MODERATOR’S NOTE
Might I remind users of one of the key rules of this site: “Our forum is expected to be a friendly and welcoming place, and one in which members can post without their motives, intelligence, or other personal characteristics being questioned by others."
The snark in some recent posts is unwarranted, and that needs to end.
@GreenPoison Please provide the hard facts about your claim not trivial details on website. Everyone is aware of those. The data is the hard facts.
@GreenPoison w.r.t. Drexel situation, it is half truth as it was Hahnemann hospital parent company who filed for bankruptcy and created an unprecedented amount of misplaced residents situation. Due to nature of how residency being paid, who controls those slots, there are lots of administrative moving parts beyond Drexel including CMS, medical regulatory bodies of residency programs and healthcare company who owns hospital. To my best knowledge finally regional system is willing to pick up slack subject to pending litigation/counter litigation in courts. Most of residents already have alternative option. Some residents have legal immigration situation as well due to nature of how those visas are tied.
Is current situation desirable? ofc not, but stacks are very high, not just for students and residents but also academia, faculty, patients. Near term it is mess, but certain a year from now situation will be much more transparent then today. Hopefully medical regulatory body, AMCAS and other organizations have a learning lesson as well.
Meant to say AAMC, not AMCAS in last thread.
Of course I’m not just blaming the medical school- in fact, I would argue that Hahnemann Hospital played a larger role in screwing over all the residents by not publishing any of their financial struggles (which have supposedly and unsurprisingly going on for years).
However, the fact of the matter remains that Drexel is now the only US MD school in the nation without any residencies at all in most specialities. Just go look at their website- they closed down the vast majority of the residencies, after selling the funding. It’s frankly ridiculous and an absolute travesty for the current medical students that this can occur, given that without home residency programs, it can be all but impossible to match into competitive specialities due to the absence of a program director letter of recommendation.
Are you trying to state that what Temple themselves writes on their own website is not proof enough that Temple is a conditional, interview-guaranteed program?
@GreenPoison can you elaborate further on last part? I thought residency can be anywhere in country on match day. If one Hahnemann is gone for future residents, there are plenty others and previous slots of Hahnemaan is already picked by regional players, so number of residencies remain same even after Hahnemann gone.
Sure.
I currently work in a research lab with a Jeff Med student who is planning on applying to the upcoming match cycle, and is writing applications right now for a ROAD specialty.
What he told me was pretty much this: for small, competitive specialities such as rads or ortho, you’re expected to either have a department chair/home residency director letter of recommendation for that specialty. PD’s typically expect this, since program directors/department chairs are the only people who can actually quantify how well you did on your rotations compared to your fellow peers. Furthermore, your home program director/department chair will typically have the biggest name out of all your possible recommenders at your school, which definitely makes a difference in smaller fields where prestige matters more.
@GreenPoison this is confusing me more, may be lingo issue for me, so all the roles you mentioned, where they fall into? SOM or Residency Hospital or something else?
Quick question - Is FAU a guaranteed BS/MD Program, an EAP, or a “guaranteed interview once you are in UG” BS/MD?
It was explained to me like this:
Student from School A with home residency program
Student from School B without a home residency program
Student from School B has a much harder time matching, as outside residency programs have no way to measure their standardized performance in their specialty rotation of choice, since they have no home residency program director letter of recommendation.
The above statement is very much debatable and can even be perceived as being insulting to the many bright students and parents following this thread. Debatable as to whether risk averse or bird in hand and stress free approach.
I am not aware of any research that links risk-averse with intelligence.
It’s purely risk-averse and bird in hand is one way to explain 
Parents hear about high stats kids not getting admissions (without knowing the the reasons) or worried about kids changing their mind in UG. Both are valid reasons for parents and nothing wrong in guiding their kids towards BSMD. only 5% of admissions are through BSMD so fewer birds, less variety of birds and expensive birds (my opinion)
To paraphrase someone’s wise words from the past, what is expensive and what is not, what is worth it and what is not, is the prerogative of the individual and his/her family. No one here has the authority to make judgments of that sort in a public forum or profiling and characterizing people intending to take a particular and popular pathway.
@rk2017 Isn’t risk-aversion same as bird in hand?
This is my interpretation, correct me if I am wrong
I already have a bird in my hand (BSMD) and and if I Iet that go, I may not able to catch another bird (medical school admission) and I am not willing to take that risk, sot that’s risk aversion.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
As a general comment, let’s not waste time debating dictionary definitions, e.g. risk-averse.
@srk2017
If your son did not get the lone full tuition offer for undergrad, as per you, you were prepared to spend 300k sending him to his second option, right? And perhaps another quarter million at the least on med school? Why are you advocating about expenses here? Leave it to those who pick the tab.
@rk2017- I am advocating about expensive BSMDs?all I am saying is to avoid risk some people are willing to pay for expensive BSMD programs and giving up the option of taking a chance and try for low cost instate medical schools. Again, I never said one is better than others and everyone makes their own decisions. This discussion is about another member saying BSMD is for who doesn’t want to take risks and I agree with that sentiment. Yes, I was willing to spend whatever the money it takes for the school my son wants to go. He is the one who decided that BSMD birds he had in hand were not worth the price for him. he also decided U Penn and JHU are not worth the price over Vandy. I will let him decide if he gets a chance to pick medical schools. Also, discussion is not about whether my son got one or multiple scholarships or how many BSMDs your daughter got. We made our decisions 2 years back and trying to help students and parents during this application cycle.
Just heard on TV that there is some kind of water crisis going on in the city of Newark. Apparently parts of city having high lead content in water (remember Flint, MI?). If you (or your children, as the case may be) or friends or acquaintances are in NJMS or the under grad portion in NJIT or Rutgers-NWK please exercise caution and only take bottled water. Please pass around the word, just in case if anyone there not paying attention. There is a large student base in Newark.