My issue is that I'm coming off a research year which will eventually yield ~5 first author pubs + additional posters, so not sure what else I can necessarily do. My grades and steps aren't great (230/255 and not very many Honors), so I know that hurts, but overall not sure what else I could realistically do at this point. Everyone I've talked to in the field has told me I'd be fine based on the match in the past, so it's a bit surprising I guess. By the way, thanks for all your helpful and insightful posts.
So in that case, your best back up will be to do a Prelim/TY year and reapply. I met other people on the trail, some interviewing at top 10 programs, that were currently in an intern year. So that is by far not a deal nail to getting into Rad Onc. The best thing about doing an intern year is that you can take an open PGY-2 spot OR reapply through the match.
As to TY vs Prelim, you have to ask yourself what your back up specialty will be if Rad Onc doesn't work out the second time. For me, It would have been radiology/IR, so I chose to use a TY as my back up plan. However, if Heme/Onc is your back up specialty, then you'd want to do a Prelim medicine year to get the ball rolling.
What this means, is that you want to make sure you go on a sufficient number of intern year interviews (I'd aim for 7-10), and then you will rank all of those at the bottom of your main match list. This way, you will for sure have a job next year and then you can reapply during.
If you have no research and that is the problem, a viable alternative would be to do a research year, but the problem is that if you apply in September and start the research year in May/June, that doesn't give you much time.
Hope that helps!
