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I will be matriculating into medical school in the fall, and I started wondering...for premeds - it's pretty easy to see the hoops you have to jump through to be considered for medical school (for the most part, get good grades, do well on the MCAT, get some exposure, possibly research experience, and maybe some other interesting-ness about you)
So I'm curious what factors contribute to matching for a residency. I hear from different people (med students & MDs) that either (a) there's tons of residencies to go around & you can go into anything you want or (b) you have to kick butt in med school for certain residencies & otherwise you're limited. Does anyone have any thoughts on which of these scenarios is more accurate?
I'm just wondering what we should be thinking about down the road - grades in M1/M2 (which for many schools is P/F)? Letters/Evals from M3/M4? AOA? Research/Publications? Other extracurriculars (i.e. working in a free clinic etc.).
I guess I'd just like to go into med school with eyes wide open knowing how the system works so that I don't end up like I did for applying to med school - having graduated, done 1-2 extracurriculars during college & having to spend a few years strengthening my application. Since I don't know what I want to go into, I don't want to close any doors on myself by, say, not doing research (if that's important), etc.
Any thoughts would be appreciated - or if you think I should move this to the residency boards, let me know. Thx. 🙂
So I'm curious what factors contribute to matching for a residency. I hear from different people (med students & MDs) that either (a) there's tons of residencies to go around & you can go into anything you want or (b) you have to kick butt in med school for certain residencies & otherwise you're limited. Does anyone have any thoughts on which of these scenarios is more accurate?
I'm just wondering what we should be thinking about down the road - grades in M1/M2 (which for many schools is P/F)? Letters/Evals from M3/M4? AOA? Research/Publications? Other extracurriculars (i.e. working in a free clinic etc.).
I guess I'd just like to go into med school with eyes wide open knowing how the system works so that I don't end up like I did for applying to med school - having graduated, done 1-2 extracurriculars during college & having to spend a few years strengthening my application. Since I don't know what I want to go into, I don't want to close any doors on myself by, say, not doing research (if that's important), etc.
Any thoughts would be appreciated - or if you think I should move this to the residency boards, let me know. Thx. 🙂