Research or Honors

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mrmandrake

mrmandrake

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Hey guys I have a question that some of you might be able to help me with. Let's pretend hypothetically that I have a limited amount of time and that I can only either do a case report or possibly honor my internal medicine rotation. Because of how my medical school works, there are some assumptions to be made.

Let's say I devote my energies to honoring medicine. Because the clinical evaluations are a certain percentage of the grade and the shelf is the other part, its not a sure thing even if I destroy the shelf and work hard. I have pretty hard working smart friends who have been screwed by a single clinical evaluation and did not honor even though they destroyed the shelf. Let's say I have an 80% chance of honoring. Best case scenario is that I honor and also impress an attending so I can probably get a good LOR from working hard on my medicine rotation. It is also possible that I don't honor and don't impress an attending and get nothing out of working hard here.

Let's say I devote my energies to publishing a case report instead. Let's assume that I have a 95% chance of getting published. Let's say that even if I don't publish, working on a case report with this radiology attending will get me a decent LOR. Best case scenario is I get published and an LOR. Worse case scenario is I get an LOR. By the way, we are far from a research powerhouse.

Which route should I choose here? Is it better to have research and a solid LOR from a radiologist but no honors in the M3 year or better to have honors in medicine and no research and just a generic radiologist letter? I realize it's ideal to have both ... but if you HAD to choose ... which way would you go?

I also realize that the radiologist letter doesn't matter much compared to medicine and surgery letters if the radiologist is no one with a "big name". Am I correct here? Does this mean I should go for honoring medicine? I had a radiology resident tell me their program doesn't care much about honoring M3 year and that I should do research instead. This was a guy from a top 25 radiology institution.

Some other details: step 1 in the 250s, no honors yet, some undergraduate research and I want to match anywhere in California. I attend med school in the Midwest.

Thanks for any advice.
 
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Honors in my opinion, enough to be in top quartile. You're screened from a lot of top interviews if you aren't AOA/top quartile. Though I'd be interested to find out which program doesn't care much about M3 grades.. feel free to PM me.
 
Asp said:
Honors in my opinion, enough to be in top quartile. You're screened from a lot of top interviews if you aren't AOA/top quartile. Though I'd be interested to find out which program doesn't care much about M3 grades.. feel free to PM me.
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I don't think that's necessarily true. One of my classmates was top 1/3, high 250s, good research, and has interviews from a lot of the top programs, although very different ones from me, it's kinda weird though.
 
I think I misspoke here.

What he conveyed to me was that solid M3 evaluations without any red flags and without honors was not a dealbreaker and that he felt research was more important than honoring the medicine rotation (which happens to be the situation I am in since I haven't honored anything yet). Basically for me, it's either one honor or one case report (although I will try for both).

Honoring all of your rotations and AOA is probably a different story though (one that doesn't apply to me) and in my opinion would outweigh one case report.

Asp said:
Though I'd be interested to find out which program doesn't care much about M3 grades.. feel free to PM me.
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mrmandrake said:
I think I misspoke here.

What he conveyed to me was that solid M3 evaluations without any red flags and without honors was not a dealbreaker and that he felt research was more important than honoring the medicine rotation (which happens to be the situation I am in since I haven't honored anything yet). Basically for me, it's either one honor or one case report (although I will try for both).

Honoring all of your rotations and AOA is probably a different story though (one that doesn't apply to me) and in my opinion would outweigh one case report.
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Get the honors.
 
Thanks Asp. I'm going for honors.

Asp said:
Honors in my opinion, enough to be in top quartile. You're screened from a lot of top interviews if you aren't AOA/top quartile. Though I'd be interested to find out which program doesn't care much about M3 grades.. feel free to PM me.
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Just curious though, can you not do both? Case reports aren't exactly indepth research. I did one last month and it took me seriously one weekend to do it. You could spread it out over a month and only need like 2 hrs a weekend for it.
 
PokerDoc said:
Just curious though, can you not do both? Case reports aren't exactly indepth research. I did one last month and it took me seriously one weekend to do it. You could spread it out over a month and only need like 2 hrs a weekend for it.
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Obv you can do both (and most of us here have) but I think honoring med is more impt.
 
I guess I just asked the question the way I did because I was looking for which one was more important and which one I should make a priority. I'm going to do both.

PokerDoc said:
Just curious though, can you not do both? Case reports aren't exactly indepth research. I did one last month and it took me seriously one weekend to do it. You could spread it out over a month and only need like 2 hrs a weekend for it.
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mrmandrake said:
I guess I just asked the question the way I did because I was looking for which one was more important and which one I should make a priority. I'm going to do both.
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then yeah I agree with the rest of the people here.. doing extra credit isnt any good if your regular evaluation sucks
 
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