surgical residencies.....

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rbfiji13

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OK, so I heard (emphasis on heard) that many surgical residencies go unfilled every year. Mostly because of the rigorous training and long hours (more so than in other specialty residencies) many med school graduates aren't willing to do it, and as a result, it is less competetive now than in past years. Is there any credibility to this statement? If this is true, is this just one of those cyclical type things and, in a few years, surgery will be just as competetive as it was? Like I said I was just told this and haven't researched it at all, so no one get offended.

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rbfiji13 said:
OK, so I heard (emphasis on heard) that many surgical residencies go unfilled every year. Mostly because of the rigorous training and long hours (more so than in other specialty residencies) many med school graduates aren't willing to do it, and as a result, it is less competetive now than in past years. Is there any credibility to this statement? If this is true, is this just one of those cyclical type things and, in a few years, surgery will be just as competetive as it was? Like I said I was just told this and haven't researched it at all, so no one get offended.
To answer your question briefly, about five years or so ago many residencies went unfilled for the reasons you mentioned. With the introduction of the "80 work week" the idea has become that a surgery residency must be cake and it has gotten competitive again. Though I dont know exact stats, but I think that there were only a handful categorical positions that went unfilled last year and they were snatched up right away in the scramble. You don't need to wait for a few years, surgery has already gotten competitive again.
 
rbfiji13 said:
OK, so I heard (emphasis on heard) that many surgical residencies go unfilled every year. Mostly because of the rigorous training and long hours (more so than in other specialty residencies) many med school graduates aren't willing to do it, and as a result, it is less competetive now than in past years. Is there any credibility to this statement? If this is true, is this just one of those cyclical type things and, in a few years, surgery will be just as competetive as it was? Like I said I was just told this and haven't researched it at all, so no one get offended.

Six unfilled spots last year, seems pretty easy to get one. :confused:
 
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Skinny said:
Six unfilled spots last year, seems pretty easy to get one. :confused:

where can one see the unfilled spots?
 
Surgery has become more competitive, among other reasons, because people can do a cosmetic surgery fellowship quite easily if they can't match into an independent plastics fellowship.
 
ggx12 said:
where can one see the unfilled spots?

The match puts out a list each year. I think scutwork.com has lists for the last several years. Even at the "worst," 60/1000 spots didn't fill, and it has been in the 2-9 range recently.
 
Pilot Doc said:
Even at the "worst," 60/1000 spots didn't fill, and it has been in the 2-9 range recently.

Surgery is competative again. The "6" was not 6%. It was actually 6, meaning 6 residency (categorical) positions unfilled in the entire country. The year before it was 2. Many more unfilled prelim spots, a few hundred.
 
teamdick said:
Surgery is competative again. The "6" was not 6%. It was actually 6, meaning 6 residency (categorical) positions unfilled in the entire country. The year before it was 2. Many more unfilled prelim spots, a few hundred.

Unmatched Spots (out of about 1050 each year)
1994 11
1995 6
1996 1
1997 6
1998 23
1999 38
2000 12
2001 68
2002 57
2003 11
2004 2
2005 6

The worst year, 2001, was about 6% unmatched. It is much more competitive in recent years.
 
Pilot Doc said:
Unmatched Spots (out of about 1050 each year)
1994 11
1995 6
1996 1
1997 6
1998 23
1999 38
2000 12
2001 68
2002 57
2003 11
2004 2
2005 6

Why such bigger fluctuations in unmatched rates in '98, '99, '01, '02?
 
Chief Resident said:
Why such bigger fluctuations in unmatched rates in '98, '99, '01, '02?

Pre 80 work week (2003) just about everyone who applied got into surgery, so a difference of 40 or so unmatched spots probably meant 40 or so less people applied in a given year (not so big considering about 1000 spots are available).
Rather than looking at numbers of slots available after the match (and there are slots available after a match in most if not all specialties) a better indicator of the competitiveness of a speciality is to see the number of applicants per slots available.
I don't have exact numbers but I've heard that during the dark days (ie. 2002) the number of US applicants dipped to 800-900 range. The past couple of years I think that number climbed to 1500 ish applicants a year.
Now if you decide that you have to go to an academic program and will only live in the Northeast or the West (as a healthy portion of that 1500 will decide) cut down the number of slots to 100-150 and you can see how competitive surgery can be.
 
In 2004, 201 U.S. medical school graduates or students didn't match. That means for every five positions offered, one person didn't match. That might not sound bad but that's actually the seventh toughest ratio amongst all the residencies behind plastics, derm, ent, ortho, urology, & neurosurg. Plastics was almost a 1:1 but ortho, ent, neuro, urology were all around a 4 or 5:1 ratio...which I guess is real evidence gen surg has gotten tougher.

Realize that there's a lot of self selecting going on here as well.

Just for info, family practice, by these measures, is easily the least competitive specialty. For every 105 spots filled there was 1 unmatched applicant.
 
USCTex said:
Realize that there's a lot of self selecting going on here as well.

.


What do you mean by that?
 
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