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- Thread starter sag21
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What year are you in college and what is your GPA?
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Do you give up your spot if you take the MCAT or apply to other med schools?
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Are you in 7 year or 8 program? Your program doesn’t require MCAT?
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Very few schools have what one would call good match rate with Neurosurgery. It is a tough field to crack. Many do extra years in med school to make it and end up doing an alternative field. I met someone from an elite school on west coast a few years ago who was doing psychiatry after spending 2 extra years trying to make the cut for neuro.
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Agreed. I've done clinical research under nsgy attendings and they've all taken 1 research year before applying to residency
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You may want to answer @EdgeTrimmer's question about 7/8 yr program and MCAT which leads us to whether if you take MCAT or apply out do you lose your current admission.
We dont understand your exact situation.
1. Are you supposed to start medicine in fall this year?
2. If you are a junior and taking MCAT why gap year?
3. What are your program's restrictions with applying out?
Some additional data points for you to consider.
1. Getting into Neurosurgery has a lot of additional requirements
2. You are supposed to rank well within your program
3. You are supposed to have high scores
4. You are expected to have some research based on where you might be applying
5. It helps if your home program has Neurosurgery residency so your faculty have contacts and can give recommendations that people take seriously.
So a lot of it actually depends on your performance in med school and also whether you can get some support and are able to do research.
We dont understand your exact situation.
1. Are you supposed to start medicine in fall this year?
2. If you are a junior and taking MCAT why gap year?
3. What are your program's restrictions with applying out?
Some additional data points for you to consider.
1. Getting into Neurosurgery has a lot of additional requirements
2. You are supposed to rank well within your program
3. You are supposed to have high scores
4. You are expected to have some research based on where you might be applying
5. It helps if your home program has Neurosurgery residency so your faculty have contacts and can give recommendations that people take seriously.
So a lot of it actually depends on your performance in med school and also whether you can get some support and are able to do research.
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I agree with the other sentiments. It’s incredibly hard to match neurosurgery. Even if you blew your STEP scores out of the water and do everything right and take research years in medical school. People in much less competitive specialties had trouble matching this year, so imagine neurosurgery. If your program is matching even one person into neurosurgery every year then tbh it’s giving you just as good odds as any other medical school. The best ones will have maybe 4 or 5 matches (that’s just a guess but probably a good ballpark).
Now if your program charges you an absurd amount of money in tuition, then yeah you can apply out assuming your MCAT is good enough. If your med school’s reputation is extremely questionable and there’s a lot of issues with administration, yeah that’s another good reason to apply out.
But applying out to have a higher chance of matching neurosurgery elsewhere is a really really bad idea.
Now if your program charges you an absurd amount of money in tuition, then yeah you can apply out assuming your MCAT is good enough. If your med school’s reputation is extremely questionable and there’s a lot of issues with administration, yeah that’s another good reason to apply out.
But applying out to have a higher chance of matching neurosurgery elsewhere is a really really bad idea.
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I genuinely can’t tell if this is serious.
I’ll be blunt - this is an incredibly, incredibly stupid consideration for many reasons.
To summarize the highlights:
1) Match lists don’t matter. If you weren’t going to match at your current school, you probably weren’t going to match it at Harvard, either. There is some prestige factor, yes, but much of the onus is on you.
2) You have a GUARANTEED acceptance right now that you are willing to throw away. I think that is ridiculously stupid. You may be very confident, but you are throwing away 100% for less than 100%.
3) You are liable to change your mind in medical school. You currently likely have less than a tenth of the clinical experience you will have at the end of med school and that is being very liberal.
I’ll be blunt - this is an incredibly, incredibly stupid consideration for many reasons.
To summarize the highlights:
1) Match lists don’t matter. If you weren’t going to match at your current school, you probably weren’t going to match it at Harvard, either. There is some prestige factor, yes, but much of the onus is on you.
2) You have a GUARANTEED acceptance right now that you are willing to throw away. I think that is ridiculously stupid. You may be very confident, but you are throwing away 100% for less than 100%.
3) You are liable to change your mind in medical school. You currently likely have less than a tenth of the clinical experience you will have at the end of med school and that is being very liberal.
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