By Guest on Wednesday, 14 August 2013
Posted in Match Center
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So, got a 238 on step 1 and a 234 on step 2. I'm not a great test taker, but its what I've got to live with. The rest of my app is pretty solid, almost all honors first three years a hefty amount of research and great evals from a couple away rotations at big name places. Just wondering how much this will screen me out of interviews at other places. Any ideas or experience with this in the past?

Thanks!
Ideally you want to trend upwards. This will be a red flag for some programs. If I were you I would apply to A LOT of programs and meet with your advisors about a backup plan. However, If you rotated well you still have a good chance at matching I would think. Scores aren't everything, but I wouldn't expect to have a lot of interviews.
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12 years ago
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I wouldn't be too overly nervous. I got a 240 on Step 1 and then followed that up with a real stellar 224 on Step 2. To make matters more nerve wracking, I took Step 2 in April of my third year to just get it out of the way (which also happened to be the week before my wedding, probably not advisable again).
Needless to say, I still got a lot of interviews and no one ever brought it up. To give you an idea of my whole picture for comparison, I did not go to a top 50 school, I was in the south, I honored one clinical rotation third and fourth year (surgery), I was nominated but did not get AOA, I had a lot of leadership stuff in medical school, I had two ortho publications (one in JBJS) and had an Academy presentation. I applied to 49 places because I was couples matching) and got 20 interviews including HSS, Brown, Jefferson, Duke, CMC, Pitt, Rush, Northwestern, Stanford, and UCSD and am now a PGY-3 at one of those places.
So, long story short, dropping down on Step 2 is not ideal, but also not the end of the world.
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12 years ago
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So, got a 238 on step 1 and a 234 on step 2.


The Step 2 mean this year is 238 and the std deviation is 19.
Step 1 mean last year was 222 with a std deviation of 22.

So that's a pretty big drop lower in terms of relative performance.
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12 years ago
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I wouldn't be too overly nervous. I got a 240 on Step 1 and then followed that up with a real stellar 224 on Step 2. To make matters more nerve wracking, I took Step 2 in April of my third year to just get it out of the way (which also happened to be the week before my wedding, probably not advisable again).
Needless to say, I still got a lot of interviews and no one ever brought it up. To give you an idea of my whole picture for comparison, I did not go to a top 50 school, I was in the south, I honored one clinical rotation third and fourth year (surgery), I was nominated but did not get AOA, I had a lot of leadership stuff in medical school, I had two ortho publications (one in JBJS) and had an Academy presentation. I applied to 49 places because I was couples matching) and got 20 interviews including HSS, Brown, Jefferson, Duke, CMC, Pitt, Rush, Northwestern, Stanford, and UCSD and am now a PGY-3 at one of those places.
So, long story short, dropping down on Step 2 is not ideal, but also not the end of the world.


Thanks for this, that is a little reassuring. I'll just be ready to answer any questions about it and do my best not to bring it up on my own.
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12 years ago
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