2nd choice for residency?

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I noticed that on the information provided by the AAGME (I'm probably getting that acronym wrong!), those who applied to derm residencies applied to an average of 2.2 types of residency positions. What other residencies seem to be the most common "second choices" for potential dermies? What appeals most to the same types of people who like derm? Obviously this is because of the competition for derm, but it's not really like the plastics people having a second choice of gen surg so they can do plastics later since there's pretty much just one path for derm. I guess one could do family practice and see some derm, path and do derm path eventually, or do something else procedure oriented with a decent lifestyle like EM or anesthesia? Thanks in advance for any insight!

Anecdotal, but everyone I know who didn't match derm and didn't want to reapply ended up doing peds or medicine.

most people apply to two types of residencies when applying to derm:

1) preliminary medicine (or surgery I guess if you like masochism)
2) advanced dermatology position

(unless they're just applying to categorical derm. only)

Hi Everybody,
Congratulations to all successful matchers. An alternative to immediately committing to a different medical specialty is completing a transitional year or prelim year, then applying to a research fellowship. Research fellows then re-apply to the residency match after building an impressive CV. One should apply if you are interested in research or academic medicine because it's outstanding training. Though it adds a couple years to your training, research fellows historically have high match percentages too.

I am a current research fellow at St. Louis University in St. Louis, MO. There is a posting for our 1st year position on SDN. The deadline for research fellow applications is quickly approaching 4/2/2012. Thanks for your interest.

Originally Posted by DermResearch

Hi Everybody,
Congratulations to all successful matchers. An alternative to immediately committing to a different medical specialty is completing a transitional year or prelim year, then applying to a research fellowship. Research fellows then re-apply to the residency match after building an impressive CV. One should apply if you are interested in research or academic medicine because it's outstanding training. Though it adds a couple years to your training, research fellows historically have high match percentages too.

I am a current research fellow at St. Louis University in St. Louis, MO. There is a posting for our 1st year position on SDN. The deadline for research fellow applications is quickly approaching 4/2/2012. Thanks for your interest.

Sounds like OP is asking which specialties do derm applicants apply for during the match, rather than what do they do if they DO NOT match. We had three people in my med school apply for derm this year and it varied amongst them. One applied for both medicine and derm spots. The other two ranked only Derm and prelim medicine spots. The 2.2 specialties ranked statistic is likely due to the people who list prelim medicine spots at the tail end of their rank lists to avoid going unmatched and having to scramble (SOAP now, I guess).

Originally Posted by RedPeony

I noticed that on the information provided by the AAGME (I'm probably getting that acronym wrong!), those who applied to derm residencies applied to an average of 2.2 types of residency positions. What other residencies seem to be the most common "second choices" for potential dermies? What appeals most to the same types of people who like derm? Obviously this is because of the competition for derm, but it's not really like the plastics people having a second choice of gen surg so they can do plastics later since there's pretty much just one path for derm. I guess one could do family practice and see some derm, path and do derm path eventually, or do something else procedure oriented with a decent lifestyle like EM or anesthesia? Thanks in advance for any insight!

i did derm and prelim med. not really a backup, i would still try to do derm as a pgy1 and not path, or IM etc.

The thing here is to realize what you really want before deciding..