harder than this.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Biostats is not hard. It is very basic math, and the concepts overall are not really difficult to understand. There are a lot of resources that you can use if you have trouble. Also, I’m sure you have a stats or math person in your class. We almost all love to teach and/or tutor math. I’m sure they’d be happy to help if you have trouble.

 

[TelemarketingEnigma]

I think one thing i've seen that makes biostats hard for people is that they just try to memorize lists of formulas without understanding the concepts. Like learning sensitivity as a/(a+c), but then getting stumped if "a" and "c" aren't neatly handed to them in a 2x2 box. but if you learn it as "the number of tests that yield a true positive out of all cases of the disease tested" it can sometimes be easier to find the info you need in a question stem (and draw the box yourself)

And also, some people just have a tough time with math on tests (sometimes its just the pressure of dealing with numbers under time limit!)