Primary Care Residencies - Competitiveness

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mssopranogirl

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I was wondering, between family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics, which primary care specialty has the most and least competitive residency?

Thanks!

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All are extremely uncompetitive as a whole. However they all possess higher ranked programs which are undoubtedly more competitive.
 
Sounds about right. A lot of the top IM programs in the country require ROAD-type numbers. (then there are others that will kiss your feet for interviewing there and not being a foreign grad).
 
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Sounds about right. A lot of the top IM programs in the country require ROAD-type numbers. (then there are others that will kiss your feet for interviewing there and not being a foreign grad).


Dont know if this is considered common knowledge on SDN, but what is a ROAD type number?
 
Competitive programs aside, and between those three fields specifically, it could be said that it is easiest to match into Internal Medicine, as it has the most positions available overall. See the numbers here: http://www.nrmp.org/data/resultsanddata2010.pdf

Dont know if this is considered common knowledge on SDN, but what is a ROAD type number?
Around mid-200's Step I score and high grades.
 
Forgive me if this is common knowledge, but where can I find out the competitiveness of a specific residency program? Is there a site where residency programs are ranked based on quality/competitiveness? Thanks!
 
Forgive me if this is common knowledge, but where can I find out the competitiveness of a specific residency program? Is there a site where residency programs are ranked based on quality/competitiveness? Thanks!

not really. The quality of a program is largely dependent on the individuals running it, which can change over time. Having a knowledgeable specialty-specific adviser does wonders.

US News can kinda give you an idea, but that's the quality of the department, not the quality of the training program... and even that has to be taken with a large grain of salt.
 
Forgive me if this is common knowledge, but where can I find out the competitiveness of a specific residency program? Is there a site where residency programs are ranked based on quality/competitiveness? Thanks!
This is a really good question, and it might be hard to get reliable answers about specific programs without being in medical school and having a specialty-specific advisor, as Winged Ox said.
 
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Competitive programs aside, and between those three fields specifically, it could be said that it is easiest to match into Internal Medicine, as it has the most positions available overall. See the numbers here: http://www.nrmp.org/data/resultsanddata2010.pdf


Around mid-200's Step I score and high grades.

It is important to note the positions that remain unfilled. Family Med has more unfilled positions than peds and IM combined, so I would say family Med is less competitive.


To the other poster who asked:

Radiology
Ophthalmology
Anesthesiology
Dermatology

= ROAD specialties. Some are starting to consider psychiatry as one as well, because of lifestyle, but the anagram and competitiveness don't fit well... although psych has been getting more competitive over the last few years.
 
Forgive me if this is common knowledge, but where can I find out the competitiveness of a specific residency program? Is there a site where residency programs are ranked based on quality/competitiveness? Thanks!


Nope. no website - and the quality of a residency program is sometimes not in line with it's competitiveness. Some places require far more competitive stats because of where they're located or because of preferences of the program itself (ie research activities), not because they're actually turning out top-notch providers.
 
All are extremely uncompetitive as a whole. However they all possess higher ranked programs which are undoubtedly more competitive.

This sounds about right to me, too.

Dont know if this is considered common knowledge on SDN, but what is a ROAD type number?

240 or so the magic number, right?
 
FM is the least competitive. below average Step Scores, very low proportion of LCME grads, very high proportion unfilled slots (comparatively)

i believe a Step I score of 240 is around the 85th percentile, roughly 40,000 people take the exam each year.
 
FM is the least competitive. below average Step Scores, very low proportion of LCME grads, very high proportion unfilled slots (comparatively)

i believe a Step I score of 240 is around the 85th percentile, roughly 40,000 people take the exam each year.


Where are you getting that percentile score? I would be interested in looking into that, because it doesn't really seem like the two digit score is a percentile rank and the two digit for a 240 would most likely be a 99.
 
Where are you getting that percentile score? I would be interested in looking into that, because it doesn't really seem like the two digit score is a percentile rank and the two digit for a 240 would most likely be a 99.

Yeah 2 digit scoring isn't a percentile, though many people (particularly foreign school graduates) misuse it as such.
 
Where are you getting that percentile score? I would be interested in looking into that, because it doesn't really seem like the two digit score is a percentile rank and the two digit for a 240 would most likely be a 99.

Yeah 2 digit scoring isn't a percentile, though many people (particularly foreign school graduates) misuse it as such.

sorry for any confusion - i realize the two-digit score isn't a percentile - i was simply extrapolating the info on usmle.org (mean score is usually quoted around 215-220, SD of around 20) It seemed reasonable to assume that a 240 was around 85th percentile.

i see people here throw Step scores around an awful lot, but saying "u need 240 for the ROAD" isn't any more useful than saying "u need 31 to get in2 med skool" without some idea of what that performance represents.
 
Yeah 2 digit scoring isn't a percentile, though many people (particularly foreign school graduates) misuse it as such.

I can relate to the foreign grads confusion on this one. I don't understand the concept of a mysterious 2-digit score either.


sorry for any confusion - i realize the two-digit score isn't a percentile - i was simply extrapolating the info on usmle.org (mean score is usually quoted around 215-220, SD of around 20) It seemed reasonable to assume that a 240 was around 85th percentile.

i see people here throw Step scores around an awful lot, but saying "u need 240 for the ROAD" isn't any more useful than saying "u need 31 to get in2 med skool" without some idea of what that performance represents.

That makes sense. Yeah, I think the way most of the numbers are thrown around one this site make everything sound so concrete, but there are always exceptions and other factors which are more difficult to quantify, which most SDNers seem to forget.


Latest data is 221 with SD of 24. So 240 is around 80th%ile

It's crazy that a 245 is ~84th percentile. Those numbers sound like they would be in the 90th percentile at least, but you can't argue with the statistics. It also helps to determine an approximate max score for the exam, which is a lot higher than I though it was.
 
It's crazy that a 245 is ~84th percentile. Those numbers sound like they would be in the 90th percentile at least, but you can't argue with the statistics. It also helps to determine an approximate max score for the exam, which is a lot higher than I though it was.
Yeah, 99.9th percentile is 293 (what the... :boom:) so assuming virtually no one gets everything right, the ceiling is probably 300 (ish.)
 
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