What is looked at by residency programs?

[Gara]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Hey everyone.

I'm going to be starting med school in August and I'm hoping some current med students could shed some light on how people set themselves apart for competitive residencies.

Is it primarily your USMLE scores? My school does offer slightly more than a pass/no pass system by giving out a Honors, Near Honors, Satisfactory, Marginal or Failure distinction. How heavily will this be considered since a lot of schools only give out pass/no passes?

It just seems like the USMLEs and a very general grading system doesn't give programs much to go off of.

I'm just trying to get myself out of the GPA/MCAT obsessed mind set and start thinking about what my priorities will be for the next four years (besides gaining the knowledge and technique necessary to be a effective physician of course)

 

[officedepot]

Programs look at lots of things. I would probably say USMLE step 1 is the most important because it will get you in the door (i.e. your application looked at) the higher it is. A program director for ENT told me the other day that my school has a cutoff for step 1 for outside applicants (people not from my school) because they only have 4 spots available and get around 500 applications. They can't possibly look through them all and need to weed out people somehow. So if your score is below that number your application is disregarded no matter what... yeah it sucks but I guess some really competitive programs can do that. Most can't set that level too high because they risk having spots unfilled seeing as how they are not that great and if they only interview people who are super students their program may not be ranked high by those students. Most programs I take it don't set too high of a bar for a cutoff. It surprised me to hear that for ENT because the cutoff was only like 4 points below the average accepted applicant's score.

Now that is not to say step 1 is the only important factor. Grades, especially 3rd year grades, matter a lot as well. Along with things like LORs, research, class rank, personal statement, etc.

Look through this site to get a better idea:
http://www.nrmp.org/data/index.html

You can look through the program director's survery though I caution you not to take some of that stuff too seriously. For example, pretty much every field says board scores are important and one of the most important things but that is of course relative to the people applying to that field... I found this document overall not that great. The charting outcomes pdf is good because it gives all the averages and plots out probability curves. It also gives other various stats.

 

[Dr Love]

Hey everyone.

I'm going to be starting med school in August and I'm hoping some current med students could shed some light on how people set themselves apart for competitive residencies.

Is it primarily your USMLE scores? My school does offer slightly more than a pass/no pass system by giving out a Honors, Near Honors, Satisfactory, Marginal or Failure distinction. How heavily will this be considered since a lot of schools only give out pass/no passes?

It just seems like the USMLEs and a very general grading system doesn't give programs much to go off of.

I'm just trying to get myself out of the GPA/MCAT obsessed mind set and start thinking about what my priorities will be for the next four years (besides gaining the knowledge and technique necessary to be a effective physician of course)

1. USMLE
2. Clinical Evaluations
3. Research Experience

And as always, connections trump all.