imo step 1/2 scores are more of a weed out factor- a low one could make you miss the cut for an interview, but a sky high score won't necessarily get you in. 230-240+ should get you past the usmle cutoff. however, i still believe clinical grades are the most important. who do you want working beside you- somebody who got 266 on their step 1 or somebody who consistently performed well on the wards?
Sometimes excellent clinical grades must not correlate with how good someone is to work with, we have all seen obnoxious residents, some in pretty prestigious programs which you would assume require an honors even for an interview, therefore, I think everyone pushes really hard for honors in Medicine if they are going into IM, but I don't think that it correlates with how amiable a person is, a person who just "passed" honors might be more nice, maybe because they were humbled by the whole process.
Secondly, the job of a medical student is not the same as the job of a resident, i.e. responsibility and making management decisions come into play rather than "Where are the vitals" and "Who invented the IVC filter". . . And the motivation is different, i.e. someone who is working their
[email protected] off to get an honors in a clerkship maybe would slide once they get their residency, whereas someone who cares about patients will go strong, if you are a "player" you can do very well on medicine clerkships by smoozing everyone without really knowing what you are doing, I have seen and been told this by medical students who do this.
Obviously there is some translation from good med student -> good resident -> good attending, but a lot of it gets lost in translation and sometimes a good med student -> average resident -> mediocre attending
