Norcalguy's Residency Application Process

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
161

<p>I think 10-12 interviews is a good number to have to practically guarantee a match. </p>

<p>BRM: definitely looking forward to applying to fellowships as most of the fellowships in rads are not competitive to get into.</p>

<p>Pharmagal: the average radiology applicant applies to 40 programs. Generally, the less competitive the residency, the fewer programs you need to apply to. There’s a common app. You only have to write 1 personal statement and there’s no additional essays. The cost of applying to more programs is monetary.</p>

<p>Mythreesons: exactly what I’m going through with radiology. There aren’t too many radiology programs that have the intern year included so I’m applying to transitional year programs, medicine prelim programs, and radiology categorical programs.</p>

162

<p>ncg, is there any customization of the apps? Use different LOR’s? As in, use an LOR from Yale doc at Yale but not at Harvard? Or is it just the same total app everywhere? </p>

<p>I had some interesting discussions with my D when she was home last week. I think some reality is starting to sink in about this residency thing.</p>

163

<p>My S just told me that he is putting the finishing touches on his residency apps so he can submit them tomorrow. Appears that his final total is 31 programs…the fun is about to begin (said with a heavy dose of sarcasm)…seems like we’re going through some sort of “admission” process every two years between my S and D…can’t wait for it to be over!</p>

164

<p>My daughter still plans on participating in couples match. I have been reading this thread with interest and no doubt will need a great deal of hand holding down the road.</p>

165

<p>Curm, yes, you can customize the apps a fair amount. LOR’s are the obvious start -assuming you have enough individuals willing to write you good letters. The other place is personal statements. As far as I know you can upload an unlimited number of personal statements - individualized for each an every program if you wanted to. When I was going through the process for residency, I originally was going to do a combined Internal Medicine/Pediatrics residency (4 years instead of 3). However, I was basing most of where I was applying on location, not program strength, and some locations didn’t have med/peds residencies - so in those places I was going to just apply for peds. I had variations of my personal statements in draft form already for both peds and med/peds and had an extra peds only LOR in the works. Of course in August of my 4th year was the first time I spent time in the PICU and after that everything changed and I knew what I wanted to do. Scrapped all the medicine aspects and here I am 3 years later repeating the whole process just for Peds Critical Care.</p>

166

<p>Just another perspective on customization. While Bigredmed shows that it can be done, unlike “secondaries” when applying to medical school, it is not required. My son is submitting the identical packet to all 30 or 40 residency programs he’s applying to. His personal statement was simply about why he picked the filed he picked, and he has only the minimum number of recommendations.</p>

167

<p>How many people choose to do a residency in IM? Do you think students are drawn away from Cards because they can’t match into it directly?</p>

168

<p>My son also used the same package for all his schools, all three of his LORs were from surgeons he worked with plus the Dept chair. He met with his adviser this morning before submitting and she had him add a few more programs to balance the mix so the final number is 35. He has a nice mix of a few top 5-10 programs, the great majority are mostly matches and a few safeties were added “just in case”. There’s good geographic diversity though his process is a combination of geography and program strength. He has chosen to not apply to several parts of the country (NYC) because he has no interest in living there despite the relative strength of several programs.</p>

<p>Between the Dean, Dept chair and his adviser they feel he is strong match for most of the programs on his list and a good match for the top, top programs. In the case of the top, top programs the reality is that they will get 1000-1200 applicants, interview maybe 100 and select 6-8… makes UG admission look like a cakewalk in retrospect.</p>

<p>And we thought Med school admission was stressful ;)</p>

169

<p>Chillbro: <a href=“http://www.nrmp.org/data/resultsanddata2011.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nrmp.org/data/resultsanddata2011.pdf&lt;/a&gt; and <a href=“http://www.nrmp.org/data/resultsanddatasms2011.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nrmp.org/data/resultsanddatasms2011.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Last year 5065 out of 5121 spots in Categorical Medicine spots were filled, with 2940 US Seniors matching (3443 US Senior ranked at least on categorical IM spot but it’s safe to assume that the majority - but not all - of the 500 who didn’t match were going into other fields and put IM spots as “safeties”) </p>

<p>In terms of going into Cardiology there are 729 spots last year and 719 were filled. There were 497 US Applicants and 425 matched. It was the most popular fellowship choice for US Grads last year, even despite the buzz over GI the last several years. GI is certainly more competitive with only 383 spots offered. It should be noted that very, very few fellowships in any field have more US applicants than spots. </p>

<p>Overall, I think whatever number of medicine or pediatric residents who decide DURING residency NOT to do a fellowship because of not wanting to do another match process/more training/depressed salary for a longer period of time, probably a similar number fall in love with a particular field during residency and DO choose to go on to a fellowship. In my experience, I think that the numbers that swing in either direction are fairly small. I think that most people go into residency with an idea that they are going towards general medicine or towards fellowship training, even if they might not know exactly which fellowship they’re going to do. </p>

<p>Medicine and Peds are different than say surgery where there’s more time and greater exposure to specialty fields, along with more time for research leading up to making a decision. </p>

<p>I think despite all of that, the real reason that people choose one field over another has little to do with the timing - it has much more to do with interest in that field, the lifestyle and so on. For myself, choosing Peds Critical Care simply was the best fit - I’m happiest when I’m in the ICU. The type of work, the number of procedures, the extensive variety of patients (all ages, patient problems ranging from severe infection, uncontrolled seizures, extreme asthma attacks, poison ingestion’s, diabetic ketoacidosis, etc), were all exciting to me and made it the single best option. For my friends going into neonatology or peds cardiology, there are similar feelings.</p>

170

<p>

</p>

<p>I had a different interpretation of this question. To clarify: cardiology is a fellowship. You need to do a residency first, nearly always an internal medicine residency.</p>

171

<p>Sent off my apps! Now the waiting game begins.</p>

172

<p>Just when this process can’t get any more stressful, the new NRMP data come out recently. The only specialties to have average USMLE scores of 240 or above: derm, radiology, neurosurgery, ortho, ENT, plastics and rad onc. Maybe urology as well although I don’t have their data since they have their own match system.</p>

173

<p>Best wishes, ncg!</p>

174

<p>Just lovely, ncg. My D has mentioned 3 of those. Oh, joy.</p>

175

<p>Good luck, NCG! Keep us updated as you progress.</p>

176

<p>S got a nice surprise yesterday. He got an email informing him that he was getting some additional scholarship money for the year. Coming this late in the year it was a very welcome surprise for a 4th year with all the interview travel expense that will be coming up. </p>

<p>Now if he’ll keep getting surprises like that through the rest of the process…</p>

177

<p>My son says a few kids are having email alerts sent to their pagers so they’ll know as soon as an interview invite comes through. My son’s a bit more mellow, but that’s not to say he won’t be watching he email more closely than normal.</p>

178

<p>Had my first interview yesterday. Fellowship interviews were far more exhausting than those for residency…but everything went well, and I hope the program liked me as much as I liked them. Forgot how much I hate changing out of a suit in the hotel lobby bathroom while in an extreme rush to get to the airport to catch flights home. Very thankful for web check-in for flights and airports that have “expert” traveler security lines…</p>

179

<p>Eadad, Congrats to you and your DS on his scholarship. These are always welcome. Good luck to him on his efforts.</p>

180

<p>Exciting news yesterday, S got his first three invitations to interview for his residency. Two were from programs at the top of his list and one was from more of a fall back/safety. This apparently is very good news since most programs wait until after NOV 1 when Dean’s letters and LORs are due before offering interviews.</p>

<p>Hoping this is a sign of more good things to come…</p>