I know a low step 1 alone can be overcome-but does my combination of low step 1 and low preclinicals from an average school put me out of contention for general surgery? One of the advisors in surgery (not mine) sent out an email earlier this year essentially stating that people with step 1 <220 and low preclinical grades are not going to match. Would be happy going to a decent community program, no real regional restriction-my primary goals at this point are good surgical training with the hope of being able to do a lot of international work when I finish (lived and worked abroad before med school, all my research has an international/medical development slant to it).

Baylor, Emory, Cincinnati, reach programs w/ international focus given my interests).

I am planning to apply to a ton of community programs (50+) as well as a handful of reach university programs (e.g. Since then I have done very well on shelf exams (95%+) and I think I can score significantly better on Step 2 as I will be studying more and more efficiently than I did for step 1. overall grade A in all rotations even with shelf averaged in but our school also uses hard cutoffs for shelf score).Įssentially I had a personal M&M over the winter break when I realized I loved surgery and changed my approach to testing/school. The reason my first semester rotations were HP (and P in peds) was due to shelf score cutoffs (e.g. I was not highly motivated enough during preclinical years and unfortunately I did not figure out an effective standardized test study method until well into my third year. Confident that I will have strong LORs but they will not be from huge names Not sure how much this matters but I should have an extremely positive dean's letter (have had multiple clerkship directors, attendings, and residents tell me and put into writing on evaluations that I am one of if not the best student they've had from a clinical and teaching perspective extremely positive reviews on every single clerkship). Good research: First author journal article in infectious disease/international research, multiple first author posters, 1 second author, 1 sole author article in medical anthropology focusing on effect of war on surgical services (medical social science but still IRB human subjects research - totally my project from start to finish including approvals for international research, funding, IRB, etc.), 4 posters in medical anthropology w/ surgical development slant. Honors in surgery, psych, neuro HP everything else. Hello all, I am at the end of my third year hoping to get some advice on applying to general surgery and if some of the strengths of my application can salvage the two major weaknesses.

General surgery step 1 score