His 10 years of experience has overshadowed the 250 and beyond.
Ophtho average Step 1 acceptance = 242 this year....
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His 10 years of experience has overshadowed the 250 and beyond.
That is what everyone says to me in med school. High step scores = better doctor.
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Exactly, step 1 knowledge doesn't correlate to being a good doctor.
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They are prolly in ms1 and are ultra competitive
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I can sum it up in one sentence: people at the extreme ends of the spectrum more often have something strange going on. The guy with the 280+? Yeah, he might know everything, but he might also be that awkward mofo who hasn't seen sunlight since he started interviewing.
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by "a lot more" he's talking about research w/ multiple pubs, excellent letters of recommendation, AOA, third year grades, how well they did on away rotations, etc..
Matching PRS is super competitive and Step 1 score is only one part of the app. Those 260's that failed to match likely had a deficit in one of these categories, or they probably didn't interview well which also plays a big part in the process.
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I like how you think residency programs actually have a way to objectively determine how good your personality is. They interview you for 30 minutes and read comments from your clinical evals on your dean's letter that are just super generic. They can also look at your clinical grades. Do you seriously think clinical grades are a good means to compare ppl? There's no objectivity between clinical grades whatsoever. You don't even get much personal contact with attendings and they can randomly grade you which determines most of your grade. The ppl who tend to honor all clinicals are ppl who nail the shelf exams, which is ANOTHER multiple choice exam. The whole admissions process is a crapshoot and subjective bs. Board scores are the one of the only objective things they have.
And the ppl 260+ matched worse than 250s but 250s clearly matched better than everyone else. 250s is still considered very high board scores. The ppl with 260s were much fewer and probably lacked things liker research or something. Most ppl interview well.
And the ppl 260+ matched worse than 250s but 250s clearly matched better than everyone else. 250s is still considered very high board scores. The ppl with 260s were much fewer and probably lacked things liker research or something. Most ppl interview well.
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So what you're saying is that getting a 250 isn't so different than getting a 260+. But a 240 is significantly different than a 250. Kind of like that law..... oh yeah. The law of diminshing returns.
As to the rest of your post, yeah MS3 is subjective, but people that have consistently good evals are generally more likeable, personable, and less likely to have personality issues than someone with middling evals or consistently negative comments.
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I agree that the 30 min or so they have to interview you is not enough to gauge one's personality or "fit", the user was asking what else besides board scores goes into determining whether you match or not and i just listed some things that I heard were important from 4th years that matched, current residents and PDs
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Except pretty much everyone gets High Pass/High Sat without even trying. You have to royally screw up and intentionally piss ppl off to just Pass/Sat. Honoring is harder thing, but it usually comes down to your shelf exam making 3rd year clinical grades a bunch of bs. Much more weight is placed on clinical grades than preclinical and you need to do very well in both to just be eligible for AOA.
They also have your letters of rec to judge you on. These are also super subjective because everyone has good recs but it's the letter author that makes the difference. If you go to a no name med school with a no name specialty department, no one will know your rec writers and don't help you much. Ppl from top schools or who get lucky and attend an average school with a top program in that specialty have a huge advantage.
I'm the person on SDN who collected all the ophtho match stats this year and last year and I know many ppl who matched in ophtho in person. And I can tell you the the general matching pattern went something like this...
The ppl with super high Step 1 or tons and tons of research matched very well (top 4-5 on their rank list) and the ones with both matched at the very top programs. The ppl who were average for ophtho (240 Step 1, top half of class but not AOA, 1-2 pubs) generally matched in the bottom of their rank list. Programs prerank you for interviews. I know for a fact that some places even gave you 1-10 rankings based on Step 1 score, med school grades, college grades, etc. because I saw them written down in my interview. One applicant told me they saw an interviewer's paper have a list of all the interviewees with their Step 1 scores next to their names.
You want to know the important things for admissions? Step 1, AOA, research, recs. AOA includes your med school grades. There's really no secret to it. The higher the Step 1, the more research, AOA and more big wig letters you have, the better you match. And ppl from top schools or average schools with top specialty program have a huge advantage on research opportunities since they have tons available at their school while they're in school. Some ppl aiming high or needing a boost for a low Step 1 make up for this by doing a research year.
Also, the region you're from is huge. There's a huge regional bias on where you get interviews since most ppl want to stay in their region and programs know this. Therefore, they're more likely to interview ppl from their own region than other ones. If you're a top top applicant, you can usually overcome a lot of the regional bias it seems but I'm sure it's still a factor even for them.
So there ya go, all you need to know to get into any top program in any field.
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No one has ever said High Step 1 score = better doctor. Step 1 score, essentially serves as a filter for residency programs. It only closes door or keeps a specialty open as a possibility. It's essentially a "barrier to entry".
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Yes and no. It's more than a barrier to entry. A 230 will not get you screened out in even the most competitive specialties, but a 250+ probably nearly guarantees you to be ranked a lot higher than that 230.
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Yes, that's bc the average is currently 228.
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Is there a score report from 2014 w/ this number? Mine from 2013 had the average at 224.
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Took mine in June 2013. It was 227 +/- 22 on my score report.
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I was going based off of this: http://www.med-ed.virginia.edu/handbook/pdf/usmle1-13.pdf, but this is probably correct: http://grenadaguide.blogspot.com/2014/01/my-personal-usmle-step-1-experience.html
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Not really true, at least not at my school. Most of my classmates aren't getting HS or H on everything in MS3, and that includes those who did well on shelf exams.
I believe your definition of "trying" as a MS3 is different from mine.
As to the rest of your post, I agree fully.
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Literally everyone in my class gets HS on every rotation without trying. I am not exaggerating here. It's because our 3rd year grades are mainly based on clinical evals with shelf exams counting for 15-35% of the grade. The attendings here consider HP to be average, so everyone gets HP. The ppl who H either kill the shelf exam or suck up big time to the attending. The attendings who give out H more generously tend to be more generous to everyone, but very few of those attendings.
This difference between my school and yours just shows how much BS med school grades are which also shows how AOA is meaningless since it's mainly based on GPA and every school has its own standards. You need to be near the top of your class to be AOA and so one can assume you are a great student if you are AOA, but you shouldn't discount others for not being AOA. There are tons of ppl not AOA who basically performed equally in medical school to those who have AOA. It's all BS.
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So then at your school grades are inflated, if HP is the average.
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Yup guess so. But then it's very hard to H. It's very frustrating missing the H cutoff by .1% on several occasions and getting the same grade as basically everyone else. Many schools are like this though. No objectivity comparing grades between med schools or even with the same med school since ppl are graded by different attendings.
It's all bs which is why board scores are the only objective way to compare students. And even that, you can argue board schools are not that helpful since most of that knowledge will not be used in your career, especially if you are specializing.
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Guys, I'm studying for step 1. I had originally aimed for a score in upper 230s/240s. However, I just got pretty nervous seeing that the average has jumped up 3 points!!!
Should I aim for a 250 instead? I'll be applying next year, so by the time the match happens for me, I expect this 242 to rise to a 245? Thus, making 250 a competitive score?
I have good LORs, published, other ECs, interesting life story, etc. I just need a good step 1 score.
Should I aim for a 250 instead? I'll be applying next year, so by the time the match happens for me, I expect this 242 to rise to a 245? Thus, making 250 a competitive score?
I have good LORs, published, other ECs, interesting life story, etc. I just need a good step 1 score.
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is this the highest? i always thought it was 300 lol
why would you not aim for as high of a score as possible? this is such an odd question
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With regards to the 300, I'll tell you after I take it next year.
Not srs.
You should aim for as high of a score as possible, within reason. I mean you probably shouldn't devote like 12 hours of your day every day for the 6 months to step 1. Not to mention it's just a standardized test. I'd wager the knowledge of the average 250 scorer to the people that pull like 275s isn't really any different , it's just that one of them in rainman and the other isn't. At some point, scoring in the absolute highest(like 275+) probably means a lot of "characters."
