When I first graduated from medical school, I did apply to residency 2 years in a row, with no invitations for interviews, as my Step 1 and Step 2 scores were on the low side. There was only a couple of differences when I applied to residency this time. One was that I worked in Clinical Research with MD’s who happened to be affiliated with universities, and that they wrote me some letters of recommendation, and two, the experience I had working in research was related to the residency I was applying for.

I guess what I am trying to convey is that what you are hoping for is very possible. I think that there are indeed programs that are more IMG friendly. I think government hospitals, hospitals in areas that are defined as “bad areas” and smaller hospitals tend to be. (They need bodies to work.) When you apply, apply to as many as you can (within the financial constraints). Consider areas in the midwest as well. New York has more hospitals than California. I remember when I was interviewing there were some people who were cancelling some interviews because they had too many. I only had three and felt bad about it. And I remember one of my friends said, “You only need one, don’t you?” Yes, that’s true. That was all I needed.

And after the interviews, I sent thank you letters to the directors of the programs that interviewed me.

Now 4 years later, I’m in a fellowship in Psychiatry in New York.

There are also externship programs that you can apply to, unfortunately, they are unpaid. Many of the residents in the program I was in came from the hospital’s own externship program.

Good for you. Be sure to check the forums for the study methodologies sometime this week.

Kumusta, kabayan. Anyway, I will be posting the course curriculum which the participants of my prep course will be using. You won’t have access to my study materials, but there are alternate commercial prep material available and they are good. Remember that’s the one I use when I prepped Look for it in my prep forum at http://forums.askdoc-usmle.com under Askdoc’s Method of USMLE Review for Step 1 anytime next week. It will updated as prep course members reach the appropriate segment of their review. There will be an area where you can ask questions about the prep methods. It won’t be fast, but it will eventually get answered. Anyway good luck on your prep. Aim high.

ps. My wiki although not bad, needs revision and more work. My study notes for the prep course which was revised from the Wiki is much better. However, using Wiki syntax is matrabaho and harder than formatting in MS Word, so probably will be sometime before I can revise the Wiki to reflect the better coverage in the study notes I prepared for the prep course.