- Joined
- Jan 10, 2012
- Messages
- 329
- Reaction score
- 69
Hello everyone.
I am almost done with my first year. but unfortunately, I am realizing that my academic ability is worse than most of my peers.
Just as everyone here, I was a hard working student during my undergrad years. I studied biochem and had a strong GPA like all my ugrad friends. Meanwhile I accumulated 500 hours of clinical volunteering and had couple of publications. Eventually, I was fortunate enough to get into a low tier allopathic school in US.
However unfortunately, while my friends in medical schools are doing well and some already matched to competitive specialities like neurosurgery and derm, I failed a course and am barely passing my rest of first year courses.
I tried everything. I had a tutor who was already scoring 250+ in January. Advisors tell me to work on BRS books or read textbooks but I simply do not have the time to work on questions or read other textbooks.
I am afraid that I won't be able to pass the step 1. in fact, faculty members at my school are concerned about this too.
I am thinking about taking a year off between my second and third year, study longer, and try to increase my chance of passing step 1. I am aware that PDs will see that I took a year off. While studying for it, I am thinking about doing research for a year. Fortunately, my school is supportive even though this idea seems very unorthodox to the school.
So here are my questions.
(1) Is it possible to register step 1 in January and schedule it in late April or something and cancel it like MCAT? If one cancels the MCAT registration or does not show up during the test day, this is not shown in our AMCAS. However, will this be shown in my residency application?
(2) If I schedule my step 1 in April and want to delay it, how long I can delay it? For MCAT, we can pretty much delay it as many times as we want and to any dates as long as there are available seats.
Thank you in advance.
I am almost done with my first year. but unfortunately, I am realizing that my academic ability is worse than most of my peers.
Just as everyone here, I was a hard working student during my undergrad years. I studied biochem and had a strong GPA like all my ugrad friends. Meanwhile I accumulated 500 hours of clinical volunteering and had couple of publications. Eventually, I was fortunate enough to get into a low tier allopathic school in US.
However unfortunately, while my friends in medical schools are doing well and some already matched to competitive specialities like neurosurgery and derm, I failed a course and am barely passing my rest of first year courses.
I tried everything. I had a tutor who was already scoring 250+ in January. Advisors tell me to work on BRS books or read textbooks but I simply do not have the time to work on questions or read other textbooks.
I am afraid that I won't be able to pass the step 1. in fact, faculty members at my school are concerned about this too.
I am thinking about taking a year off between my second and third year, study longer, and try to increase my chance of passing step 1. I am aware that PDs will see that I took a year off. While studying for it, I am thinking about doing research for a year. Fortunately, my school is supportive even though this idea seems very unorthodox to the school.
So here are my questions.
(1) Is it possible to register step 1 in January and schedule it in late April or something and cancel it like MCAT? If one cancels the MCAT registration or does not show up during the test day, this is not shown in our AMCAS. However, will this be shown in my residency application?
(2) If I schedule my step 1 in April and want to delay it, how long I can delay it? For MCAT, we can pretty much delay it as many times as we want and to any dates as long as there are available seats.
Thank you in advance.
