0. The goal of medical school is to match well, not to graduate. The same way as the goal of your undergrad is to get into medical school, not to graduate.
1. Anything that is "mandatory attendance" is useless- PBL, ethics sessions, special interest group lectures etc. Bring a book or mp3 player to pass the time.
2. Don't be afraid to decline stupid research projects from staff if you are not interested or don't have an idea of what specialty you want to pursue.
3. Don't spend any time focusing on projects or efforts related to primary care even if you're interested. You'll still match to primary care(though why you'd want to is beyond me) without it, but if you want to do ROAD etc it won't help you match. It's wasted time.
4. Look the part - dress professionally, keep your hair trimmed, and walk tall.
5. Don't get wrapped up in class drama. Keep a life outside of your class. Most of your classmates will be total losers anyway.
6. Set goals to make you a strong candidate for the match: High step 1, AOA etc.
Sigh.
0. No. The goal of medical school is to make you a competent medical professional above all else, in addition to matching. I dislike this mindset very much. Just because one may want to match in, say, Ophthalmology, does not mean you disregard or make light of what you learn in all your rotations. Being a well-rounded doctor is incredibly important.
1. Knowing your biomedical ethics is absolutely important. I've had to deal with more than one case involving child services, and there's definitely been times where confidentiality has been an issue. I've known people to royally F up something because they didn't understand the basics of their bioethics. Also, for the gunners out there, this is something you do need to know for Step 1, so don't make light of it. PBL sessions... this is a matter of opinion as I usually learned more about actual clinical medicine from PBL sessions than I did from listening to some ***** lecture about Tay-sachs Disease.
2 and 3. This is absolutely not true. I know someone who matched Urology and one of their projects was a community health awareness one. It helped open the doors for many other urology-related projects and it was brought up during interviews. Some research is always better than no research. And your general disdain for primary care is nasty and uncalled for, especially from a resident. There is such a thing as highly competitive Medicine or Peds or Med/Peds programs by the way... by comparison there are many ROAD programs, particularly in Anesthesia, which are very easy to match.
4. Yeah, no. In 3rd year, dress professionally. In first and second year, you can go to class in scrubs and pajamas.
5. This I partially agree with, but no, not everyone in your class is a "loser". Many are melodramatic idiots, yes, but there's always people you can find who understand/you get along with.
6. If you don't get AOA it's not the end of the world. I am in the top quintile of my class and not a contender for AOA. I don't really care. Step 1 score on the other hand does make a pretty big difference but getting a relatively lower score will not rule you out of a specialty... it may make it harder but there are other ways to bolster your application (including 3rd year grades, research, LORs, audition rotations, etc.)
Please, see through the horse crap, people who are reading through this thread. I have no desire to go into primary care personally but knocking people who do is pathetic.
. PBL success is extremely variable depending on the school, the students, and the preceptor.
