<p>Trapezius. When are you graduating? My kid is 2015. She’ll have a better than median Step 1, a year of derm research at her school, a big name med school with impressive match list for derm the last few years, Honors in surg and peds. IM is ongoing now. Her school doesn’t have AOA until after the match. </p>
<p>I hope her UG research focus on melanoma and awards will form part of her PS and her Goldwater will put an exclamation point on that. That plus editing some textbook chapters for a well known book, some unrelated research work, and her research year in med school will have to do. </p>
<p>Weakest part will be extracurriculars in med school. Not a lot there yet in the way of community or school involvement. She’ll do what she can to flesh it out but the reality is that she simply hasn’t done much. </p>
<p>If you are a 2015 I am more than happy to join forces on our hunt for derm residency data. Send me a pm with email info.</p>
<p>EM is competitive but not insanely so, kristin. Board scores range all over the place. Programs seemed more concerned about “personality fit” than numbers at many places. (Heck at our local hospital the current residents vote on which new interns to accept.)</p>
<p>But D1 has some specific things she looking for in a program–including options in medical toxicology and/or wilderness medicine, and possibly [international] disaster management w/ overseas rotations.</p>
<p>One of the great things about EM, IMO. Again, I’m interested to see if things have changed much this year. From talking to people on the interview trail, as well as knowing the makeup of EM applicants from my school, it seems (and perhaps falsely, admittedly) that both the number and caliber of applicants has gone up this year. Fully 15% of my class is applying to EM (a three-fold increase over last year), and over a third of those are AOA - the vast majority have very impressive board scores and applications overall. </p>
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<p>For me, this was important as well. I have a lot of different things I’d like to do with my career, so finding a residency that would allow me to explore lots of different aspects of EM was important to me. And I’ve interviewed at places that have awesome “extras” like this - fully paid months at a NYC poison control center, paid international months, training and allowing their residents to work as ski patrollers at the local mountain, having residents be flight physicians on the hospital’s helicopter, teaching months dedicated to education of medical/paramedic/nursing students, etc. Most residencies have their “specialty” within EM, but very few have it all (fortunately, my top 2-3 have everything I want and more :D)
As the counterpoint to this, I’ve heard the argument that you shouldn’t care about extras like this and just focus on the place that will give you the best clinical training because the vast majority of EM docs won’t do any of those extras outside of residency.</p>
<p>These posts are very interesting and totally ignorant </p>
<p>First. Getting into a residency of a top program is more “old boys network” than anything else. Which professor in med school know the chief at the program you want to go to. A phone call gets you in</p>
<p>Second. If you are going into a surgical field, go to a program that has a county or VA component. Then you will get to operate.while if you go to a private hospital, you will hold retractors.</p>
<p>Third. Scut work. You help the team, they help you. Drawing blood makes you good</p>
<p>Fourth. Going into a medical field, pick a program where the internists specialize on what you are interested.</p>
<p>Five. Family practice or internal med or Peds or surgery. Will you have your own patients</p>
<p>And most important. Where do you want to live for three to five years.</p>
<p>The more you are on call, the more you get to see</p>
<p>And finally, the odds are high that you will end up practicing where you do your residency</p>
<p>Princess’Dad is right on target. If I had to go through residency again I would do derm. I was not interested in it back in the day. It was hard to get in back then and harder now. Dermatopath is even harder. Literature will say you can get in via Derm or Path, but from what I know those few spots available go to dermatologists. PrinDad’s first point is very very true. .Last point very true too. You get to know the area and make connections. For the OP I would pick Derm and apply to many programs. If the only ones are malignant, so what? At least you are in the field you wanted. Look at how many people did “a decade with Dave”.</p>