One great pub is better than ten minor ones. Step scores aren't entirely a function of time spent either- some people can work 24/7 and fail while others put in 4 hours a day and do very well. The most important thing is to focus on the quality of your application, not the quantity of things in checkboxes.
That is not commonplace. 265, all honors, 2 publications and only 4 interviews and no match? What specialty?
Seems like they either had a red flag or were not applying broadly enough tbh, there are no guarantees in this field. Despite what adcoms on here will say, there is absolutely some luck/randomness to the process; the only way to combat this is to make sure you've applied to enough places-with a good distribution of safeties/reaches (I know a guy who had a great gpa, 523 MCAT and did research in undergrad who got exactly one acceptance ...and he's an awesome person). He nabbed an acceptance only bc he had the humility to apply to places that by all standards he should've been a shoe-in for. Ik crappier people with worse stats and more/better acceptances bc they applied to more schools. From the few residents I know, it is no different. You have to apply broadly. I'm rambling on about this bc I don't want people going through the cycle of hopelessness I felt in undergrad during med school bc of some rare circumstance they read on sdn-just wanna make sure they know that it was likely avoidable (two crappy pubs should've been plenty to match in any specialty as long as a person with those stats had no red flags and approached the match cautiously).
Really? Is that the best you can come up with? Or are you just trolling for the fun of it. And, no, my "family member" is not a tool. Finished first in med school class. Can you say that?
It depends what we are talking about. I assumed actual publications...the numbers you quoted are incredibly inflated, as each project could turn into 3 or more of those...also look at the number of people getting in: with a 265 they had about 90% chance of matching based off that data alone-I'd wager 1/10 with that score are not very good socially, as I'd say 1/10 of my class as a whole isn't the best with social skills. Even those with FOUR "publications" went 15-4 (79% of those people matched, not even taking step 1 into account). Bottom line is that is likely not what kept them out...people do fall through the cracks, but with those stats (yes, even in derm-where the average step is "only" 249, a 265 puts you at an advantage) I'd wager there was some problem whether they were forward about it or not. The problem could've been as simple as they just don't have the personality to fit in, but they might not feel comfortable saying that.
Yes, she did, immediately afterwards. She did interview at home program and thought it went well. The PD didn't give her any feedback.
Even if personality was an issue, the bigger problem here is that this person only got 4 interviews despite having 260s, all honors, and publications. Really strange.
