<p>curm, you’re killing me…lol</p>
<p>^ this reminds me of what Saxon (who is enthusiastic about math education at the primary/secondary level):</p>
<p>It is impossible to convert a teacher who himself has never done well in sciences (as demonstrated by taking rigorous science classes which are taken by premed or natural science majors) into a competent teacher.</p>
<p>To clarify, in the above, teacher=science teacher.</p>
<p>… Matthew 9:5?</p>
<p>For MCAT, it is often said the real test score is likely, say, two points lower than your later practice score,</p>
<p>Is STEP-1 test similar ? For example , if your target score is 240, should your practice score be 260 on average a few weeks before the real test?</p>
<p>I just google usmle step-1, and I think the numbers in my hypothetical example may not be good. Maybe I should use the numbers:
If the target score is 240, the practice score should be 250.
Many of DS’s classmates seem to set.240 as their target - whether or not they can achieve it is another question. DS thinks if he could consistently maintain a 250+ practice score, there is a good chance he could hit 240 in the real test. I do not know whether he is right.</p>
<p>Two things to consider about that:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I think Kaplan might have 1 full length test, but no one else does. NBME and UWorld only make 4 section tests (the real test is 7 sections). The MCAT has plenty of full length practice tests. This means that a single question is worth more on practice than it is on the real thing, but also the breadth of knowledge needed on a practice test is much less.</p></li>
<li><p>The # of practice tests taken is usually much lower for Step 1. I think I was on the high end of my classmates because I took 6. Similarly, unlike the MCAT, you can’t just blow through a bunch of them at the end of your studying, you have to be taking them on a regular basis because unlike MCAT, there is a lot of concrete material to study through those questions as opposed to just getting used to the style and process. Maybe your final test or two is representative of your full knowledge but that’s not a very large sample and honestly certain topics are so crammable/forgettable that within a day you could drastically change your knowledge base.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>UWorld’s tests are notoriously over-predictive though with the consensus on SDN that they are typically 10-30 points too high.</p>
<p>My final test was nearly 10 points below my real score.</p>
<p>D is still thinking an IM residency. She did some checking and it appears that only a few of the residencies considered the top are in places she is even considering or, more importantly, willing to consider. Is that good or bad? Hmmm. </p>
<p>This is gonna be a different bird. And fellowship? Even more different. </p>
<p>Right now she has 3 metrics: location (as a measure of quality of life), reputation ( as a measure of quality of training), and “malignancy” (as a measure of quality of work life). </p>
<p>And then of course the wild cards. Cleveland Clinic because she remains enamored with the “philosophy”. Big time college sports towns will get an otherwise middling program considered because she is a rabid college sports fan. Other crazy stuff. </p>
<p>This should be real interesting.</p>
<p>Still thinking GI, Curm?</p>
<p>Apparently. Guts and Butts.</p>
<p>Curm,</p>
<p>Hubbell is doing IM residency at Vanderbilt University which has that combination your daughter is looking for. As you know, he could have gone anywhere he wanted to and that was the choice. She might look into it.</p>
<p>Oooohhhh. If I knew that, I had forgotten. Vanderbilt is high on the list.</p>
<p>Curm - would Ellie May be interested in this?</p>
<p>[Yale_Stanford</a> Global Scholars Program](<a href=“http://medicine.stanford.edu/education/global_scholars.html]Yale_Stanford”>http://medicine.stanford.edu/education/global_scholars.html)</p>
<p>I will pass it on. Seems like they have some other innovative/interesting stuff, too.</p>
<p>My D has two more days of her last rotation and she will be done with med school. I keep telling her I can’t believe it, and she told me to stop! Graduation is in two weeks. </p>
<p>She is doing her residency in family practice in a smaller town in a neighboring state so she will be moving. She wanted to be a surgeon, but did not match into that, so is doing family practice. That was a difficult pill to swallow, but she has adjusted. I think it may be for the best as far as her physical stamina and a family lifestyle. </p>
<p>I have been helping her sort through her loan repayment plans. There is another whole can o’ worms for the helpful parents to worry about.</p>
<p>Congrats to your D for her upcoming graduation. She has reached another milestone,</p>
<p>Being a surgeon somehow has never been in DS’s radar screen. Too stressful as a life.</p>
<p>Recently I was sick in the hospital (and receiving a surgery!) and have had a chance to see several doctors. It appears to me that the life of a surgeon , at least the one who operated on me, is very fast paced and stressful. He has patients in at least 3 hospitals which are located far apart, and he also has his own clinical office where he see outpatients (i.e., check up after surgery.) So he often needs to drive around the city to see/operate on his patients in a very tight schedule.</p>
<p>As a comparison, the infectious disease doctor who gave me antibiotics seems to have a not so stressful life.</p>
<p>Another interesting comment from a nurse in the hospital: If you want to be a less stressful life, do not work in the hospital. Just work in the clinics. This is the same for both the nurse and the doctor.</p>
<p>Congratulations and best wishes to bookiedaughter. :-)</p>
<p>What a profession…after years of hard work and sacrifice you still may not end up where you want to be. Good on her for handling it with grace and hopefully in very short order she will have not a single regret.</p>
<p>D will be applying in Ob/Gyn. We won’t even get into the lifestyle aspects of her choice. She enjoyed many of her rotations but Ob/Gyn clicked more than any other and there was no budging her. She will be great at it I have no doubt but …Oy.</p>
<p>Thanks for the good wishes. My D was really in love with surgery and was good at it, according to the surgeons who recruited her for their residency program (and then didn’t select her). The whole residency application was so difficult, and it is not always what it seems on the surface. But she is good at many areas and with different sorts of people. She will be a good dr. Initially she wanted to be a geriatrician, and she is really good with the elderly patients. Maybe she will circle around back to that. </p>
<p>Elleneast, your D might not have such a bad lifestyle depending on the group she joins. I have an ob/gyn friend who only has call every 7th weekend. She is in her 60s and still practicing. But she had a stay-at-home dad to help raise their daughters. One of her Ds is now an ob/gyn.</p>
<p>Congratulations on your daughter’s graduation!</p>
<p>It’s gotta be a bittersweet moment. To know she’s a physician (and wow, you have to be proud), but to also know that residency requires that she moves father away from you.</p>
<p>It sounds like she is handlling the lack of the surgical match with grace and maturity.</p>
<p>Yup. Good for her. Very resilient. Very mature. I wish her all the best . </p>
<p>But I gotta tell y’all, my family just ain’t that “evolved”. Where we are on the evolutionary scale there would be some scheming and plotting going on. At the very least. And something just might get burned to ground. Figuratively speaking. Yeah. Figuratively speaking.</p>