<p>@curm
failing to match on first try does not mean your child will not be able to pursue the specialty they wish.</p>
<p>It happens often in competitive residencies, even to qualified applicants. Derm is famous for it (sorry).</p>
<p>Most do match if they try again, and in the best programs, IF they use the year wisely: approach the chair of the Dept. you want to specialize in and explain you did not match and want to do a year of research in the field. If no such opportunity in your field is at your school, go searching for one to visit. Can they, or any of their “friends” in other academic centers, take you in for a year of research? MOST GOOD DEPARTMENTS HAVE SEVERAL RECENT GRADUATES DOING THIS - the more contacts you have, the better. Or maybe NIH?</p>
<p>This will help your resume (get published), allow you to prove your passion to the field and get you references from the field you want, which trumps the general letter from medical school rotations by far. </p>
<p>Do not start a preliminary internship. Internship is not something you want to repeat. </p>
<p>Grants are available to students from the professional societies to cover their salary and expenses during research years, but you need to find someone to help you first. </p>
<p>If, however, your board scores and grades are below average for the specialty you want, you also have to seriously consider whether another specialty may be more appropriate.</p>
<p>I believe curm’s D has a STEP-1 score that is good enough for any specialty. So there is no concern there. Also, I believe, at her school, there is a “fifth year” that the student can take without paying tuitions. I would imagine many students gunning for an extremely competitive specialty will take advantage of that. But I am not sure how many percentage of students take this tuition-free fifth year. (maybe 70%-80%? I heard if a student is pursuing family/primary care, (s)he would not take this extra year to accumulate more debt.) It appears this fifth year for research could actually be the fourth calendar year instead. That is, this additional year is between the typical MS3 year (first clinical year) and MS4 year (the second clinical year.) I also think the required thesis may be completed in this additional research year inserted between MS3 and MS4.</p>
<p>I wonder how much advantage a student could have by taking advantage of this additional research year before applying to any residency programs.</p>
<p>Re: preliminary intership, I think norcalguy once mentioned in his thread that some resident may be relatively idle (to wait this year out without achieving much) in the first year. I could not remember whether he referred to the preliminary intership year. The terms like transition year, and preliminary year really drive me nuts. What is going on here for the need of all these varieties?</p>
<p>Thanks, folks. I am just whining. “Ellie Mae Jabbar” (lol) will have a competitive app for Derm. I guess my point was that even though she will be “advantaged” by a research year, grades, Step 1, well-respected school, and (hopefully) rec’s …the numbers are still abysmal. Bordering on the ridiculous. For everybody. No matter what they do. </p>
<p>70 apps? 90 apps? </p>
<p>It just seems to keep getting worse instead of better the further they get down the road. I am ready for it to end but I know it won’t. So I whine. ;)</p>
<p>Disagree with 2prep about the prelim year. For derm at least, those who fail to match will probably do a prelim year, then apply for a research fellowship (these require you to be board certified so you need to that prelim year), then reapply.</p>
<p>Curm, your D must have owned Step 1. I hope to be in her shoes in a couple of years</p>
<p>texaspg, curm did mention it. I wonder that, if she takes the 3rd and 5th school years as clinical years and the 4th school year as the research year, does it mean that the 4th year is tuition-free or the 5th school year is tuition-free?</p>
<p>This may have some consequence on need-based financial aids. If you want to raid the retirement account, say traditional IRA, for paying tuitions, you want to make sure that the distribution from the IRA will not inflate your income in any of the base years. In this sense, borrowing from 401K may be better.</p>
<p>I suspect that, if the research year is the 4th school year, the 4th school year would be the tuition-free year, This is because the student works in the lab (like a PhD student in a graduate school, except that the scope of the research is much smaller) and does not “take classes” and is not clinically-trained in the hospital in the 4th year. The 5th year, which is the second clinical year (and traveling for residency application), is not tuition free.</p>
<p>DS is an MS2 and he mentioned at one time that, although he thought he likely studies enough just like many other students do, he was likely “behind” in the research as he really could not make enough time for it. I guess some of those insane students who intend to pursue the competitiove specialty are capable of studying STEP-1 and doing research at the same time during the school year?! But I do not think he is interested in getting into any of the highly competitive specialties.</p>
<p>curm, Is the research year, if taken in the 4th school year, tuition-free? Or, it is always the fifth year (which would be the final clinical year and also for traveling for residency application) that is tuition free? Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>DS and several (or most?) of his classmates were working in the lab during the summer between MS1 and MS2. They were paid. But they jokingly said that, because of the income they earned during the summer, the school essentially takes back whatever they earned in the next school year by reducing the aid. This is the reason why I think it would be better if the 5th school year is tuition-free, rather than the research year between MS3 and MS4. Well…people should not be too “greedy” as this is already a very good deal (without paying the tuition for that year.)
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<p>M2CK, my analytic brain is confused. You said you were around when Mudgette was back in HS, that was 2004-05-06 era, but your join date is 2009. How did that happen?</p>
<p>^ She could still be a lurker back then or she could read some of curm’s older posts. (Am I the only person here who sometimes enjoys reading old posts? It could help bring back sweet memory, esp. for an empty-nester.)</p>
<p>I heard if a kid grows up with goats and cows, she will liklely not have any allergy problem. If this is true, I wish I would have known this earlier and at least our family would visit farms with these animals more often – we can not afford a farm like curm does. goats and cows may smell, but it is better than relying on Clariton-D.</p>
<p>I did not know Mudgette and her dad back then. We cared about winter clothings and air travel more than how to be a premed when we heard of CC many years ago.</p>
<p>I just notice that the number of posts from mom2ck is roughly an order of magnitude higher than somemom’s.</p>
<p>As in (when good news arrived) “the goats are dancing tonight and everybody eats”. </p>
<p>My kid was raised on a sorry little Texas ranch. She can shoot (a little), ride (a lot), and can tame a rattlesnake. We considered this her “diversity” angle. lol She also started 4 years for her state championship basketball team at the “5” or center spot (even though she was 4 inches shorter and 50 lbs lighter than many opponents). She used her somewhat unique “profile” throughout her UG app process. Hence, one cc’er dubbed her “Ellie Mae Jabbar”. I like it. </p>
<p>It was pretty successful in admissions and merit aid. </p>
<p>Take-away point: “Write an app nobody but you can write.” </p>
<p>As to how finances work in that 5th year that she is taking as a 4th year, don’t get me to lieing. I have no idea.</p>
<p>And as to me being able to “afford” the ranch? Yeah, right.</p>
<p>Well, Curm, those undergrad schools, back in the day, thought you could afford a right nice ranch! Good thing you sent photos for MD school I guess you were supposed to sell it the first time to pay for school.</p>
<p>Which is why D1’s BF is thrilled to be gaining a [possible?] life partner who actually help support his money-suck…er…ranch.</p>
<p>And D1 can’t ride, but she can shoot guns a little, learned how to string barbed wire this fall, and can diagnose and doctor a rattlesnake bite lickety-split. (The things you learn doing EM in rural hospital… She got to treat 3 snake bites in 6 weeks this summer–with 2 coming in the same day within an hour of each other.)</p>
<p>A surgeon who used to operate on my wife owns a ranch. Since then, I have had the impression that whoever owns a ranch must be rich.</p>
<p>I heard his pets are longhorns.</p>
<p>Regarding snake, not growing up in the countryside myself, I was stunned and did not know what to do when my preschooler (decades ago) found a garden snake (the green color kind) underneath my car on our drive way. A neighbor happened to pass by and helped us get rid of it. He did not try to kill it. He just picked it up with his bare hand and threw it away to some place else so that it would not bother the kids anymore. I was amazed that he did not try to use some tool to pick it up and was still not bitten by the snake.</p>
<p>I shot a few shotguns on the 4th of July once, right after driving a tractor through a field. (We were visiting my friend’s farm, and out of the visitors, I’m the only one who can drive a manual transmission…piece of equipment [usually my car]). I’ve seen a rattlesnake in the wild once. Does that count for anything? </p>
<p>I will find a rattlesnake in my backyard occasionally. D1 once ran across one over 6 feet long in a trail on the Gila Wilderness. My DH nearly stepped on an Arizona coral snake in the Grand Canyon backcountry. (He took pictures to prove it was a coral snake. When he showed his photos to the Park Rangers at HQ, they got very excited since coral snakes are extremely rare.) I once spotted a Faded Pygmy Rattlesnake–an endangered species-- in Natural Bridges National Monument.</p>
<p>But I’ve never shot a gun. Have driven a tractor and gotten bucked off a horse, though.</p>
<p>M2CK, my analytic brain is confused. You said you were around when Mudgette was back in HS, that was 2004-05-06 era, but your join date is 2009. How did that happen?</p>
<p>I’ve been on CC since older son was a soph in high school…way back in 2004.</p>
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