Honorary House Job and PLAB

First, already known facts:

  1. FY2/SHO are easily available after GMC registration and it doesn’t depend upon the month when you apply.
  2. After SHO, We have to do CMT, which always starts in first week of August.
  3. Before CMT, we must have one year experience (in the form of FY2)

Now, If we start FY2 after August 2018, it is impossible to get CMT in next year (2019) as we would not have one year experience. We will have to wait for next August (2020) for CMT. However, during this duration we will not be unpaid as we can do locum jobs anytime.
But if our goal is to get FRCP/S in minimum possible time (7 years) then we have to try to get FY2 on 1st August 2018.
Now if we consider our current routine, that is to start HJ on 1st May 2017 and to go UK in first half of May 2018, it will be impossible for us to get GMC registration and hence FY2 job before August 2018, given that we have to give at least 1 month for PLAB2 preparation and PLAB 2 result also comes after 1 month interval and GMC registration also takes almost 15 days.
So, my opinion is to start HJ on 1st April 2017, so that we can go to the UK in first half of April 2018 and we can get GMC registration in July 2018. In this way we will be eligible for CMT in August 2019 and we will be on right path to achieve our goal of getting FRCP/S in least possible time.