<p>Hi All,</p>
<p>Can anyone capture the salient points for each year of med school?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>In general:</p>
<p>Year 1: How the body should work
Year 2: what happens when it doesn't and what to do about it (ie pharmacology)
USMLE Step 1
Year 3: Standardized clerkships in internal medicine, pediatrics, OB/GYN, Psych, and General surgery. Those 5 I believe are universal, after that some schools include ER or Neurology. The sixth rotation at my school is a rural family medicine clerkship.</p>
<p>Year 4 - July-September: take sub-internship rotations in your desired residency path or internal medicine at your home institution, take away rotations in your desired residency path at some place you're interested in ending up at next year, begin preparing residency applications and setting up Step 2 exams.</p>
<p>October through January: Finish and send out applications/letters of rec/etc, take Step 2 CK (the multiple choice part). Begin taking interviews. Take rotations in areas that will either help you next year or that you'll never get exposure to again. Go out to the bars a lot.</p>
<p>February - Submit Rank order list, go to bars a lot, maybe take Step 2 Clinical Skills, February can also be a good time to do a rotation abroad.</p>
<p>March - Match "week" usually begins second Monday (I think). Find out through e-mail on monday that you did or did not match (but not where). If you don't match, go to Dean's office to begin "the Scramble". Thursday is official "Match Day" find out where you're going for the next 3-7 years. Huge celebration.</p>
<p>April and May relax, finish up requirements and wait for graduation.</p>
<p>Rest of may and June depending on when graduation falls - vacations and moving preparation.</p>
<p>July - start residency, fall off face of earth to family and friends (if med school didn't cause that already ;)).</p>
<p>Thanks so much for the full snapshot, Bigredmed. </p>
<p>What happens if you don't get your desired "dream residency", and let's say you end up with something boring like internal medicine?</p>
<p>Can you complete internal medicine residency and then try to get in your dream residency? If yes, would it be easier to get in the second time around since you have more maturity and experience by then?</p>
<p>I am just wondering what options exist for those who do not get residency matches in their area of interest?</p>
<p>to work my ass off
and have as much fun as possible while doing it.</p>
<p>pharmagal...I'm pretty sure I touched on that second question somewhere else.</p>
<p>is getting into med school the hard part of becoming a doctor?</p>
<p>Yes.</p>
<p>Most schools (at least all the ones I know) will allow you to repeat a year if you happen to fail. It's rare for someone to "fail" out of med school.</p>
<p>Well, it's the step at which the most people fail. Almost nobody fails after that.</p>
<p>I don't know that that makes it the hardest step...</p>
<p>Some medical students do not achieve a sufficient score on USMLE Step 1 to stay in medical school. Most, but not all, medical schools require passing USMLE Step 1 as a condition for advancing to clerkships. Note that the Step 1 passing score was recently increased from 182 to 185.</p>
<p>Pass rates on Step 2 and 3 are much higher primarily due to lower raw and percentage score requirements and secondarily to prior attrition of weak candidates.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.usmle.org/scores/2005perf.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.usmle.org/scores/2005perf.htm</a></p>
<p>Passing specialty boards, particularly the oral portion, can be challenging. A substantial minority of physicians never pass their [ABMS member] boards.</p>
<p>Require passing, but most schools give you multiple chances (in fact I don't know of any that don't). My school gives you three chances. If you fail the first time, the process depends a little bit on which clerkship you are on at the time, but in general are allowed to complete that rotation, then stop to study - the required clerkship being missed will take the place of 2 vacation months during the 4th year. If you fail the second time, you are pulled out of the third year and the school essentially holds your hand so you can pass and then join the class below you in July.</p>
<p>
[quote]
From the website given by double penny</p>
<p>The pass rates for first-time takers from MD-granting US and Canadian medical schools were 93% in 2004 and 94% in 2005. Because failing examinees generally retake Step 1, the ultimate passing rate across test administrations is expected to increase to approximately 99% for this same group.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>AAMC Analysis in Brief titled Medical School Graduation and Attrition Rates</p>
<p>The attrition rate at year 4 seems to be highest.</p>
<p>Could it mean that some students who drop out after 4 years are possibly going into other areas of work such as Clinical Research in industry?</p>
<p>I believe figure 2 presents cumulative attrition data. </p>
<p>If not, losing 1-1.25% of the matriculating class every year for years three through ten would result in greater than 8% attrition by year ten.</p>
<p>For all three data sets, the greatest attrition occurs in the first year; second and third year attrition is constant and less than first year attrition; fourth through seventh year attrition gradually decreases, as indicated by the concave downward shape of the graphs.</p>
<p>High first year attrition is consistent with anecdotal experience.</p>
<p>When they refer to 'matriculation', they are referring to a point when you complete your residency or the point when you complete 4 years of med school?</p>
<p>It refers to those students who were accepted and enrolled as a first year medical student.</p>
<p>So for Medical school X, their accepted class size (which rarely gets reported) will be larger than the matriculating class size (b/c people get accepted elsewhere, put off enrollment, etc). The matriculating class size will larger than the graduating class size because people leave school for a variety of reasons - academic and otherwise.</p>
<p>Pain and suffering</p>