Red Flag and Interviews

[SgtThunderfistMD]

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[Surfer]

It's really early in the game. Just work hard and you'll be fine.

 

[anbuitachi]

I was struggling in school (no failures), got a great research opportunity, and thus took an LOA in the middle of my second semester of M1. I got several poster presentations at national conferences (in a different specialty) along with a pub. Also have several medically-challenging case presentations at ASA, as well as one case report published.

Step 1 was low 240's, decent amount of research, good LOR's, top 20 med school, probably around 50%ile of my class.

My question is how much these two factors will limit me in my endeavors? I am trying to plan aways at places I want to go (MGH/BW/BID/Stanford/UWashington/Columbia/etc), but am not going to waste my time there if odds are this red (maybe yellow?) flag is probably going to prevent me from getting an interview. I would rather spend my time doing aways at mid-tier programs in that case. I would rather not waste time at an elite program if odds are they are going to filter my ERAS app based on 'gaps in education' anyways. Thanks in advance.


Note: this is a cross-post from ERAS forum, but I didn't really get an answer to my question there and would rather ask here since it seems more specific to anesthesiology. Feel free to delete that one if I am breaking a rule. Thanks.

i dont see a negative in your application. do well on the research and you deifnitely have a shot. big programs care a LOT about research. on my interview trail, candidates were offered extra interviews because they had good research (the chair of one school had an extra interview w/ them, when he didn' ttalk to the rest of us). From what I see, MGH, Brigham, columbia dont need super high scores, if you have something that stands out like good research. I know ppl who got in w/ 220s and 230s on step 1 which I think makes sense for them. THey are known and are famous for teh research