Likely they mean one of the step exams. Med school and residency are a brutal game - the exams don’t stop till you pass the boards at or around the time you become an attending!
Others instantly assumed I was lying or exaggerating, as if I need some street cred on an anonymous 1 week old throwaway account.
The real issue is that failing a step exam or passing with a lower score (once passed you can never retake) nearly completely eliminates you from certain specialities - especially the more lucrative surgical subspecialties. Some people may simply decide to give up at that point. It’s much more likely burnout or an overall “fuck this” with the training, or other red flag, eg cheating or egregious behavioral problem then not passing a single exam. Because although there are a ton of exams after entering medical school none are as high stakes as the MCAT for continuing to be a doctor.
Maybe not the thread, but certainly relevant to the top commenter's story, which sounds really embellished.
"Failing the MCAT" (?) -> "Failing boards as dropout reason" (?) ...
And top commenter is all over the thread, trying to win people back after folks point out these oddities. Seems like a lot of effort.
Either top commenter is the car sales messiah or embellishing (along with his "alleged" med school dropout colleague). Both are possible, but one is more likely.
> There’s a lot of stigma associated with dropping out of something like medicine...
Sure, there's external stigma, but IMO, the larger driver for stigma is self-imposed. Med school enrollees are filled with "most likely to exceed" personalities who are harder on themselves and catastrophize a minor setback v. peers as "the end of the world."
> (colloquially doctors hardly ever call them boards in the US, they just call them “step”.
Anecdotally, I've only heard friends in medicine (US) refer to them (the USMLE exam[0] and steps) as "boards," while in med school. I'm sure that some call them steps, too. I'm also aware of post-residency/fellowship specialty boards. Those are usually singular because you only need one and sometimes they're oral, like a thesis defense where you get grilled on a schedule of of your cases over the past couple years.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Medical_Licensin...
The counterpoint to this is that most medical trainees endure a tremendous number or setbacks during training that they must overcome. If anything residency teaches it is grit. I would say trainees generally tend to evolve in this respect from premed undergrads and 1st/2nd year med students who are relatively insufferable throughout the rest of training where there is necessarily a personality shift.
> Anecdotally, I've only heard friends in medicine (US) refer to them (the USMLE exam[0] and steps) as "boards,"
Yes, probably when talking to non doctors to keep it simple. But everyone inside usually just says specifically Step 1, Step 2 etc or USMLE.
> Those are usually singular because you only need one
No. If you subspecialize - you will board in two or more things. For instance an interventional cardiologist will be boarded in internal medicine, general cardiology and interventional cardiology each with their own training requirements and exams.
> sometimes they're oral, like a thesis defense where you get grilled on a schedule of of your cases over the past couple years.
The vast majority of even the oral exams are standardized tests with standardized cases. I can only think of OBGYN that does the case review.
> No. If you subspecialize
Sure. I agree that you need a singular board for a terminal specialty and potentially interstitial boards along the way.
> Yes, probably when talking to non doctors to keep it simple. But everyone inside usually just says specifically Step 1, Step 2 etc or USMLE.
Again, I'm not in the field, but see a lot of references on the web using "boards" language. From a quick google search "USMLE called steps or boards", I get a test prep site [0]. I'm assuming this is a matter of "precise v. common" usage.
> The United States Medical Licensure Exam (USMLE) Step 1, commonly called “the Boards,” is a standardized test
[0] https://www.boardvitals.com/blog/9-things-to-know-before-tak....
Furthermore, I said early on I was top 1% in the country (for my brand atleast, which already only hires 'better' and experienced salespeople) and later narrowed it down to the most accurate at 0.3%.
But let's say I'm lying.. for fun I suppose? Doesn't everything I wrote apply to someone that actually IS top 1% in car sales? Even if I didn't sell 30 cars a month for 10 years, surely you don't deny someone does that? And even if you'd argue that "no, no one can sell 30 cars a month for years!!"... Doesn't the entire point of my original message still stand.. even a salesperson that is just average will still make tens of thousands of calls, practice thousands of closes, see how thousands of people act as they try to negotiate or stall...
Are you implying top sales people don't exist, or that one wouldn't be on hacker News, or that I was simply not one because of the way I write things?
Ps, if you check my post history, you'll see I went to Cal as an ME, and recently self taught and wrote an entire Saas in shitty php that 30+ companies pay for happily. Unless that is ALSO made up, doesn't that sound exactly like the type of person that would probably outperform the average car sales person?
On first order principles, I reject your premises that "throwaway" account names make accounts worthless in the long run. There are tons of counter-factual examples, e.g., "ironic name."
> Ps, if you check my post history, you'll see <insert resume"...
See, this is circular reasoning. If your account is "worthless," what incentive do you have to be reliable/honest?
What's interesting is that I think you know these counter-arguments and are trying to steer away from them.
And to your second point, that while obviously there is no proof of anything by just reading my post history, you'd have to be slightly crazy to think I started a new account recently, and from the FIRST post dreamt up an elaborate plan to seem like a php Saas creating, Berkeley grad, top salesperson persona..
And to think, you caught me in my massive lie because I mistook the MCAT exam for board exams! Something no regular person would EVER do.
Perhaps they didn’t match (entirely didn’t match or couldn’t match where they needed to be for family/some obligation), burnt out, etc.
There’s tons of reasons one may not make it all the way through, though it is quite rare if you grind hard enough and are adequately flexible RE residency location and stuff. The system wants you to finish once you’re in med school, since med schools and residencies are measured by completion rates and similar success metics.
Medicine is a really tough thing to get in to, and I don’t think people fully grasp that as they apply for med school. It looks prestigious from the outside, but is financially draining for a long time and is extremely inflexible (find out where you match and move with only ~3 months notice?! Who thinks that’s acceptable in the modern world of two working spouses?).