Rating Residency programs

Pre-Med & Medical School Careers in Medicine
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<p>O.K.. I am posting this in the right sub-forum (but I'm gonna clue folks in to where it is on the pre-med forum, too). </p>

<p>My kid is deep into the decision making process on her residency choice. Has it narrowed to two. For now, she has decided to run both paths and let them fight it out. Not the best plan but....hey. It's a plan. </p>

<p>To that end she has started looking at resources for choosing between programs. "Best reputation-academic", "best reputation-clinical", "non-malignant", etc. From what we have gathered there is a dearth of information on-line and folks usually gather info word of mouth from mentors in the field, by doing away rotations, and ....uhhh.. wildly guessing? Dart boards? The Dark Arts? </p>

<p>As she is single and portable, with high enough Step 1 scores, she starts with a somewhat open slate. </p>

<p>I have hopes that this thread can gather what few (and almost uniformly useless) on-line resources there are and give ideas on how to gather more current, valid, comprehensive info.</p>

<ol>
<li>sdn specific residency threads</li>
<li>Scutwork.com</li>
<li>some fields have specific sites (like oto)</li>
<li>Your home program</li>
<li>Doctors in the field</li>
</ol>

<p>We have or will have exhausted all of these we know about by the weekend. Based on where we are now, we still won't know our asses from a hat-rack. </p>

<p>So.......any ideas?</p>

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<p>What does she wants? She wants the most prestigious or she wants where she personally prefer to go or it is the same thing for her?
I am very far from advising you, I am learning from your experience and hoping that you continue share it. The best! I also heard that some people change later on, of course, they would loose a year or two, but it has happened and even my D. heard about it. Not cut in stone, of course, you want to avoid it. For us, the home program (her Med. School, not our hometown) is preferred so far, but everybody is different. And she does not have her score and her home program would probably be more on selective side.</p>

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<p>Trying to keep this general so it has universality.</p>

<p>For my kid academic rep, clinical rep, and location would likely all be tied for #2. Behind malignant or not. </p>

<p>In other words, she might live in Philly for Penn but not for ___<strong><em>. Might pick UTSW-Austin over higher rep’ed </em></strong> because Austin is…Austin. </p>

<p>She knows even at this early stage that there is a 30% chance (or better) that she will end up at her home program in whichever competitive residency she chooses. And btw, it is still between Derm and Otolaryngology and leaning to Derm.</p>

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<p>^Both sound awesome!</p>

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<p>With those 2 specialties, I think most people just apply to as many programs as they can since they are so competitive. Then decide based on how they felt when then interviewed there.</p>

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<p>Can you contact alumni of the school at the programs to ask them their thoughts? Can the school facilitate this? I believe mine does - I’m sure we’re not unique in this. My understanding is since the system is so personal, you really have to get as much as you can out of the interview (i.e. you have to talk to people affiliated with the program).</p>

1 Like
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<p>I have been id’ing those folks from recent match lists. Don’t know what good that does just yet…but those names are something that I stumbled on looking for what programs kids from her school do their residencies.</p>

<p>She contacted a doc she knows very well who recently retired from a Derm practice. She will do lunch this week. :wink: Will report back. In other news just got Honors in Surgery!!! Woot!! That’ll help.</p>

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<p>Congrats on Honors! Good job!
Mine also started making connections before she even took the Step 1. Never hurts!</p>

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<p>

I think there are 100 + programs in each. Looks like 40+ apps are necessary though some have 90+. Good God.</p>

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<p>DD is still liking surgery, she has been focused on OBGYN for a long time, but now is not sure. It is my job to find all the horror stories I can such that if, in fact, she does stick with surgery, she will not ever regret it because she did not know something…oh, she may regret it at moments, like 4AM, but she darned well won’t be surprised by any of it when I am done.</p>

<p>We all posted recently about women in medicine, and I have been perusing the blog, Mothers in Medicine, looking for stories from the trenches to give her ideas.</p>

<p>My DD, I think, will prioritize having a humane vs malignant residency, perhaps especially critical for a surgical rotation and sanity, and will stay as far west as she can, definitely no place east of the Mississippi. I guess we should have saved the time and money and skipped those college & med school apps in the east, she has absolutely no interest. She has lived many places the last 10 years and, I think she would like to just be in the same general geographic area she is now in and try to have some roots put down.</p>

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<p>I would think that she has made good contacts at Yale who can guide her, have contacts in other universities etc. I would trust these resources over anything online.</p>

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<p>Agreed. And she will exhaust those, too. But it seems that even those resources have limitations. </p>

<p>I am finding it easier to judge the academic clout of a program than the clinical side. At least some of that is due to the tee-tiny nature of the programs. 2-4 a year? Jeebus. If head doc Joe dies or moves on the whole program can change + or -. Data that was relevant last month can change by next month. </p>

<p>Hence the argument to apply very broadly and make the decision if you have one at the interview stage. But still, if you are an above average candidate by grades and Step scores, Isn’t there some value to an initial culling done on some factor other than location? That’s not rhetorical btw. ;)</p>

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<p>Just positing. If there was a list of presently malignant programs , that would be the first cull. Then, if there was a list of best rep programs academically she could cull out the worst or no reps. Then do the same for clinical.</p>

<p>Then she can knock of locations that she just won’t go. Right now that is simply NYC. </p>

<p>If she is gonna apply to 50, that may be all the culling that happens. If she still has 80 on the list then…</p>

<p>among the survivors she could then get down to ranking location against quality.</p>

<p>Right now, southern states are her preference with Rocky Mountain, SW, Midwest , and PNW following. Northeast is just not her thing but … for the right program…she’d stay.</p>

<p>Luckily for her, her location preferences are almost the exact opposite of everybody else’s on sdn. Most popular- NYC, LA, Chicago, DC? Uhhh…no.</p>

<p>Nashville, Charlottesville, Charleston, Austin, Atlanta, Birmingham, Little Rock, San Antonio, Dallas, Houston , Galveston, SLC, Aurora, Scottsdale, Tucson and many more are much more palatable to her.</p>

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<p>My daughter wants to be in Boston or NYC. For some reason, she doesn’t understand the cost of living in those places on a resident’s salary.</p>

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<p>DocT. I have read that there is subsidized housing in NYC that makes it doable for some. Only way I could see it happening . </p>

<p>It has dawned on D that she will likely need $10k or more for interviews after application fees. So she will immediately begin looking for cheaper digs in NH.</p>

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<p>Just how many green boxes do these IRL contacts have? ;)</p>

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<p>curm: my D is a 4th year applying for general surgery. She has finished her interviews now. </p>

<p>My words of advice: research the programs in the areas of country she is most interested in. Google the hospital programs and the page for each specialty residency. Identify top 5-10 programs in each specialty. </p>

<p>4th year away rotations are very important and they start scheduling those from Jan. on. (Each program is different though.) You need those rotations from July-Oct. so the program can see your work and you can get letters of recommendation IN THAT SPECIALTY before application deadline. Some programs require four letters, and they are supposed to be from attendings in residency programs (not professors from med school). You are more likely to get an interview and more likely to match if you have rotated at a program. </p>

<p>There is strategy to this and it is very hard to figure out, much more so than applying to med school. I think it would be very difficult to apply to two specialties and do a good job at it. There aren’t enough four-week slots for summer-early fall rotations, for one thing. Also, when you interview, the program likes to know you are committed to that specialty and really want to do it. Psychologically hard to pull off to be equally committed to two different specialties and the programs just won’t buy it. It will hurt her in application process if she does it that way.</p>

<p>If her program allows it, she can do four 4-week rotations July-Oct., maybe back to her home program in Nov. for 4th year rotation in chosen specialty. Interviews are Oct.-Dec. She won’t be able to do all that many interviews because you still have to do rotations during this period and take time off to fly to the interviews. Maybe 10-15 interviews. And yes, that can be about $1,000 each.</p>

<p>This is the weakest part of the whole med school process, IMO.</p>

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<p>For derm, interviews are Dec-Feb, I believe. Not sure about ent</p>

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<p>I should have specified that my D is at a DO school, so my information may be specific to the DO world. (Interview dates and so on.) And maybe for your D, curm, coming from a prestigious med school with a strong Step 1 score, her situation may be easier. </p>

<p>The above is just a summary of what I have gleaned (mostly from sdn and from my D’s own experience) and it was hard to come by.</p>

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<p>Sorry. Poor job explaining. She will pick between the two prior to app season. Most Yale students take a research year. Not all but most. She will take one next year.</p>

<p>Yale requires a research thesis.</p>