The Impact of Step 1 Scores on Medical Students’ Residency Specialty Choice

Background Various factors have been found to affect medical students’ choice of residency specialty, but there is little quantitative evidence describing students’ perception of the impact of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 score. We sought to assess whether students at our institution self-reported changes in their specialty choices based on Step 1 score, and to investigate the relationship between students’ scores and their ultimate match fields.