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Rad Onc and bad M3 grades?
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No, absolutely do not reconsider. Try to do better moving forward. Given the strength of the rest of your application, I don't think you've done irreparable damage.
Lol. Well if I have all passes (which I won't, but I might be close to that, which would suck), I'm just really worried that a 254 isn't going to save me.
Btw, am I the only one who did well on step 1, but sucks on every single shelf no matter how hard I study?
Btw, am I the only one who did well on step 1, but sucks on every single shelf no matter how hard I study?
I had high step 1 and 2 scores, but had some trouble with the shelf exams. For me, the difference was time constraints. I was not getting to about the last 10 questions on my first few shelfs. With adjustments in test taking strategy, I was able to change this and my shelf scores went up later on in the year. I wonder if this is the problem you're having?
I was on a similar boat with solid step 1s and for some shelfs I was just hopeful I would pass...I saw almost no correlation to the amount I studied and my shelf scores and time constraints (both to study and finish the exam) I know definitely added to my poorer performance
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Yes and yes.
Ditto on what others have said ... I was in a similar situation. Did med school in the US with passes on most clerkships including medicine and surgery but with strong clinical evals and decided late on doing rad onc.
Was told I would probably not match to rad onc by my own med school advisor ... didn't listen ... applied broadly in the US and in Canada ... interviewed at a range of programs in the US and 8/11 programs in Canada and ultimately matched to ONE of ONLY18 rad onc spots in Canada !!!!!
Don't let anyone set your limits for you!
All of the Canadian rad onc programs are considered equivalent to the US rad onc programs with the ABR (so you'll be board eligible to do your exams) and state licensing bodies. Most of the residents at my program end up doing the ABR exams as well in addition to the RCPSC exams. I can't speak for all of the CAD programs but our grads haven't had and difficulty getting fellowships at top institutions in the states after residency.
The only issue I can think of that would come up would be the visa issue if you're not a US citizen/PR but every year, our PGY-5s get solicited offers from rad onc practices in the US and there are a few CAD grads working in the US now so I've been told it's very doable.
The difficulty with applying for residency in Canada is that you have to be a CAD citizen/PR and that there are such few spots. However, it's def. worth a shot applying if you qualify! CAD programs provide top notch training and are a great alternative to US programs. At our center, we've got 22 staff rad oncs and 3 GPOs which is sizeable when compared to many US centers .... although we still get dwarfed by PMH (which is only 40 mins away) and has 63 staff rad oncs !!!! lol
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I have 250 on step 1... and suck on the shelves. And freaking out just like you are.
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So you have to be a canadian citizen/PR to apply?
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Is it really?
yeah
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haha. seems like you should be ok? a friend of mine matched 2 years ago with a 240+ on step 1 and mostly passes 3rd year. Went to a nice program too
since the OP deleted all his stuff I thought I'd ask about the effect of mediocre SECOND year grades.
I'm waiting for the grades to come back on my last few exams, but I'm looking to land somewhere around a 3.7 GPA (Honored ~3/4 of courses, HP'd a few by a question or two...). I'd say it puts me somewhere near the middle or bottom of the class, as many students have honored everything all year. I want to put forth a strong showing on Step I, but will my grades and class rank hurt my application if I try for radonc?
I'm waiting for the grades to come back on my last few exams, but I'm looking to land somewhere around a 3.7 GPA (Honored ~3/4 of courses, HP'd a few by a question or two...
). I'd say it puts me somewhere near the middle or bottom of the class, as many students have honored everything all year. I want to put forth a strong showing on Step I, but will my grades and class rank hurt my application if I try for radonc?
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How can you be in the bottom half of your class when you honored 75% of your classes??
My class is full of gunners! Word on the street is that 1/3 of the class honored 100% of the courses... and I imagine many in the middle third HP'd 2-3 (I HP'd 4 out of 16, and maybe a 5th that I'm waiting to hear about; thus, 12/17 or 13/17 honors overall). It's not that the classes are easy, but the average person here (WashU) is just beastly.
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I wouldn't worry about it, what's done is done. Focus on doing well on Step I, clinical rotations, and doing Rad Onc research. That's where the meat of your application will be anyway. Also, coming from WashU, you will have a leg up anyway given your outstanding home department.
So does your school not have a limit on the number of people that can honor in a course? At my med school there was a policy that no more than 15% of the class could honor (I may be slightly off on the exact number but it was in that neighborhood) and there was no HP just honors, pass, marginal pass, fail (although your rank was also calculated in each class to be used for overall standing).
I had simply assumed that other schools limited the number of students that could receive honors but maybe that isn't as common as I had thought.
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I saw this thread and found it relevant to something that one of my friends wanted to know as she's curious about WashU's grading process esp for residency.
So it appears that having high/honor passes at WashU isn't enough? Does that mean everyone in the class is still ranked? How is student standing at WashU reported to residency programs? Quartile?
Seems like despite working hard and despite some mild "grade inflation" -- you really do have to still work even harder to keep up with everyone else b/c class standing is still important at WashU?
Thanks! Please let me know so I can share this info, it may help my friend understand this process at this specific school.
First and second year classes only matter in two circumstances - you do well enough to get junior AOA or you do poorly enough to stand out. Basic science aptitude in general seems to be judged by Step I and that's it. Basic science is way too heterogenous to compare amongst different schools. As far as ranking, at least in my school third and fourth year rotations are weighted much more. The most they might use it is to stratify your schools candidates. At the end of the day...you go to WashU you will be fine.
There's no limit to how many people can Honor a course. Generally, about 60-80% of students will honor a given course. Keep in mind, these same students came in with mean stats of like 3.8 gpa / 38 mcat.
It's tough because our our exams are, for example, 54 multiple choice questions and you need a solid 90% (not 89.9) for Honors. Given that such a test has ~3 poorly written or ambiguous questions, you can essentially legitimately miss 2 questions to get Honors if you guess wrong on the other 3; your odds of guessing right on all 3 are 1 in 125, and your odds of guessing wrong on all 3 are 1 in 1.95. Thus, you basically need to get 49/51 (96.1%) on the well-written questions to get Honors, so you can certainly miss the grade even if you really know your stuff.
First year at WashU is P/F, while the remaining 3 years are H/HP/P/F. A GPA is calculated based on cumulative performance, where 3rd year is weighted more than second year-- I don't know how 4th year factors in, but residency apps are already sent away. As far as I know, we'll be broken up into thirds for the purposes of residency applications. I know that the top 20 students get AOA (16% of the class).
