<p>Congratulations to everyone here. It seems that once again the CC people are setting the standard and having great results.</p>
<p>Congratulations to eadad’s S and ginnyvere!</p>
<p>Congratulations to everyone who heard today!</p>
<p>Wonderful news everyone! Congratulations to you all.</p>
<p>WooHoo!! Texas boy makes good. Congrats to eadad’s talented S.</p>
<p>Congrats NCG! and EADad too!</p>
<p>Congrats to everyone! Sounds like good news for all of our CC friends. </p>
<p>And thanks too for taking time out to share with all of us just how this whole process works.</p>
<p>congratulations to all those who matched!</p>
<p>i’ve basically fallen off the radar on this site after being quite active but wanted to drop in and say that i’ve been following this thread for months and appreciate that you guys took time out to share your experiences. As someone who’s going to go through this process next year it makes the process a bit less daunting.</p>
<p>This may be common knowledge for those who have gone through the process or are going into the process. However, I still post this in case some newbie like me who would like to read it. This article was published in August 2011.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nrmp.org/data/chartingoutcomes2011.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nrmp.org/data/chartingoutcomes2011.pdf</a></p>
<p>It surprises me a little bit that, while there are 16559 seniors from US MD programs, there are 6659 Non-U.S. Citizen Students/Graduates of International Medical Schools. </p>
<p>DS mentioned that some MS1 (or MS2? I can not distinguish which is which) preclinical courses are more important than the others for USMLE STEP 1. It seems he has mentioned physio, patho and anat. Is this true? When do MS2’s usually take this test? At the end of the summer between MS2 and MS3?</p>
<p>D1’s school has an accelerated second year. They finish classroom training in mid- January, have Feb for Step 1 prep, take Step 1 in early March, do a 4-6 week research project, then start clinical rotations in early-mid-April.</p>
<p>^ It seems Baylor is like that: only 1.5 preclinical years. But I think they claim that, by doing so, they give the student 0.5 year of clinical year experience so that their students may have an edge because they could have a little bit more clinical experiences before STEP 1. (I think the truth is: if a school gets more students who are among the best of the best test takers among the med school students who are all good at taking a test, they will get a higher average STEP 1 score no matter what.)</p>
<p>So I thought that even at a school where there are only 1.5 preclinical years, students still take STEP 1 after 2 years. It is apparently not always the case.</p>
<p>DD and her classmates are taking step 1 this summer after two years of classes, MS3 clinicals begin in July.</p>
<p>99% of med schools take Step 1 after the first 2 years of pre-clinical classes, in the summer between M2 and M3 years. There are a few exceptions (Duke being the most notable that I’m aware of, and obviously Baylor as mentioned above) that have a modified pre-clinical schedule or otherwise take Step 1 at an alternate time, but they are by far the exception rather than the rule. The big difference between schools as far as I can tell is how long they give their students between M2/M3 years. At my school, you get 8 weeks between the years - you can take Step 1 whenever you want and use the rest as vacation time. Some of my classmates took it really early and took a nice long trip to Europe. My friends at other schools sometimes had longer, sometimes shorter. </p>
<p>Personally, I dont’ see the benefit in taking Step 1 after some/all core clinical rotations. Step 1 is not a clinical test. The further out you are from the basic science classes, the harder and more annoying it would be, IMHO.</p>
<p>A strange program I have seen is the one at Texas Tech: If you are committed to be a primary doctor, that school allows you to complete their MD program in 3 years instead of 4 years. From the financial point of view, it may make sense: Since the current insurance system pays less to these primary care doctors on a per hour basis, these students are not motivated to carry more debt than those would-be specialists do.</p>
<p>I heard a joke along this line: A med school student says: “I really do not want to carry too much debt; otherwise I may become a bad doctor who would prescribe too many borderline unnecessary procedures (but still would not be sued by doing so) so that I can pay off my debt.”</p>
<p>So Tech Tech’s policy may help prevent some patients from not getting some unnecessary procedures. But the downside is they may produce a less qualified doctor by shortening the time. Pick your poison!</p>
<p>Another dumb question from a ms2 parent. What is a preliminary during the residency process -which specialities typically have this and do you get paid?</p>
<p>A dumb MS1 parent happens to know the answer to your very last question: Yes, you get paid even in the preliminary year, but likely slightly less.</p>
<p>I think the first year is always called the intern year no matter what program you are in. There are three kinds of programs an “intern year resident” can be in: 1) preliminary, 2) transitional, and 3) just the first year of your main residency program. I hope I would be right at least at this level of understanding. If a resident gets into a preliminary or transition year followed by the rest of the residency program, the latter is called an advanced program. </p>
<p>Sometimes I can not understand what these med school students or residents talk about because they use some terminologies that they understand and assume the rest of us should have no problem in understanding them. But this may not be true for me often times. For example, when they talk about a rotation called “medicine” as one of the clinical year rotations as MS3 or MS4, I have no idea what this rotation is about.</p>
<p>Well…every field has its set of jargons that would confuse the outsiders.</p>
<p>Edit: I think they use the term i-medicine instead of just medicine. Now I think they referred to internal medicine when they use that term.</p>
<p>That is great news - I plan on retiring when my kid finishes medical school. Right now we’re helping with rent, food, gas, insurance etc. I was getting a bit panicky.</p>
<p>If your kid does not take out any loan and he is not in an MSTP program, you have definitely been doing better than our family.</p>
<p>If DS’s loan amount when he finishes med school would be around 150K and we are able to chip in everything else in the coming years, we will be very happy. If the debt is over 200K, we would then be very panic. (This is because he is likely not interested in a competitive specialty that would rake in more money to pay off his debt.)</p>
<p>I’m so clueless that I had to look up mstp programs. My kid will graduate with roughly 80k debt - no debt from undergraduate which cost us a boatload.</p>
<p>
I figure D will be somewhere around there (with a chance that it’s a bit less) as she is going to do 5 years. The fifth year may be tuition free but that’s not exactly “free”.</p>
<p>Our plan is to keep helping during the lean training years and then retire. Or die. Whichever comes first. ;)</p>