Hello guys, I want to share my experience with you as my journey was tough and challenging and I think my story will give a hope to many people especially those with red flags in their CV.
Here are my credentials:
•step 2 235 2nd attempt
•step 1 231
•step2 cs 2nd attempt
•step 3 218
•YOG 2013
•no visa needed
• 3 years usce “6 months inpatient”
•6 LOR 2 "all is personalized and 2 of it from assistant professors and 1 from attending.
Here’s my story
I graduated from Cairo University Medical School in Egypt in 2011, my dream since high school had been to travel and become a physician in USA. So I decided to follow my dream and start the journey in 2014 by completing the CK exam for which I studied full time for over 8 months. I took the CK in 2015 but I didn’t pass due to 2 reason, first I got a panic attack 8 hours before the test and couldnt get any sleep before the exam and that affected my performance, the second reason is bad preparation because I didn’t study from a good resource and I used to use the UW as an assessment tool not learning and I kept revising the same topic without working hard on my weakness point.
after I received the result I broke down and decided to get my residency in Egypt. I started IM residency but after a few months i started to reconsider my dream and I didn’t want to feel that any thing beat me down this way. So I made the decision to try again but this time by fixing the mistakes that happened last time. so I started to work on my anexiety to learn how to deal with stress, and in studying. I started to build my own resource for CK and printed MTB with UW tabels and after few months I retook the exam and passed with a 235!
A few weeks after the CK Exam I moved to USA and started to study for step 1. It was the easiest step for me as I was a recent immigrant and at that time I was home sick, so I decided to spend all my time studying for step 1 , I used to study in the community library from 11 am to 8 pm 5 days a week for 7 month and i passed with 231
A few days after the step 1 exam I travelled to houston to get my CS done before the 2019 matching session, I studied for 3 weeks and applied to 2019 matching with pending CS and didn’t pass in language .
The CS result destroyed me and most of my friends either told me to forget about the matching at all or gave me the advice to start to look at alternative other than IM , the nice people just tried to say keep trying but your chances on the matching are almost impossible, no PD would give interview to any one with a 2nd attempt in 2 steps ,but they were mistaken.
2 days after the CS result I picked myself up again and decided to fight till the end and give myelf one more year to do whatever to help myself and if i don’t match i planned to go back to my country
here"s what I did in this year and it’s helped me alot
1-clear CS after working hard by all means to improve my laguage skill "I worked as a sale associate and i did a volunteer work in homeless outreach , and took alot of accent reduction online video and classes
2 -Cleared step 3 exam before my IV"s
3 -I did a few inpatient rotation in hospitals that have a residency program.
I even went to the hospital on weekend during my rotations to let them see how I am a hard worker and in one of my rotation I asked the PD to join him in his clinic to learn more and to get better exposure to him and i was very fortunate that he liked me and give me intetview, he told me during my Interview he will be happy If I matched in that hospital and he told me "you would be a great addition to any program you will match in.
4-this is important thing I did during that year, I looked for any oppurtunity that could help me and tried to get all possible connections either through vounteer work, rotations, or asking the doctors Who I rotated with to call their colleagues who work in program to help me and most of the amazing doctors I rotated with helped me a lot either with strong LOR or with their direct recommendation
when the session started I already my had my cv ready and my connection list ready and even during the session I was trying to email people asking for advice and I tried to email all programm to show my interest in there programm and that helped a lot.
I got 6 IV 5 IM & 1 FM
I matched this year in catogorical Internal medicine university affiliated program
if I want to say anything after this long journey it would be
*please please forget about what other people’s opinion about your chances are, no one knows exactly what will happen and the only rule in the matching is that there is no rules.
*Don’t focus on your weak points, passing your hurdles is a big strength not a weakness. Passing hurdles is a prove that you are strong and you can deal with difficulties and many program look for this kind of personality.
*keep focused and dedicated to your Dream and always GOD is good and he will Open the door by his way and get us what we really deserve
Good luck everyone wish you all the best 
please If you have any question put it in comment and I will be happy to answer it .