It’s possible. It wouldn’t be what I would call “a good plan”.
“Also isn’t failing a 0.0? I thought a D was a 1.0?”
My guess would be the first semester there was some passing or else the person wouldn’t have lasted a whole year.
“Surely a student who failed all their classes their first year of college could take a year or two off, go to a community college for 2 years, then transfer to a 4 year college and graduate with a degree, no?”
Why place so much importance on a degree that seems out of reach? There are a lot of things one can achieve in those 6-7 years if they have no aptitude for college.
fair enough, i thought you were talking about what’s possible vs. impossible not what’s most practical.
Is it harder to get into med school or a residency program? I heard people apply to about 100 colleges when they’re applying for residency, is that true? My friend got a score of 230 on USMLE step 1, does he have a good shot at neurosurgery ?
Definitely harder to get into med school. Approx 97% of MD medical seniors match into a residency. (It might not necessarily be their first choice program or first choice specialty, but they do match somewhere.)
You have a number of misconceptions—
First, not all residency programs are at medical school-based academic hospitals. Some are at community hospitals. All of the community programs offer reputable training, but they don’t always carry the prestige of a academic hospital.
Applying to 100 residency programs–only for candidates are applying to highly competitive specialties (derm, neurosurg, ortho, ENT, optho) OR candidates who are marginal (failed coursework, failed STEP exams, marginal STEP scores, failed rotation, ethics violations, conduct violations, etc). Most medical seniors apply to 30-50 or so programs. The rule of thumb is apply to 30, interview at 20, rank 15. Outside of highly competitive specialties, this give candidates a 98% chance of matching.
A Step 1 of 230 and neurosurg—not very likely. According the NRMP, the average Step 1 for neurosurg was 244+ (in 2014–latest data available)
See Charting the Outcomes–neurological surgery starts on p. 136.
http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Charting-Outcomes-2014-Final.pdf
Depends on how you quantify harder and exactly what program you’re going for. Globally, the minority of medical school applicants wind up in medical school while ~95% of US medical students wind up in residency (also don’t forget that only a small sliver of med students don’t make it to graduation in contrast to a majority of freshman pre-meds don’t make it to med school applications). By that metric, it would seem residency is easier. I would argue if your goal is to end up in a non competitive residency (e.g. family medicine, PM&R, psych, IM, ob/gyn) and you’re willing to go to any part of the country, then yes, it’s easier, for a med student to end up in residency than a pre-med to end up in medical school. Now, is it easier to get into a plastic surgery residency in LA than medical school? No way, and it’s not even close.
In terms of the number of apps, one thing to keep in mind, there is absolutely no supplemental/secondary application materials for residency. That means that from a time/effort standpoint, applying to one program requires just as much as applying to 100. Obviously money is a factor and then time/effort become a factor when it comes to interviews, but at the application level, the effort required per program is zero whereas many (most?) medical schools have school specific secondary applications.
Now on to your 2nd question. Looking at page 141 of charting outcomes in the match (http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Charting-Outcomes-2014-Final.pdf), we can see that neurosurg applicants from US medical schools with a 230 step 1 score have a neurosurg match percentage of roughly 75% (~15% for FMG). I’m actually surprised it’s that high given it’s below the average for matched applicants, but that brings me to point #2. There is a much greater level of self selection at the residency application stage than the med school stage. A 230 with no honors or research and a less than glowing LOR from the chief of neurosurg at your school is very different from a 230 with lots of honors, a research year in neurosurg, and a glowing LOR from your chief. The former probably isn’t even applying to neurosurg so it skews the stats a bit. Only 318 people (out of 34,270 total applicants across all specialties - or 1% of applicants) even applied for neurosurg residencies across the country.
Oh ok, thanks for the clarifications. Btw, my friend who got a 230 is actually an international student, who went through med school in Asia. Does this lower his chances a lot of getting into a residency program?
He wont ever make it to neuro surgery in my opinion.
@Phoenix55555, as I wrote, a foreign medical student applying to neurosurg with a 230 has about a 15% chance of matching. When you say international, do you also mean he is not a citizen? That hurts his chances too since someone will have to sponsor his visa (not all programs do). That 15% number includes american students who went abroad for medical school who will certainly get priority over a foreign student from a foreign medical school.
Yes, he isn’t a citizen, and only has been in the US to write the Step 1 and Step 2 USMLE so far. However, he has done a summer clerkship at Harvard 2 years ago, and knows the head of the neurosurgery department very well and will probably get an LoR from him. I’ve heard that if you know the head of a certain dept. then you have a very good chance at getting into that residency’s program?
Simply not true.
Doing a clerkship and getting LOR helps, but it doesn’t make matching there a slam dunk, esp for an international student.
One of the kids from my class had a monthly tennis date with the chief of plastics at our school. He not only didn’t match into plastics at our school, he didn’t match into any plastic surgery residency.
I suspect many of the 17 people who did match to Neuro surgery are permanent residents or citizens with foreign degrees.
The other possibility for those 17 is that they were trained neurosurgeons who had practiced successfully for many years in their home countries before trying to match to a residency in the US.
^ I can see that…
I think the US medical Residency matching is heavily biased. IMGs have very little chance to match into their prior specialty. I know several family doctors who had to give up their successful specialty practice when immigrated into the US. Especially for those who needed be sponsored for green cards. One of them had even attained department head in a major hospital.
I heard a new one yesterday where a couple paid a million to get their greencards. 
^Did they get it?
Nothing new there, EB5 investment for immigration has two levels $500K and $1 Million.
They did get the greencards. They are still taking tests in order to apply…