Am I screwed? Failed MS1 final & have to remediate

How can I PM you about this?

Totally agree with IronMan. Just fuel for the fire. Figure out what went wrong and fix it. Don't let it happen again and crush the rest of the way out and you will have a pretty good answer to the question of your biggest failure and what you did in response at interviews.

Good luck!

Sup.

Sorry to hear about you failing your final. However, use this as motivation. To quote rocky, "it's not how hard you can get it; it's how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward".

This is a bump in the road. Use it to motivate yourself. Ortho programs want to hire people who are a) going to do well on the OITE, 2) pass their ortho boards first try, and 3) most importantly, have the mental fortitude to stick with 5 years of orthopaedics residency.

I had a 3.0 GPA coming out of third year, because I was in an engineering field and not used to memorizing lots of things before medical school. Most programs won't give a crap about your first and second year grades as long as you get 240 or above on step 1.

So, moving forward, take this MS1 final, take a month or so to recuperate mentally and enjoy life before starting second year. Then, spend August-January doing the absolute best you possible can do in your second year classes. Get A's and B's in as many courses as you can. Then, total 1000% focus on doing 240+ on step 1.

If you do that, then you set yourself up for success pending doing 3-4 aways at *realistic* programs and getting good letters. PM me if you want some advice on studying for step 1.

I had a similar experience (failed histology and remediated), crushed step 1 and third year, and ended up being very lucky with 18 interview invites. Not a single interviewer asked about my MS1/2 year grades.

Good luck.

Well as you know, this isn't a good thing. It might say more that difficulty with mastery of MS1 material doesn't bode well for your potential to master MS2 material (which is more difficult usually) and ability to perform on Step 1. That being said, don't know the reason you did poorly first year. But just need to put your head down and move on. Importantly figure out why you did poorly if it was improper studying skills, etc. Seek assistance through your advisory office. If you manage to rebound do well through basic science years, crush third year and go get some Sub-I's and crush those. You just might make a program overlook this and consider you for a residency position. It's an uphill battle but maybe doable. Plenty of naysayers on this site with 250+ step scores, honors all around, AOA might tell you that you are hosed. But look at the match data and you will see that students with glaring shortcomings in their application (step, grades, etc) get into ortho. Yes the odds are not as good as if you crush all of that stuff. My hunch is, and from my own experience, if you go crush your away and home ritations, you can open some doors and land yourself a residency spot.