Summer Remediation for course failure MS1 - impact on surgery residency

[pmd2017]

Hello all.

I have just finished MS1 at a state school (aka not anywhere near top 20 school) and it has been an extremely challenging experience. I managed to pass every course (barely), but everything caught up to me on the very last course. I failed the last class of MS1 (a very short class - smallest number of credit hours to date) and will have to remediate this summer. The fact that I did not pass will be on my transcript.

My question is how much this will impact residency placement. I know I am only a lowly MS1 and still have clinical years to go through, but as of now, I am currently interested in general surgery with the hopes of sub-specializing (also small amount of interest in Neurosurgery). If (and I understand this is a big IF, but for the sake of this post...) I manage to get my act together and earn top grades during MS2 and get a phenomenal Step 1 score and do well during clinical years, would it still be possible to get into a competitive residency program for surgery? My (perhaps now, unrealistic) dream would be to do residency in NYC, Philadelphia, SF, or LA (aka not in the middle of nowhere and preferably not at my home medical school).

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[evilbooyaa]

One remediation in MS1 won't kill you. That being said, it may be a slight issue if you try applying to top of the line academic programs, since they can pick the cream of the crop without any issues at all.

I would stop worrying about the failure. Focus on remediating the class successfully and then doing better in MS2. I don't know what you plan to do to 'get your act together and earn top grades during MS2', but I'd focus on whatever changes you deem necessary.

The main issue here is that this doesn't sound like a fluke failure. If you passed every course barely (meaning you were close to failing each individual course) then that's a red flag (to you, not on your CV) that something in your study habits is not optimal. If there were only a couple classes that you scraped by the skin of your teeth, and you have this one remediation, it is less of an issue, but an issue nonetheless.

 

[JJMrK]

Be honest with yourself about how much time you are putting in and how efficiently you are using it. Keep a running timer each day during study time and pause it while eating, FBing, and SDNing; may be informative.

If you have no other issues and kill everything else you have a great shot at a top program in any specialty. But in all honesty, you have a significant amount of work to do with regard to correcting your current study habits.