Gabriel wrote:
Dr. Littlerock,
Thanks for your words, I was through very dark moments during the process of getting the residency. Do not give up, in cases like yours it helps a lot to start doing practice questions, get a qbank in whatever company of your choice and start, reading the questions and the explanations for the answer help a lot persons that are not very fast USMLE learners, it helps you get up to speed, of course, the majority of the time would be devoted to read your books, but with the questions is easier to diggest material. So try it an hour a day for the next month you will see the results.

I guess people wonder why I seem to know about what's best for this and for that, the reason is because for the las three years, I have shared with at least a 20 maybe more people who are IMGs preparing for their exams, most of them have gotten their licenses in that time, there are some that keep on repeating the same mistake, and have not made much progress, and there are some, like my wife, who after a bad start, have started to make modifications on the way they approach the exams and have made significant changes.

I don't assume to know everything, I work in a hospital with a very high number of IMGs holding different possitions, from Flebotomists, and Monitor Techs, to House Physicians, research fellows and surgical assistants, currently there are more than 50 IMGs at my hospital. And in these years, I have seen a lot.

I will not disclose full names, but I can tell you that I have seen cases, like Dr. GG, he is 51 years old, was a great Internal Medicine Physician in his Country, Scored on the Upper 80s in Step 1, 92 in Step 2, he was offered a Prematch Family Practice position at a very important Hospital in Illinois, now he is about to start his second year of residency.

There is also, Dr. F. L. More than 13 years after his graduation, Failed the exams, once, all of them, he is one of my colleages at the hospital, and will be working until next tuesday because he got a position in Pediatrics in a hospital in NY prematch.

I have also mentioned the case of the two other guys that matched for surgery one of them has more than 5 years after his graduation.

Dr. K. Q. This case is really encouraging, more than 10 yrs after his graduation, took the steps several times, EACH. after having his ECFMG Certificate, he worked for 1 year at a Teaching hospital in my city, and was accepted this year for the program of Internal Medicine, will be starting in June.

I see there is no hard coded rule, that define who gets a residency and who does not, people that fails, always fail because they gave up, nothing else. my theory is that, like most things in this country, everything is set to test your commitment, this persons I have mentioned had something in common: they set their goal, they did not give up, they always believed.

Fellow Img, do the same, keep on, you will get your residency, I am sure about that.

Gabriel