Once you are in med school, it’s never early to start the USMLE preparation. Here I will try to explain the two bases, first on curricular and second on an extracurricular basis. The right information at the right time is the power to excel in USMLE, so here it is.
What we need to apply for the residency
- Personal statement (PS)
- USMLE transcript (which will include your all step scores)
- ECFMG certificate (ECFMG will issue this certificate after completing USMLE Step 1, 2CK, and 2CS)
- Letter of recommendations (LORs)
- The United States Clinical Experience (USCE).
- Medical school transcript (it’s a document stating your all clinical rotations and subjects you have studied in med school)
- MSPE (Medical school performance evaluation)
- Photograph
Professional years
If you find yourself mugging any subject or topic then you will go in wrong direction because that won’t be useful for your USMLE steps. It’s a wastage of your energy.
Because USMLE is all about understanding the concepts thoroughly and memorization the concepts. After studying a topic, you should be able to answer these five questions,
- What
- Why
- Who
- Where
- How
So focus on the concepts of Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry, Pathology, Pharmacology, and Microbiology. Side by side always keep First Aid (FA) open to get the idea that what is written in First Aid and are you getting FA or not. Always do PATHOMA for Pathology; there is no alternative to this to date.
If you aren’t getting your professors in med school, you can watch Dr. Najeeb’s video lectures. Kaplan and Boards&Beyond are good too. I did Kaplan, Dr. Najeeb, Pathoma.
Extracurricular activities
Everything you are doing in med school will matter either you’re volunteering or participating in any activity.
Keep in mind this all you will write in your CV and Program Directors (PD) ain’t interested in the certificates you are having. In the interview, they will talk and ask about your experiences while doing these activities, so you can’t lie. PDs are excellent for taking IVs; that’s why they are Program Director. They don’t take more than a sec to catch you up for lying.
Your options are,
- Volunteer in a health camp
- Volunteer in an awareness program
- Participation in sports, online games, quiz, playing an instrument, or anything
- Assisting some attending to his research work
- Write an article in the newspaper
- Join an organization like Red Cross or any NGO and volunteer with them
- Assist in organizing any event, conference
- Join the student council, magazine editor, secretory, etc.
It is a very rough list, but you have to you what other options are available at your place and do whatever is doable.
USCE
It is my favorite part of guiding you, as I wasn’t able to get this at the right time.
Electives are considered as number one type of clinical experience as this experience is hands-on so you can examine patients, do procedures, and all. But the main problem we as the IMGs suffer is that when we get to know that these electives are necessary we get our graduation completed by then. Because the eligibility to do elective will end on the day you get graduated. And it’s highly competitive to get the position for very self-explanatory reasons.
So in India, our eligibility period is in between after we pass our final year exam to the ending of our internship. It changes with the country, so find yours.
It’s okay if we apply in January (starting of internship) because it’s good to secure the position way before. All over the world, people wait to grab the positions as soon as applications get open up.
Curricular activities
There is a section in ERAS CV where you will write your med school awards.
It could be anything like,
- Best Intern award
- Any medal you got
- Distinction
Again it’s a very rough list. Look at other options available in your med school.
Hobbies/Interests
Keep a unique hobby or interest on which you can talk about for 15 minutes. It is the section we usually underestimate, and at last, we don’t find any hobby or interest to talk about because all we did to date is just the hardcore study.
It could be like,
- Meditation and Yoga
- Calligraphy
- Trekking
- Hiking
- Stone Skipping
- Painting
- Soccer or any sport
- Reading or Writing
- Literature
- Stand Up Comedy
- Brewing Beer or anything.
I met a person who had an interest in beekeeping. He sounded fascinating, but I was on the dumber side at that time. My friends have a lot of traveling and off-roading experiences but I incline towards reading and meditation.
These things will give you content to speak up your personality during IVs as no one wants to do work with a dull person. These are some things I got in my mind while writing this blog post, and these are the advice I give to all of my juniors. So take anything from this all which you find useful.
The Med Kid 