WAMC: residency following failed class

[doc.Junior]

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I'm wondering if anyone could comment on how psychiatry views a failed class in M1 (particularly early on, vs late in the year).

I realize that, aside from red flags, there's beneficial application factors including school prestige, clinical, Step 2, LORs, research artifacts, advanced degrees, and (maybe?) away rotation success and mission statement.

Would love it if anyone could comment on forecast for someone rebounding from a failed class. I've been told psych may be more forgiving of this given that the field encourages learning from psychological hardships, especially if it's prior to clinical rotations. Wondering how that scans to you esteemed folks, and where that would fall on the spectrum of one being able to 'scrape by somewhere' to 'you can still go anywhere with reasonable other stats'. Anecdotes welcome 🙂

Thanks!

 

[TexasPhysician]

Many programs automatically screen out a single failure. That said, psych is more forgiving on average. A single failure doesn’t eliminate all hope of being a psychiatrist. Finishing strong will be important.

 

[splik]

This information is usually buried in the transcript/MSPE and in the quick glance a lot of people won't even notice it. Obviously, it is better to have passed everything but only things like Step failures, repeating years, prolonged LOAs, disciplinary actions, and clerkship rotation failures are red flags. I would consider this a yellow flag. In the past there have been people matching at even top programs with a class failure. There have to be other redeeming features in your application that wash away your sins of course.