Potentially a completely career-altering opportunity for 2 lucky souls though
Yay!!! Number ONE Choice!!!
@mom2collegekids: congratulations to you, family and most importantly your S.
Happy Match Day to @mom2collegekids and @CottonTales
Weâre all excited! Thank you!!! From wine to champagne!
How hard is it to go back to California for residency after going to an east coast medical school?
My D is a CA resident. She got accepted to UCSD but is leaning toward going to a top 3 (USNews ranking) non-CA school. She really want to go back to CA for residency. Currently, her top 2 choices for specialty are anesthesiology and ophthalmology. Of course she may change it later.
I do understand that for competitive specialty, residency depends a lot on step scores, LORs, research⊠Hopefully she will be doing OK for her steps score even though there may not be a very strong correlation between her SAT score (2360), MCAT score (525(new)~41-42(old)) to step scores.
Anyway, I appreciate any input in what you think would give her a better chance for residency in CA: UCSD or the east coast school?
Thanks in advance
Are you saying that she was accepted to UCSD med school, but prefers a top 3 med elsewhere?
I donât think it would be hard - at all - to go back to Calif for residency.
My son hasnât lived in Calif since he was in grade school, but when he applied for residencies in Callif, he got invited to interview at nearly all of the Calif residency programs he applied. If he had ended up ranking any of them higher, he likely would have matched there.
Your DD would have a further advantage because sheâs still a Calif resident.
Since your DD is a strong test taker, sheâs likely going to have high Step scores. She should have no trouble getting residency interviews as long as the rest of her app is strong.
AlsoâŠfor your DDâs 4th year of med, she can apply to do an Away Rotation in Calif. My son did that last October and it was an awesome experience.
Yes DD got accepted to both UCSD and the east coast school. And she think the other school would give her a better chance for her residency choice in CA.
Thank you for the Away Rotation tip. Will let her know about that.
@dave61
RE: returning to California is going to be a big IFâregardless of whether she attends med school in CA or not. Itâs going to depend on what specialty she wants to pursue and what her grades & STEP scores look like.
And itâs going to depend on the policies of the specific med school. Some med schools very much like to keep their own med students for residency; others tell their own students not even to apply to their home program because they will not rank them. If she strongly wishes to stay in CA she might ask where exactly UCSD falls on that continuum.
My Ds attend a med school in Rocky Mt region and both wanted to stay in the West for residency. (One is now at an East Coast Ivy which was not her first or second choice because she wanted to stay in the West; the other will go into the match next year. She wants to match in CA, but also wants to be match into an academic residency so she is resigned that she will probably end up in the East or midwest. )
There are some major issues for matching in CAâ
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there are fewer residency positions (especially many fewer academic residency positions) in CA and western states than there are on the East Coast. (This is because there are a much smaller number of western med schools in CA and the West than there are in the East.)
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a annual survey of medical students reveals that a full 1/3 of all US med grads want to do their residency on California.
mom2âs son had exceptional qualifications for his specialty of choice. Top grades, exceptional STEP scores. Plus he impressed during his aways in CA. (I will note here that her son did not match at a CA school.)
Interviewing is NOT the same as matching.
Residency programs interview at least 5-8 (or more) applicants for every program slot. Sometimes significantly more than that for competitive specialties. For example, at most of the residency programs D1 interviewed at (in a moderately competitive specialty), the PDs interviewed over a 100-120 candidates for 12 positions. That isnât uncommon.
If your D is interested in a competitive specialty (like ophthalmology), she will need to apply broadly to several dozen programs in order to interview at & rank a sufficient number of programs so she has a decent chance at matching. (The 2016 NRMP survey of program director does include data for ophthalmology, but for orthoâwhich is approximately equally competitiveâapplicants need to rank at least 15-16 programs to have > 90% chance of matching)
There are only 6 ophthalmology residency programs in the entire state of CA. (see:[Ophthalmology Programs Academic Year 2016-2017 United States](https://apps.acgme.org/ads/Public/Reports/ReportRun?ReportId=1&CurrentYear=2016&SpecialtyId=41&IncludePreAccreditation=false))
Anesthesia will be less of an issue since it hasnât been a particularly competitive specialty in the last few years. If she open to matching at community program (rather than an academic one), then thereâs good chance she can find a residency slot in CA.
Aways can help her match back to CA academic programs, but aways are always a doubled edged sword. If your performance during the away rotation impresses, it will boost your chances to match at that program; however, if your performance is average or less than average, it will damage your chances everywhere. You also need to consider that doing really well at an away rotation can actually damage oneâs chances of matching elsewhere. A LOE from an away that heaps high praise on an applicant will cause other programs to say âConvince me why youâd come here over XXXâ and often causes a candidates ranking to be moved lower on the departmentâs rank list (or not ranked at all)
For these reasons, D2 (who has grades & STEPs & additional qualifications in the same range as mom2âs son, thus making her one of the top candidates in the nation for her future specialty) was strongly advised by her the dept chair of her specialty NOT to do an away unless she is desperate to match at particular program because it will only damage her match opportunities.
(BTW, for some specialties, away rotations are mandatory; for other specialties theyâre stongly not recommended. And no, it doesnât make any sense to me eitherâŠ)
Matching is complicated and nothing is ever certain. Numbers (STEP scores & grades) are important for getting a residency interview, but âprogrammatic and personality fitâ are #1 item a PD considers when making up the rank list.
Sorryâtypo
The 2016 NRMP survey of program directors does NOT include data for ophthalmology
Thank you so much for a lot of helpful information. Even though she is just about to get into medical school, it is good to know these things so she could plan accordingly and set the right expectation.
Will definitely have her read your post.
Thanks again
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mom2âs son had exceptional qualifications for his specialty of choice. Top grades, exceptional STEP scores. Plus he impressed during his aways in CA. (I will note here that her son did not match at a CA school.)
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Very true.
My son didnât rank a Calif residency as his #1 or #2. He matched into his #1. His #3 was UCLAâŠthat was the highest he ranked a Calif residency.
If your DD has the high stats during med school that her current high school stats suggest that sheâs capable of achieving, then I donât think sheâll have a hard time getting a Calif residency. Sheâll have the advantage of being a Calif resident.
See if you can find where residents in Calif went to med school. I would be surprised to see if they highly bias towards their own students.
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1059
Elleneast
Registered User
Posts: 1,224
Senior Member
03-15-2017 at 8:53 pm edited March 15
Boy, Columbia dropped the ball. I just looked at their cardiothoracic surgery residency web page and it looks like they take two a year.
1060
iwannabe_Brown
Registered User
Posts: 7,366
Senior Member
03-15-2017 at 9:23 pm
Potentially a completely career-altering opportunity for 2 lucky souls though
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Oh my! And @iwannabe_Brown is likely right! If Iâm understanding all of this, then likely Columbia will be accepting two students who otherwise would not have the stats to have likely ever been interviewed before.
Itâs possible that they took someone they did interview but then failed to match (eg didnât rank enough programs)
Wow, I just realized, itâs time to talk fellowships, they apply for those an entire year before they finish residency, and need to put together a nice application, etc. It never ends!
@mom2collegekids - Congratulations to your son on matching to number 1!
@somemom - I think it depends on specialty. From what I have seen radiology fellows do apply an year early and find out by May the previous year while cardiologists interview similar to residents but find out in December (at least two areas I know people in).
IWBB - when do you get to second Dr.
Dâs residency alone is 7 years, so she wonât be seeing fellowship for a long, long time.
I didnât realize that a residency could be that long. (7 years)
@raclut, her residency has a mandatory 2 years of research after year 2, then 3 more clinical (is that what it is called?) after that.
@texaspg I get the 2nd one in 2018. And yes, fellowship timelines is not only specialty dependent but fellowship dependent. One of my pediatrician friends matched in december of his final year, the other (doing a different fellowship) matched in march of his final year.
@ralcut - neurosurg and plastics top the list at 6: https://physiciansalaries.â â â â â â â â â â â â â /residency-lengths/
@CottonTales 's D is probably in some sort of special track of residency that gives protected time for something (in this case, research) - her Dâs timeline sounds a lot like my surgery chiefâs path that involved getting an MPH during residency.