Need Advice!!
By Guest on Tuesday, 18 May 2010
Posted in Match Center
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Hey guys,

I need some advice. I have always wanted deep down to be an orthopod, but I choose to go a medical school in Israel for other reasons, and then I got a 230 on step I and kinda figured that I would pursue Gen Surg since it still would allow me to pursuing my goal of international health/surgery. So I applied for all my 4th year electives (one where I can get a letter of recommendation) in gen surg and sub-specialties and I have them all confirmed and can't back out. So here I am knowing that I should have done ortho the whole time and I need some help into what the next steps are. I am planning on applying to Ortho in August even with all my letters in Gen Surg and hope and pray for the best, but if I don't match should I do research or a surg prelim and reapply next year. Do I have a shot at all at matching this year if I can clearly state my reasons and goals on my PS?

Thanks
Honestly, you have a lot working against you at this point. Your Step I score is only average for an ortho applicant, you're not an American grad, and you have no ortho sub-I's or LOR's.

My advice to you would be to get involved with an ortho department here in the US ASAP. You're probably not going to match ortho this year, so you might want to consider taking a year to do some ortho research to get some letters and show your commitment to the specialty. Even if you do this, the deck is still stacked against you as an FMG. If you think you might be happy doing gen surg, you might just want to go that route.
Guest
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16 years ago
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I agree with spiff21. Certainly you shouldn't base your final decision off of the random advice of people on the internet, but I do think that you would be wasting your money applying to ortho this year since:

1) all ur letters are gsurg letters
2) all ur sub-i rotations are from gsurg
3) fmg
4) below average step 1 score (avg was 238 for us. seniors in charting outcomes 2009).

Of course there are those intangibles that none of us really can predict or know about you. And while I am a huge proponent of prayer, I also think you should do your best and right now you haven't put forth any effort into going for ortho thus far. Are you sure that you can't back out of the gsurg rotations?
Guest
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16 years ago
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