<p>Well I've looked at some match lists because I am a rising senior looking into BS/MD programs and one of the ones I THOUGHT would be a great one to apply early decision to would be Brown's PLME. However, when I looked at the match list, I was sadly disappointed. I saw a small amount of specialists compared to other schools like Cincinnati and even Toledo which I think is an unranked medical school. I was wondering if anyone had any clue why this was the case?</p>
<p>Well I didn’t look at the lists, but I’m guessing you’re talking about the high number of medicine (IM) spots - this is because a lot of specialties require an Internal Medicine residency first before you do the specialty fellowship (e.g. cardiology).</p>
<p>But match lists change year to year based on the interests of the individuals in each class, so don’t put much thought into the numbers of each specialty. Look rather at the quality of the residencies on a match list (which to be honest you won’t be able to assess because it doesn’t necessarily correspond to the “big names” you’re used to)</p>
<p>People who put stock in match lists and average USMLE scores really don’t understand what an individual effort and decision it is to get into a specific specialty.</p>
<p>Yeah, you can’t say that Brown is a bad school based on their Match. Reading a match list is more than counting the Harvards and neurosurgeons. Further, as people have mentioned, not everyone wants to go into Derm and specialized surgery.</p>
<p>Without knowing the individual situations of each student, where they ranked and why they ranked either their field or a particular hospital/program, it is impossible to say “this is not a very impressive match list”. You also don’t know about the dynamics within residency programs and how they ranked the candidates.</p>
<p>A few things to keep in mind: about 40% of US graduating seniors end up going into either Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Family Medicine, or Emergency Medicine. There are some programs in internal medicine and peds that take 45 interns (first year residents) a year. Compare that to 2 derm residents per year or “big” general surgery programs that have 6 or 8 categorical spots. </p>
<p>And as Icarus said, you as anything other than a person within a particular specialty, absolutely do not have enough information to know what the big names are to identify the quality of a particular program. I’m a pediatrics resident, and I can promise you that I don’t know what the really great programs in Derm or Ortho are, nor what makes them the best. I can tell you with certainty that for Pediatrics, the “big names” laypeople who think they know a thing about medicine generally think of are not that good. I can also tell you that are quite a few programs which are excellent peds programs have names attached to them that no one would even think of, unless they were pediatricians. And to further complicate matters, I can tell you that several of the “big name” peds programs actually do a ****poor job at training their residents.</p>
<p>Hey BRM, I like to mention what you talk about on occasion and give examples of top residency programs that aren’t what a layman might expect (meaning not Harvard, JH, Mayo Clinic). Can you think of any examples of top peds residency programs that fit the bill? I used to know of one, I think it’s University of Utah’s hospital or something… A malignant program at a name brand university hospital would be nice too.</p>
<p>The University of Utah certainly fits the bill of a really program, with a pretty decent research rep but one with very poor public perception.</p>
<p>The University of Cincinnati has an exceptional academic/research reputation in Pediatrics (also ER) but would not be on the radar for the overwhelming majority of the public.</p>
<p>I would argue that MOST of the top tier “name” places are not great places for residents. I have multiple friends, mentors, and colleagues, who have told me from firsthand experience that many East Coast name institutions (Hopkins, Duke, Brown, UNC, among others) are VERY “fellow driven” in nature - which is great: WHEN YOU’RE A FELLOW. In other words, the fellows are the main decision makers, the main focus of teaching while the residents are left to scramble for the scraps. I had one Infectious Disease attending who did her fellowship at Brown who said she would never take her own children to a general pediatrician who did residency at Brown. She felt that they did a wholly inadequate job of preparing them to be generalists and that their program was focused on figuring out which fellowship to pursue rather than making good doctors ready to practice on their own after finishing residency.</p>
<p>As for malignant programs - I’ve never heard ANYTHING good about any program, in any field at the University of Colorado in Denver. Not sure why that’s the case, maybe because there will always be people who want to go there, so they figure they can be ***holes to everyone and still fill spots.</p>