Red flag…help with matching

[slightlycharred]

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Hey, I’m a fourth year at a top ~50 med school who has 4/7 honors including IM, 265 on step 2 and 7 pubs (multiple in high IF journals, one in IF>15, one in IF>20). My letters are strong and have mentors who are willing to call programs on my behalf who have trained at top programs (MGH, Penn, etc). Interested in IM.

I unfortunately also have a red flag on my app which is that I was given a professionalism strike in my second year and had to undergo an 8 month probationary period which will appear on my MSPE. It was for something totally non-clinical and not related to academic dishonesty, basically I accidentally let my health clearance lapse and showed up to a practice patient encounter that I wasn’t cleared to go to. It’s been totally remediated and my deans letter will explicitly mention I’ve completed the monitoring period.

Im struggling to figure out how to signal/apply. My old dream was a top program like MGH or Columbia (shooting for NE as I’m from there). Now I’m worried I won’t even match. Any advice on signals? Any advice from people that have been in a similar situation?

 

[NotAProgDirector]

This is going to be one of those questions that's impossible to answer conclusively.

One thing that can be said -- you'll absolutely match, and I'm sure at a great spot. This isn't serious enough that it will have a major impact, and it's relatively far in the past.

What's impossible to say is how much it will impact apps at tip-top places. Further details might matter. I assume by "health clearance" you mean some vaccination or some such. You mention here it was an accident. If you just forgot to get your paperwork done, then programs may not care much at all. If you didn't actually get your vax's by mistake, they might care more. If you were refusing your vax's for whatever reason, they might care a lot. If you school warned you multiple times and you still blew them off, they might really, really care.

Tip top places can pick whomever they want. Will this be enough to have them drop you? I don't know. And neither will anyone else. You'll need to spread your signals across the tip top, and other programs. I'm sure that's not the clarity you're looking for, but I doubt you'll get more than that.

 

[slightlycharred]

This is going to be one of those questions that's impossible to answer conclusively.

One thing that can be said -- you'll absolutely match, and I'm sure at a great spot. This isn't serious enough that it will have a major impact, and it's relatively far in the past.

What's impossible to say is how much it will impact apps at tip-top places. Further details might matter. I assume by "health clearance" you mean some vaccination or some such. You mention here it was an accident. If you just forgot to get your paperwork done, then programs may not care much at all. If you didn't actually get your vax's by mistake, they might care more. If you were refusing your vax's for whatever reason, they might care a lot. If you school warned you multiple times and you still blew them off, they might really, really care.

Tip top places can pick whomever they want. Will this be enough to have them drop you? I don't know. And neither will anyone else. You'll need to spread your signals across the tip top, and other programs. I'm sure that's not the clarity you're looking for, but I doubt you'll get more than that.

Thank you for the clear and helpful advice. For additional context, I’d been having issues with lateness/late assignments/etc in the past (nothing crazy, but just chronic dropping the ball on stuff) before this that led to their strict punishment. However that stuff won’t be included on the app. This specific instance I had gotten a couple notifications from the school but dropped the ball again and was 1 day late on getting a TB test. They won’t include that context since it’s PHI, it’ll just be a general description of the incident. This whole thing was a big wake up call for me and my professionalism after that for 2 years has been perfect, they actually ended the probation period early since my record was spotless after the incident (should have been a one year period, ended in 8mo). I thought because of this they’d remove it from the MSPE but they’re not going to, and I definitely fell into a pretty deep depression for a while when I found out.

Anyway, sorry to ramble, but this makes me feel a lot better. Advisors at my school are pushing me to only apply to like 1-2 total top 30 programs and use most of my signals on community/IMG friendly programs, which really made me feel like I was at risk of not matching at all. I don’t really mind if I miss out on top 4/10/20 programs, I just want to match somewhere academic in the NE area (or even a strong community program would be good) as my goal is academic medicine and research in the future.