Dude. Nobody's making fun of your gender. But not having at least a rudimentary sense of humor is going to make you a distinct minority about EM practitioners, in my own experience. If you're gonna do this for a living, you might as well lighten up, because you're going to see and treat depressing things in the ED on a daily basis, and if you can't laugh at yourself and other people, you'll end up crying at the end of every shift.
Most of us are sitting around biting our fingernails for the next two weeks and change, eagerly and anxiously awaiting to learn IF and WHERE we're going to spend three or four (or more) years of our lives becoming emergency medicine physicians. Any attempt at humor to take my mind off this horrible, hideous waiting is certainly welcome, for my two cents.
You're never going to get anyone to tell you what the "best" program is, because there's no way to define that. Do you want to live in a certain geographic region? Do you want to do lots of trauma in a busy county ER where you're drawing all your own labs and wheeling patients to X-ray yourself, or do you want to work in a pretty, well-lit community program with great benefits and lower volumes? Do you want to focus on EMS, HBO, administration, toxicology, something else? Do you want a program with fellowships? Is placing yourself in a fellowship important to you? Do you want to do lots of research, some research, no research? Do you want a program with six residents per class and lots of camaraderie, or a program with 20 residents per class and lots of diversity? What kind of program director do you want to work for? Do you want to moonlight? Do you have a spouse and children, and if so, what kind of place would they want to live? Do you want a three or four year program? Do you want a combined program (e.g. EM/IM)? The RRC ensures that all residency programs meet a standard, and for emergnecy medicine, that's a pretty high standard universally. You aren't going to get hosed by going anywhere accredited, and there's still plenty of demand for EM docs most places. It's hard to make a WRONG choice; it's much harder to make a RIGHT choice. In the end, just like going to medical school, it's going to be what you make of it - what kind of recommendations you get, how are your evaluations, what kind of professional connections do you make, and so on. The places with good reputations are the places which are generally established programs at large academic centers; if you want to do high-powered academic medicine, someplace like Cincinnati would be perfect for you. Me, I want to do small-town community emergency medicine, and the idea of a research-oriented urban knife-and-gun program just depresses and frightenes me, which is why I ranked highly programs that are community-type programs with a clinical, not a research, bent (e.g. Orlando Regional, Palmetto Richland, East Carolina). So, the only way to find out what programs are the best is to figure out what YOU want and find the programs whose aims match yours. I hope something in there was helpful. Best of luck to you in your search.