Hello!
I will be taking Step 1 in November 2017, I graduated in 2013 and I am IMG living in the US. By January I will have authorization to work in the US; I got US certification as Medical Assistant and US training in clinical research (which is basically all I’ve been doing after my graduation if we don’t count the clinical experience I got in my country), so I can find a job in one of these areas, which will give me good US clinical experience. My original plan is to go for the 2019 match, which means I would take step 2 cs and ck in 2018. But now I’ve been thinking on taking one more year to get solid clinical experience and good letters of recommendations through it, also considering that I have children this would give me time to assure better grades in the steps instead of rushing into it. The downside is that I will have more years of graduation by 2020.
What do you think I should do? Improve my CV or Match with less years of graduation?
Note: I posted this same topic in USMLE-Forums, but the reply rate is too slow there.