What's my chances for 2015?

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barzan

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Dear All,

I have been a reader of this forum for a while now and I admit it has changed my perspective of a lot of things I would like to thank you all for that.

Intro: I am an IMG interested in pursuing psychiatry as a career, my credentials:
1 - Step 1 >240, CS passed, CK next july
2 - Currently I am working as a Research fellow, I managed to work on 5 projects, two of them I have presented this year in the APA annual meeting one as a poster and the other as an oral presentation (30 mins talk), I got 5 submitted articles one for final review, no publications yet.
3 - No clinical experience in the US
4 - three psychiatric LOR all from chairs of different institutes two US.

The purpose of my thread is I have been reading the NRMP match report today and surprisingly the number of IMG's that matched this year in psychiatry were around 190 out of 1322 total number of positions, which made me question my chances of at least being invited to an interview? And if you have any further advice for me in preparing my application that would be highly valuable ?

Thank you again

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Not all IMGs are created equal. Based on what you've said, I would be surprised if you don't receive a substantial number of invites this interview season.

Start working on your personal statement if you haven't already, and make sure to score higher than the 240 on CK. Also, read Iserson's Getting Into a Residency. It's old, and a lot of application advice on it are completely useless, but for a general "attitude" preparation for the interviews, I haven't seen a better text.
 
Dear All,
...
2 - Currently I am working as a Research fellow, I managed to work on 5 projects, two of them I have presented this year in the APA annual meeting one as a poster and the other as an oral presentation (30 mins talk), I got 5 submitted articles one for final review, no publications yet.
3 - No clinical experience in the US
4 - three psychiatric LOR all from chairs of different institutes two US.
...

Try to fix that. I know the opportunities don't grow on trees, but in spite of all of your scores and research accomplishments, what we really want are residents who are good at rapport with patients, good on teams with staff, who understand how a US hospital works and what they have to do in that context.
 
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I agree with OPD. The biggest weakness in your application is the lack of US clinical experience. For a lot of programs this is a must. One of your LORs should be from the person supervising this experience. Try talking with the school where you are doing your research to see if you can get off and follow around one of their attendings -- even a month would make a big difference.
 
Thank you all for responding to my thread, I totally agree on the importance of the clinical experience unfortunately I have not been able to secure one, and my only exposure to patients were during our research interviews performing diagnostic inventories such as SCID,PANSS,SAPS,SANS, and other IQ testings etc..

Thanks again
 
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