3rd year- need advice

a good grade in surgery and some good letters of rec should give you a fairly solid application.

I'm feeling blue. My 3rd year isn't going so great. I've recieved HP on all my rotations so far (still have surgery and medicine). I am from Philly and really need to be there for residency (family). There are a few programs here but I'd like to be at Jeff or Penn...but obviously beggers can't be choosers.
What is the best way I can try to over come this drop? I read the previous thread about how non-surgery rotations are considered important to show work ethic. Is there another way I can show this? I am a pretty competitive applicant otherwise (~250 step 1, all pre-clinical Hs, 2 ortho pubs currently, few more in the works).
Any thoughts on Jeff, PENN, Temple, Einstein/Phila would be appreciated, especially the latter two. What are your opinions on Jeff or Penn vs Temple and Einstein? In your opinion, is it worth it to take a year off to improve my chances to match at Jeff or Penn? Thanks in advance

DVN

Merry Christmas all! Just read this post and though i would ask a few questions also

I'm entering the 2nd half of my 3rd year of medical school.

A little about me:

Good academic school (top 25)
Step 1 238
I have done 5 clinical rotations so far (2 H, 3 HP). Have not done surgery or medicine yet.
Research: I have a tissue engineering project in bone/cartilage regeneration, which is pending publication in a basic science journal. Have a few abstracts with my name on it.
Extracurriculars: lots of service, co-founded a campus organization to help inner city high school students

1) Away rotations: I am interested in applying for a strong academic ortho residency because of research interests. My stats are pretty average considering people who posted on this forum have >250 board scores, many honors. I want to make the most of my away rotations and try my hardest since i'm pretty middle of the road. That being said, are there academic programs that traditionally given out more interviews to rotators?

Furthermore, I am open to going anywhere in the country, but only have a chance to do 2 aways. I heard that program directors may look at where you have done your aways and see your geographic preference. Is this a true statement?

2) Letter of recommendations: I am starting to collect letters of recs from the core 3rd year rotations. I know that I read somewhere in this forum that ortho programs more strongly consider letters from orthopods. I do have potential excellent letters from ob/gyn and neurology. I know that these may not be too flattering in the eyes of a program director. However, I feel that doing well in other specialties other than ortho shows work ethic, ability to be flexible in different clinical situations. Is it worth pursuing these letters?

3) Research: the project that I've been working on the most may be published in more of a basic science journal than a clinical ortho journal. In essence, it was an ortho project but I doubt orthopaedic surgeons look at journals like journal of materials chemistry. How will this be taken? Does it even matter?

Thanks all. Enjoy the holiday season. Take care!

The research process (i.e. dealing with IRB's, obtaining consents, analyzing data, preparing a submittable manuscript, etc) is fairly complex for a medical student and having experience with it (regardless of whether your research was in ortho, or whether it was ultimately accepted for publication) is a major plus.

I think having anything published at all puts you ahead of many applicants (hell, many residents don't even have published research).

Also, away rotations are an excellent idea (mandatory, really) and will significantly improve your chances of a match with a particular program, especially if your paper application is not superb. This is true for just about every program I can think of, though some programs such as Northwestern & Georgetown almost exclusively grant interviews to away rotators and their own students.

Good luck.

2) Letter of recommendations]

I would suggest that you get letters from orthopods from your 4th year rotations and not from peripheral services. Your grades in those other rotations will show your flexibility, etc...

just to defuse any rumors: this is certainly true for northwestern, but I'd have to disagree about georgetown. on my interview day at georgetown there were a bunch of people who were non-rotators. many people had no ties to the D.C. area, either.