Bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off.

What's the most neurotic thing you've seen in virtual open houses so far? I think this one takes the cake for me.

Long story short I had to delay my Comlex exam by a month so I missed my first rotation. Ended up passing just fine so now on rotations BUT my school just emailed me YESTERDAY and told me my loans won’t be grandfathered so I need to take out private loans??? Where TH was the warning before I decided to delay my exam??? Is this legal???
I emailed the Dean and he said I need to work with financial aid lmao. I had a meeting with financial aid and they said they can give emergency fund for now until I figure something out. I do NOT have any co-signers and am immigrants as well as my parents and they do not have the credit history required to get these loans. Yes I applied to 4 now and nothing!!!

Idk wtf to do atp. This whole process has been a joke and nobody is taking accountability.

I’m applying EM. During medical school, I got into firearms and target shooting. Would I be stupid to add this as a hobby in my ResidencyCAS app, or would programs think I’m crazy?

Note: I haven’t competed in a USPSA event, but I want to. I go to the local range and have fun with the wife and the bros.

Edit: I will NOT be putting this on my app. Thank you guys for saving my app. Also, I'm left-leaning.

I’m a 3rd year and 7 months postpartum and just feel like my brain is operating a lot slower than most of my classmates. Those who have had kids during med school/residency, how did you deal with this? And is this something you experienced too?? Please tell me I’m not alone. 🥲🫠

Off to a great start

I have two generic letters in, not for the specialty I am applying for. I am waiting on my specialty specific letters. I had asked an attending in specialty from third year early spring (he was happy and agreed to write it, told me to email him) and was eventually ghosted, never heard back at all. I emailed them multiple times and eventually said this is my last time reaching out to you. Never heard back like at all.

So I pivoted. I have a mentor thankfully I found and he agreed to write letter early on too. He’s been procrastinating writing it. Tells me he will get to it but hasn’t yet. Good thing is, he responds so I can just email him every few days to remind him.

Third, now I had done a Sub I last month. Attending was very happy when I asked her and I told her I would email her. I emailed her Monday after rotation ended and she never responded. Emailed her again a week later and no response. I’m worried she’s either not getting the emails like it’s going to spam or she just doesn’t wanna write it anymore? Idk with eras submission technically starting tomorrow (even tho I won’t submit til 20 ish), I’m getting so worried. I have no strong letters in right now. This attending was so happy and we even had a heart to heart so I just don’t get it. Idk how often I should respond, whether I should ask a resident for her number (I had made friends with residents) or even tell resident to tell her idk. I’m on another sub I so I can’t stop by the hospital or anything.

step 3/level 3

Don’t know if it’s a good idea. But if I have chill rotations from October onwards, 5-10 uworld questions a day (30 mins a day max) then maybe?

Do you guys think it would be worth it to get it out of the way?

Applying IM

I’m a US DO MS4 applying to Internal Medicine and I’m confused about the standardized letter requirement.

My school advisor told me that I need a standardized letter for IM. I already have a few narrative LORs, as well as an IM Chair Letter from my medical school that they told us to request as narrative. 

I also asked an IM attending I worked with if she would write me a letter, and she agreed but asked me to draft the letter and send it to her for review/editing.

This is where I’m confused. When I look at ERAS, I see some IM programs specifically listing “specialty-specific standardized letter” as required or preferred. Am I correct that this refers to the AAIM Internal Medicine Structured Evaluative Letter (IM-SEL)?

If so, what exactly am I supposed to draft for my attending? Is the IM-SEL something the attending completes using the standardized template, rather than a traditional narrative letter that I draft myself?

I’m also wondering whether my IM Chair Letter already fulfills what my advisor meant by a standardized/SEL letter, or if I need a separate IM-SEL.

Would really appreciate clarification from anyone who has gone through this or understands the current ERAS process. I feel like I’m overthinking this ERAS checkbox 😅

I know its right up there with plastics, neurosurgery, etc. in terms of the data on charting outcomes, but anecdotally I've heard that unlike with e.g. plastics when an applicant dual applies they don't necessarily rank all CT i6 programs above all GS programs if that makes sense?

What I mean is if a plastics applicant is dual applying plastics and GS, they'll rank basically all plastics programs above all GS programs in their final rank list with very little exception vs I've heard that for applicants dual applying CT i6 and GS their final rank list might have their top CT i6 programs in the first say 3 ranks but then top GS programs known for having strong 7+3 pathways or strong CT exposure/fellowship match might be in ranks 4-8 before the rest of the CT i6 programs. Would that mean that if an applicant is not targeting the top programs in CT i6 that it might be a bit more attainable?

Back in M1, I was sick and missed a medical procedures class (one of those ones where they teach you to suture or whatever else).

I failed to get a doc’s note in time, because I was quite sick, so I had to remediate the course, which I did so successfully. Literally just showed up that next week & did the medical procedure. On my MSPE it says I successfully remediated the course.

I’m pretty annoyed about this because my MSPE is otherwise fine. I never remediated any actual preclinical courses, never failed any exams, and have very positive comments from all my preceptors from my M3 clinicals.

I’m applying IM. Is this a big deal? Or will PD’s not care?

Thanks yall

Just started rotations, starting in IM, and its been so fucking emotional.

Day 1 see the doc casually tell someone theyll never go home again.

Day 2 see an acutely decompensated homeless person who ran out of meds. Attending informs me the social worker thinks they sold them for drug money.

Now week 5, seen multiple people die, and got to watch a 12 year old boy say goodbye to his disoriented 30 yo mom with metastatic breast cancer. And I fell apart. Had to step out of the room

Idk I might be taking it all too personally but Im honestly kind of worried I won't be able to hang on if it's going to keep bothering me so much. I dont want to like, not feel bad for people suffering, but I know I need to at least be able to keep it together day-to-day...

So, what the title says, how do you cope with the sad stuff, and how do you supress it for later?

Am I signaling too high? Worried about my step 2 score

Low tier USMD

step 1 pass, 247 step 2

4 honors/4 HP

some leadership, volunteering, mentorship 

30 scholarly products, 7 published papers, 3 first author. Others are a mix of abstracts (published in journal) and posters 

Signaling geographically to middle Atlantic, south atlantic, northeast 

have aways at 3 golds, one not signaled

Gold: Mount sinai morningside, Penn, UMD, Tufts, BU or Temple

Silver: AHN, Temple/BU (whichever not gold), Zucker, Brown, Montefiore, BI, SBU, PSU, Lahey, Westchester, Jersey shore MC

Just like a subi and half in and I’m beat the traveling and having to be on everyday is getting to me. whose with me?

Whats’s everyone else’s experience like for 3rd year rotations? I’m just following around these attendings like a silly donkey.

Has anyone received Grad PLUS disbursements from their schools yet? With all the bureaucratic red tape from the BBB, just wondering if there’s any progress or luck… 😮‍💨

US DO, Level 1 fail first attempt, pass 2nd, Level 2 430. Applying IM, community, NJ/NY. Really just hoping to get into anywhere at all and wondering if this is possible?

I’m 9 months into my first year and i’m repeating which isn’t important here. I am someone who is generally outgoing, however, I do have AuDHD which makes friendships hard already.

I’ve done everything from going out to society/club events, going out to libraries/cafes to study in hopes to talk to ppl or even asking ppl to study or general small talk which doesnt get either of us anywhere (i think small talk is stupid but to each their own). Alongside this, I’m also a part of a society/club executive role but it’s for a smaller club.

The people I do talk with, they don’t invite me to things and are generally kind to me, but they aren’t ppl I’d sacrifice my time for, nor would I ask if they could come to the hospital if need be. I do have a friend in my class from last year who is now in second year, who will be leaving for her clinical years so we won’t have as much time to work.

I feel like a lot of the people I’ve talked to are either fake, don’t care or just forget (the last bit I can understand but it still hurts).

I went from someone who was really extroverted in high school and last year, to the exact opposite since my friend group from last year also broke apart when all my friends (minus the close friend) found out I was repeating the year.

My psych has helped, but there’s only sm therapy and my psych CAN do. I’ve done practically everything but I feel like a broken individual and I don’t like it. I’m not trying to project that everyone’s evil/a bad person, but if ppl say they’re my friend, I’d appreciate SOME level of transparency of how they feel in regards to a friendship rather than radio silence or leaving me on read?

So I am about to start my internship year and I have already graduated med school (MBBS), but I still struggle in converting signs and symptoms into a diagnosis. When I listen to podcasts like the clinical problem solvers, I always get stumped. When cases are not clear cut, it's really hard for me to organize the clinical picture constellation into a respectable differential diagnosis. How does one get better at that?

I see the AIIM is recommending IM SEL letters in lieu of tradition chair or PD letters. However, I’m not really seeing many academic IM programs listing it on their websites. Thoughts?

In ERAS scholarly works, what would be the best way to enter authorship for publications where there are 20+ authors and I'm somewhere in the middle?

In my job prior to med school, I was part multi-center projects that had 20-30 names on publications. The character limit for the author section is 255 characters, so if I type out the authors in the way ERAS indicates, I can't fit them all. ERAS user guide doesn't say what to do in this case.

If anyone else has dealt with this, curious how you handled it:

-First author et al (including Me), etc?

-First author, [....], Me, etc?

Hello, I am an 3rd year DO student and was looking at programs on Residency Explorer and was curious about the accuracy of the following filtered statement:

DO: USMLE Step 1 Passing Score Required for Interview Consideration

A lot of the programs I was looking at allow you to apply without a Step 1 score and only COMLEX scores, as seen on the specific residency websites, yet most say “Yes” to this question on Residency Explorer. Can Residency Explorer be trusted? Or is it possible they are incorrect?

Note: Took Level 1 and passed but planning on taking Step 2 and Level 2 next year.

I’m an OMS1 in my 8th week of school and I’m kinda struggling with where to go for advice/mentorship.
My assigned advisor at my school is an immunology PhD and quite literally started at the school the same month I did. He is a very nice person, but unfortunately cannot answer any specialty related or academic pathway related information.

I know I’m still very early, but I’m interested in radiology or pathology and unfortunately do not really have any mentorship or know where to turn. I don’t even really know what is required of me for those specialties (I.e. research, etc.).

We do have a pathology professor on staff, do I just email him, explain my interest, and ask to meet? Is that weird?

I don’t really know where to ask any questions or how to plan out my future because when I go to my advisor all he tells me is he unfortunately doesn’t have experience in med school (obviously). Maybe I’m spiraling but I’m confused and would much rather figure out now than scramble and have to worry about it closer to boards/clinicals.