<p>if it doesn't matter once you're in practice, should aspiring doctors aim for the best college, medical school, and residency they can get? or is any college, medical school, and residency sufficient?</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>Your college matters for med school admissions. Your med school matters for the residency you get into (particularly the more competitive ones). The residency you get into directly determines what kind of a doctor you become. The degree to which the prestige of your college and med school matters is debatable.</p>
<p>Let's be certain though that no single college is singlehandedly going to prevent you from getting into med school, and no single college is singlehandedly going to assure you admission into medical school (guaranteed acceptance programs - which limit your options - not withstanding).</p>
<p>Likewise no medical school is in and of itself going to prevent you from getting into a desired residency program or guarantee you a spot in a desired residency program. While many schools do look out for their own in regards to residency positions nothing is guaranteed. </p>
<p>I'm increasingly hearing that in some cases the strength of your med schools residency program (which you would have rotated through as a 3rd and 4th year student) can have a reasonable impact on getting into a residency in that field. For example, the Internal Medicine department at my institution is fairly highly regarded and the student rotation through Medicine is outstanding (routinely see a large increase in scores from step I to step II of boards). Good letters from the chair of the department as such carry a fair amount of weight around the country with other Internal Medicine Residencies b/c of the reputation of my own schools department. So it's not really my school as a whole, but one section of it. I'm not planning to go into a Medicine residency so I don't stand to benefit quite as much as some of my colleagues will (though I hopefully will benefit from the Step II score increase).</p>
<p>The other thing, at least for the M4's I know from this year and last year, and this may just be an institutional thing, but a lot of people are applying to residency programs almost entirely based on location. One of my really good friends is an M4 (we were in the same fraternity in undergrad) is applying almost entirely to anesthesiology programs in Southern Cali, Arizona, Florida, and Texas, regardless of their ranking. He's definitely not the only one and I'm sure that a lot of people across the country do similar things. Sure there are some people (probably CC'ers back in their HS days) who probably are insistant on getting into the best residency program, but not everyone.</p>
<p>I disagree about the impact of residency on practice.</p>
<p>In certain specific exceptions, it matters - very elite plastic surgeons, people who want to run for President, wanting to be the chancellor of a medical school, etc. (Although, come to think of it, I don't know where Howard Dean went to school.)</p>
<p>In general, I don't think people ask their doctors where they went to school, or where they trained, etc. They listen to their neighbors saying that this doctor is nice, or their primary care physician's referral to a guy who "seems like a smart guy over at that big hospital".</p>
<p>If you are pursuing one of these careers, then your prestige matters. Otherwise, probably the most important thing you can do for your career is be nice to other doctors' secretaries on the phone. (This is always important, of course.)</p>
<p>Certain types of schools can "grease the skids" for you, but the entire purpose of the chain is questionable. I don't think there's any doubt that a kid going to Yale undergrad has a better shot at Harvard Med and Mayo residency. But after that... if he wants to join an office in a reasonably sized suburb and see patients, it will be slightly EASIER to land a job, but almost all doctors get jobs in areas where they want to work, they work however much they want to work, and their patients don't leave their practice, aren't more likely to sue, etc.</p>
<p>unless you're going into research, it doesnt make a difference where you went to med school.
how many of your doctors do you know where they went to school???</p>
<p>Patients (perhaps 10%) do actually ask their doctors which medical school and undergrad institutions they attended. Very few patients, usually those with a medical background or an unusual medical condition, ask about residency training. Patients generally respond positively to a recognized institution being named. Patients also respond positively to grads from a local institution unless it is really, really bad. Of course, by the time a patient asks about education, the decision to commit to care has often already occurred.</p>
<p>What patients should ask is whether their doctor is board certified and whether their doctor became board certified on the first attempt.</p>
<p>Going to a well-respected medical school or residency program can be of value when relocating or changing practices. Specialty physicians know which residency programs are good or, at least, which programs were competitive and desirable when they sought training.</p>
<p>Patients very frequently research hospitals, procedures and physicians online. See the AMA's "Doctor finder" or the California Medical Board site for examples of information available to consumers.
<a href="http://webapps.ama-assn.org/doctorfinder/html/patient.html%5B/url%5D">http://webapps.ama-assn.org/doctorfinder/html/patient.html</a>
<a href="http://www.medbd.ca.gov/Lookup.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.medbd.ca.gov/Lookup.htm</a></p>
<p>See RateMDs.com for a pro-consumer perspective.
<a href="http://www.ratemds.com/index.jsp%5B/url%5D">http://www.ratemds.com/index.jsp</a></p>
<p>I googled "San Francisco cardiologist" to see if any med school or undergrad correlations would be revealed in a competitive specialty in a competitive city.</p>
<p>At Cardiovascular Associates of Marin & San Francisco you will find graduates from "name" programs. Significant?
<a href="http://www.camsf.com/physicians.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.camsf.com/physicians.html</a></p>
<p>Responses:</p>
<p>1.) I will, of course, not dispute that prestige of schools makes things easier, but I suspect that while this particular firm may recruit big-name schools, there are probably also lots of other cardiologists in SF. This is wild speculation on my part.</p>
<p>2.) Cardiology is apparently a quite competitive fellowship - i.e. you would expect some tilting towards big-name schools by virtue of the field. I should have mentioned this as an exception above and did not (my fault). One of the exceptions is that some fields are competitive enough that in order to be, say, a dermatologist at all, you are advantaged in going to a high-powered school.</p>
<p>3.) It may strike others as being a big name, but I've never heard of Tuland University...</p>
<p>4.) Notice the obvious exceptions, perhaps the most significant one being Loma Linda school of medicine. As BRM says (and I am fond of quoting), "Excelling is a panacea".</p>
<p>5.) It's unclear to me exactly what this group is. They seem to have several specialties (not rare), a couple members on faculty at a medical school (a little weird), a director of a health center of some kind (??), etc. Are they a practicing group of physicians? Are they some kind of professional association? Their description certainly sounds like a practicing group of physicians, but their resume seems a little bit... well, not oriented around that.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The recruiting appears to be UCSF related. Big name schools might matter to the UCSF cardiology fellowship selection committee.</p></li>
<li><p>ditto.</p></li>
<li><p>ditto. Perhaps the Cornell residency helped.</p></li>
<li><p>The majority attended prestigious universities or medical schools. As you noted, there are exceptions. I do wonder why some entries do not list undergraduate schools.</p></li>
<li><p>This appears to be a full service cardiology group. The assistant and associate "clinical professor" titles mean only that a doc volunteers at UCSF for a certain number of hours precepting residents and students. The full clinical professor title either an unpaid volunteer or paid position at UCSF.</p></li>
</ol>