<p>Don’t know about foreign grad numbers, but the referenced program was one of the Scripps in CA</p>
<p>Miami,</p>
<p>maybe our definitions of “low” are different, but if more than half of people are below X, X can no longer be considered “low.” If more than half of people are applying to fewer than 50 programs, 60 can not be considered a low number of applications regardless of the fact that 50% are applying to more than 50. If you would like to call 60 applications average for these specialties. I would agree.</p>
<p>Additionally, you seemed to completely ignore the fact that I said it was specialty dependent and that I don’t know what specialty your D is applying to. If your D is doing derm, i’m not batting an eye at 60 apps or that friends of hers doing derm are applying to more. If your D and her friends are doing family medicine, then that volume of applications becomes extremely odd.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why this concept is so difficult for you.</p>
<p>Miami:</p>
<p>“D. is not concerned with getting her top pick, it is nice, but it would be just an icing on the cake. The concern is to get one spot, single spot will make her and us very happy. She is not into this at all rihgt now, she has many months of MS3. She is paying attention whenever she hears anything though. “</p>
<p>Again students want to try to match in the main match, not SOAP. And just like college and med school, I think that students should apply broadly and not just to competitive programs and/or specialties. Don’t pooh pooh programs because there not ranked someplace. However, unlike college and med schools applications, it is not so easy to have a one acceptance goal because you’re not going to get some early acceptance that will take the pressure off. D will learn on match day, period. As a MS3 your D and you might find it helpful to look at </p>
<p>[Main</a> Residency Match Data | The Match](<a href=“http://www.nrmp.org/match-data/main-residency-match-data/]Main”>Residency Data & Reports | NRMP)</p>
<p>Look at the link to 2012 NRMP Residency Program Survey. Check out the factors that PDs believe are important in matching. Many of those factors are in a MS3’s immediate and direct control. She absolutely needs to be into this right now. Besides Step 1, grades, etc. one of those factors (Dean’s letter/MSPE) may not be well understood. This is a fairly structured document. My S’s MSPE was 7 pages long. One paragraph completely summarizing the first two preclinical years was two sentences long. The first sentence said that he performed superiorly in the preclinical years. The second sentence was that his superior performance is further demonstrated by his very high Step 1 score. That was the total summary for the preclinical years. The bulk of the MSPE was simply quotes cut and pasted from the attending’s, senior resident’s and fellow’s evaluations of my S during his third year clerkships. It has comments like works well with team, eager, knowledgeable, able to form realistic diagnoses and treatment plans, etc. It is in essence a giant Cliff Notes letter of recommendation from the MDs that she is currently interacting with. It will be important to a PD to help him/her decide if you D will fit in. Your D may not be into the residency application process right now, but she needs to be into the third year as negative evaluations will show up on the MSPE and could negatively affect her matching.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>Jugul.
“jNot ust to competitive programs and/or specialties.”
-I undertand the first part. In fact, the ranking will not be considered (as usual D. is not into “prestige” at all). She was told that location is important, and she will listen to this advice. So, as of now, she will apply by location (as it has been in a past - for UG and Med. School).<br>
I completely do not understand the second part though. What do you mean? I did not realize that they can apply to several specialties. From everything that I heard (I do not have any first hand knowledge), I thought that they apply to one specialty. Could you, please, elaborate on this one?
I am so gald we have this thread!</p>
<p>Miami,</p>
<p>You can, theoretically, apply to as many specialties as you want. If you look at charting outcomes in the match, you’ll see that for competitive specialties in particular, it’s not uncommon to apply to a backup or two (e.g. someone wants plastic surgery but also applies to general surgery as a backup, or someone who wants derm also applies to IM) because if you don’t match anywhere you’re kind of screwed. Better to be a general surgeon or internist than nothing.</p>
<p>If you apply to more than one specialty, when it comes time to submit your rank list, you rank each individual program you interviewed at so you could ultimately do something like get 5 plastic surgery interviews but decide that unless you get into one of your top 3 choices, you’d rather just be a general surgeon and rank gen surg programs 4 and beyond.</p>
<p>I actually know several people who genuinely (i.e. couldn’t decide, not as backups) applied to two specialties (psych/IM was a common combo, path/IM was another) although most in this context usually pulled their applications from one specialty after a few more weeks of thinking about it. I imagine the people using it as backups don’t pull out unless they get lots of interviews-if they ever pull out.</p>
<p>Mea culpa:</p>
<p>After talking with my S yesterday I came to realize that my number of applicants in above post# 36 was way off. As it’s been quite a while he couldn’t remember either but thought the number was around 500? I apologize for my brain lapse.</p>
<p>Miami</p>
<p>I think IWBB #45 post answers your question. People do rank two specialties but it’s risky especially if she is applying to nothing but top programs (eg UCSF, Mass Gen, etc) or specialties (eg RadOnc, Derm ,etc).</p>
<p>Also it is not a match violation for an interviewer to ask a student if they are applying to more than one specialty. Answering yes could probably raise a big red flag as it could show a lack of commitment.</p>
<p>Miami<br>
although it is probably less helpful to a MS4 at this point, with your D being a MS3 check out the book “The Successful Match” by Rajani Katta MD and Samir Desai MD. It has lots of useful practical info.</p>
<p>Re programs asking about other specialties:</p>
<p>that’s why I said “theoretically.” There’s no logistical rule to prevent applying to all sorts of things but it’s going to be hard to tell an IM director how interested you are in IM when he knows you’re also applying to Rad-Onc (probably the only thing worse than that would be if he were to find out later you lied to him because you hid the fact that you were applying to Rad-Onc). </p>
<p>We had an MSTP graduate last year who did his PhD on bone repair mechanisms but he actually ended up applying to only gen surg programs, not ortho. He said that nearly EVERY program indicated during their interviews that they were concerned he was just using them as a back up to ortho and he would have to explain to them that that was just his PhD and that as a clinician he was 100% dead set on gen surg.</p>
<p>"she is applying to nothing but top programs "
-big NO. No applying based on ranking, she never ever considered it in her life. She will apply based on location as she was advised. They told her to apply in Midwest, and she will apply to every single one around our state (in circular movement on a map) until she reaches about 65 programs. That is how I see it, I might be whrong, but not in respect to “prestige” and ranking. D. has never cared about it. And in regard to residency, she will be happy to get somewhere, any place, the lowest ranked, she would not care. Cannot be choosy now, not like thinking which Med. School to attend, took her long time to decide. Does not look like people have choices in regard to residency.</p>
<p>As a student will be in residency training 3 or more years, I think a student should absolutely consider things like the locations where he/she will be happy, where they can receive the experiences/training that will enable them to move forward in whatever endeavor they choose, enjoy their work environment and colleagues, etc. We’re talking about some person’s future and he/she should not let the fact that they didn’t apply to some program that is “higher ranked” based on something like total research funding create unwarranted angst in their decision making process. If one chooses to apply to a “ranked” program, fine. As the competition will be fierce at ranked or unranked programs considering the somewhat static number of residency slots, students need to apply broadly. Remember just applying doesn’t equal interview offer. But receiving an offer does provide choices as at least the student can attend interview, get a feel for the program and people, and whether or not it fits with his/her expectations and then create a list of their choices, aka rank list. However, after the deadline to submit the rank list has passed, things are out of their hands and in the hands of a computer program.</p>
<p>Well, I am trying to make some kind of sense out of applying to couple specialties. All I know as of now are posts above. According to these posts (and nothing else), it lloks as though applying to 2 specialties is shooting yourself in a foot for either of them. Apparently, if it is not the case, then there is something there that we do not see based on the posts above. Frankly, I cannot see anything positive, just trying to think thru the process, placing myself into interviewer seat. He/she is the very very busy person, who is trying to indure minimum effort in finding the best candidate for the spot that has many very top applicants who are shwoing a total devotion to one specialty. Why to waste the time on somebody who is not sure and/or has some back up plan? I personally would let this applicant to paly his game at somebody else’s expanse, not mine.</p>
<p>Applying to two specialties is not shooting yourself in the foot - especially if you desire a very competitive specialty. The competitive specialties know they are competitive and do not hold it against applicants that they are willing to be something less competitive. The reason why people who don’t match applied to more specialties isn’t that programs turned them down for applying to multiple, it’s that the people who apply to multiple are the ones who are less likely to match. Strong applicants don’t need backups.</p>
<p>The example I gave was someone wishing to do gen surg (not competitive) but people worrying they were using them as a backup for ortho (very competitive). Ortho programs would not have been concerned to hear he was willing to be a general surgeon. But you are right that you would shoot yourself in the foot if you applied to family medicine with a backup of being a dermatologist. A) it makes no sense, b) no one would believe you.</p>
<p>Now, if he told his 4th choice ortho program “well, if I don’t get my top 3 choices I would rather be a general surgeon than come here” that would be shooting yourself in the foot. But an applicant saying “I’ve applied to gen surg programs in case I don’t match into any ortho programs” is not.</p>
<p>iwbb,
How many succssfful applicants who have applied to 2 specialties do you know? And what specialties did they apply?</p>
<p>If we look at chart 5 of charting outcomes: <a href=“http://b83c73bcf0e7ca356c80-e8560f466940e4ec38ed51af32994bc6.r6.cf1.rackcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/chartingoutcomes2011.pdf[/url]”>http://b83c73bcf0e7ca356c80-e8560f466940e4ec38ed51af32994bc6.r6.cf1.rackcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/chartingoutcomes2011.pdf</a></p>
<p>We see that for the more competitive specialties, the mean # of distinct specialties ranked approaches or exceeds 2 among applicants who matched:
Derm: 2.1
Rads: 1.7
Plastics: 2.3
Rad-Onc: 1.8
(I’ll admit I’m surprised Neurosurg, Ortho and ENT are 1.1
Anesthesia almost made the cut at 1.4 and PM&R is shockingly high at 1.4)</p>
<p>1 is probably still most common but there has to be enough of a tail to pull the averages up given the number of applicants. If you go down into the specialty specific sections, they break it down into 1, 2,3, 4 or more specialties ranked.</p>
<p>In fact, jumping down to derm and plastics. The minority of people matching into derm applied to one specialty and only 2 people who matched into plastics applied to one (compared to the roughly 80 people matching who applied to 2 or 3)</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, this is the list of specialties with <1.3 as the average:
EM: 1.1
Family Med: 1.1
Gen Surg: 1.0
IM: 1.0
IM/Peds: 1.2
Neuro: 1.2
OB/GYN: 1.0
Path: 1.0
Peds: 1.0
Psych: 1.1</p>
<p>I would argue that you are right, applying to path and IM is shooting yourself in the foot for both, but clearly derm/IM or plastics/gen surg is not so.</p>
<p>I have zero personal knowledge of anyone applying successfully/unsuccessfully to multiple specialties or their motivations. Maybe the motivation is a couple’s thing where one is willing to accept a specialty other than his/her preferred specialty just so the couple can stay together. Maybe it’s just hard for a 20 something med student to zero in on one choice that will impact him/her for the next 40/50 years and so he/she takes a shot at his/her top two specialties. </p>
<p>I do not think the students who try constitute a sizable population. It is however done but would be an enormous undertaking. Besides huge amounts of money and time, additional considerations such as personal statements tailored to each specialty, acquiring timely rec letters from MDs in each area, making sure the rec letters didn’t end up going to wrong specialty, etc would be needed. I just think most MS4’s will not want to chance failing to match and would probably list 14 programs in one just specialty (contiguous) v splitting their list into two groups of say 7 which brings up the question of how would you split them: 7 of one first and then 7 of the other, or would you alternate the specialties 1 first then the other then back?? </p>
<p>The most recent charting the outcomes 2011 states that applicants are more likely to be successful if they rank more programs in their desired specialty (contiguous – meaning the number of programs ranked in the first-choice specialty before a program in another specialty appears on the rank list)</p>
<p>[Main</a> Residency Match Data | The Match](<a href=“http://www.nrmp.org/match-data/main-residency-match-data/]Main”>Residency Data & Reports | NRMP)</p>
<p>I think most students are just ready to move on, and although feasible to apply to multiple specialties and is done by a few for their own reasons, will just take the path of least resistance and pick one specialty to apply for.</p>
<p>From the research I have done, IWBB is correct, is in not uncommon to apply to two specialities when one is incredibly more competitive than the other, like Ortho/gen surg. It is also not uncommon for average or below average applicants to hedge their bets with something like fam med & IM, but wow, two PSs. two sets of letters, and worse, two sets of interviews.</p>
<p>If it is a below average applicant (read SDN!) either due to scores, marks, failing a step exam or being a DO or IMG, I think that it is understood why a person might be applying to more than one speciality. I have read of DO’s & IMGs applying to 100+ programs in hopes of half a dozen interviews. That should not be an issue for most MD applicants, but possibly a couples match or a person who needed to stay in one region, for example, there are significantly more residency options in the eastern US than the western US, so a person with a family obligation in the west might apply to more than one option in their area.</p>
<p>All in all, it seems advisable to choose your one specialty if you are likely to match and choose a back up if your chances of matching #1 are weaker.</p>
<p>you guys are giving me a headache.</p>
<p>i’m (blissfully?) stuck on a rural rotation until January and would be up for some “light” reading about my alleged future. any suggestions beyond the links above and “the successful match”? </p>
<p>also, any insight into how much weight “who you know” holds? i have some well-known-to-the-field contacts/mentors in the relevant-to-my-future research area i’m interested in, and i’m curious about whether/how much i might leverage those in the future.</p>
<p>who you know carries a not insignificant amount of weight (at least it is constantly brought up at my school). The difference among applicants is so thin that a recommendation/phone call from a trusted colleague goes a long way.</p>
<p>There is someone on CC who interviews residents who said something to that effect. He said it is a common practice to recommend students for residencies and it seems to go a long way to get into some programs. I forget the ID but he is usually vocal about not going to shortened BS/MD programs.</p>
<p>Who you know is definitely important, especially in the smaller fields where so many people know each other. One phone call from a heavy hitter in the field can lead to interview or a rank to match spot.</p>