STEP 3 for fellowship

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Bostonredsox

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Just curious how relevant/irrelevant step 3 scores are for applying to fellowships. Im debating taking it in august/sept as it looks like my more time consuming intern year rotations are in the latter half of my schedule. Essentially, if I spend a little time studying for it early into this year (july) and take it right after and score the average or even a little below will it impact me down the road? I've been told its basically like the CS/PE in that you need to pass it to get your license but the score doesn't matter much. Wondering if that is also true if your applying for a fellowship a year later.

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Just curious how relevant/irrelevant step 3 scores are for applying to fellowships. Im debating taking it in august/sept as it looks like my more time consuming intern year rotations are in the latter half of my schedule. Essentially, if I spend a little time studying for it early into this year (july) and take it right after and score the average or even a little below will it impact me down the road? I've been told its basically like the CS/PE in that you need to pass it to get your license but the score doesn't matter much. Wondering if that is also true if your applying for a fellowship a year later.

My understanding is that many fellowships will ask for the score, but probably use it in their decisions about as much as any residency which asked for your MCAT score, ie not much.
 
Exactly. Think about it. Why would cardiology fellowships (or any other) care about how well you could manage family medicine issues on an exam 2-3 years old or more?

Don't underestimate the power of laziness. Why not just screen out candidates with Step 3 scores like they do with the MCAT for medical school and Step 1 for residency? It just takes too much time to look into the substance of numerous candidates when you can easily sort an Excel spreadsheet by some numerical score. You can cut your work in half or more when screening applicants!
 
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Don't underestimate the power of laziness. Why not just screen out candidates with Step 3 scores like they do with the MCAT for medical school and Step 1 for residency? It just takes too much time to look into the substance of numerous candidates when you can easily sort an Excel spreadsheet by some numerical score. You can cut your work in half or more when screening applicants!

First, the number of folks applying for each fellowship is but a fraction of those applying for residency slots, which in turn is smaller than the number applying to each med school. Some fellowships have a couple of dozen applicants tops, not thousands like you have for med school. Second, if you are coming out of a 3+ year residency, you have a significant track record they can look at that has more to do with what they care about than Step 3.
 
Don't underestimate the power of laziness. Why not just screen out candidates with Step 3 scores like they do with the MCAT for medical school and Step 1 for residency? It just takes too much time to look into the substance of numerous candidates when you can easily sort an Excel spreadsheet by some numerical score. You can cut your work in half or more when screening applicants!

Numerous fellowships have more spots than applicants! You can't be lazy. Some programs almost have to beg for fellowship applicants.
 
I would take it as soon as you feel ready. The last thing you want mid-way through your 1st year is to be studying for it. Depending on your program there may also be a restriction as to whether you can proceed to 2nd year if you have not passes Step 3. You could have a bad day on the day of the exam etc so delaying it might be detrimental. And the biggest reason ofcourse is that unless you're in OB-GYN you really want to delete all the stuff about fetal heart tones & developmental milestones from your head as early as possible.
Good Luck
 
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