Peds Residency Application Question

[CR7]

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I have a question regarding my residency application that I'm hoping some of you Pediatric residents can answer for me! I'm a 4th year at a DO school in the midwest and in the process of planning ahead for next year's match. I am originally from the west coast and want to go there for residency, either WA, OR, or CA, but I notice that DO's are rare in many of the west coast programs. I feel I am a competitive applicant (top 20% of my class, good clinical grades, great USMLE I score) but I'm unsure whether I should dish out the extra $500 to take the USMLE II. Would not taking step II hurt my application in the long run? What do you think?

 

[m1234d]

sorry no one has answered your question.

my answer would be to just take the week to study for step 2 and shell out the $500. I mean in the grand scheme of how much money you've invested in your medical education, how much is 500? for me it's less than 1% of my student loans. I don't think it should matter that much, but I tend to play it safe in general.

 

[MonkeyRalph]

I agree.
I think you should just suck it up and take USMLE step 2.
It sucks, but there are some programs that just won't consider DO applicants. You should look for programs that are more DO friendly. They exist. Otherwise, you'll just feel like you have to make up for the fact that you're a DO for the rest of residency.