retina fellowship questions

PDT4CNV said:

Looking for some info on a few fellowships if anybody knows about these. I have my application list almost finalized, but there are just a few fellowships I haven't heard anything about.

Anybody know about the retina fellowships in:
DC
Denver
Madison
at Schei
or at Wash U.

Would appreciate any info, particularly regarding the role of the fellow, the amount of surgery that is done both 1st and 2nd years, call, amount of trauma, etc.

Thanks in advance.

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I'm in the process of applying as well and the only information I have about the programs you listed relates to Madison, Denver, and Wash U.
Madison is a great program, but they take one fellow every other year and the year we are applying is an off year (no fellow to start in July 2007)
Denver is a new program with I think only one or two prior fellows.
Wash U seems like a pretty good program both on reputation and quality of training/surgery. I have had the opportunity to meet Dr. Holekamp and she really seems like she would be very pleasant to work for.
That's all I've got though.
I really wish there was a central application service though. I'm going crazy tracking down all these other documents in their different permutations to satisfy every program's different application requirements.
Good luck with everything and maybe we'll meet on the interview trail.

I have a similar question about retina fellowships. Are there any rankings for retina fellowships?

PDT4CNV said:

There are no rankings. Most of what you can find out about them is by word of mouth/reputation. From what I have learned, there may be about 10-15 really really good fellowships, maybe 20. There are a lot of bad ones.

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Can you further elaborate on which ones are good and bad?

GuP said:

Can you further elaborate on which ones are good and bad?

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Without naming names, there are a lot of fellowships where you are with just one guy, who basically uses you as a slave to cover his call, and do scutwork. These poor souls don't get to go to any of the fellows conferences either, because they get almost no vacation time. I really strongly think you need to be in a practice with more than 1 surgeon. 2 as a bare minimum, preferably 3 or more.

One exception to the solo boss fellowship would be the Steve Charles fellowship. That man is a genius & I think that would be a great fellowship, although I've never met one of his fellows.

Just my humble opinion, but from talking to lots of other retina fellows & 16 interviews, this would be my list.

In no particular order
My top 5 Best: Wills, Columbia / Manhattan Eye & Ear, Wilmer, Bascom Palmer, UCLA

& for internationals, Mayo Clinic, UBC Vancouver, Toronto, UC Irvine

Next top 11: Doheny, New York Eye & Ear, Mass Eye & Ear, Duke, Rush U / Illinois Retina, Chicago, Wash U, U Alabama Birmingham, Tufts, Iowa, Cleveland Clinic, William Beaumont

Other good fellowships, that may arguably belong in the list above include
U Chicago, Cornell, Scheie, kresge, Northwestern, Yale, Washington Retina, Baylor, UC Davis, Seattle, Emory, UIC, NRI, NEI, Wisconsin

There are almost certainly other good one's I've left off that list, because I forgot, or just haven't heard enough about them.
hope this helps

The above list is fairly good. You should also add Medical College of Wisconsin and the Oregon program to the list of reputable fellowships. UK in Lexington is a fellowship that I have heard solid things from the current fellows as well.

theeyeboy said:

The above list is fairly good. You should also add Medical College of Wisconsin and the Oregon program to the list of reputable fellowships. UK in Lexington is a fellowship that I have heard solid things from the current fellows as well.

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Yes, I totally agree about Oregon & Medical College of Wisconsin, definitely great programs I should have included.
I don't know anything about the UK program, but am glad to hear it's a good solid program.

Thank you very much for the info. Hopefully, I can be in position to use it in the future!

Thank you for the post!

PDT4CNV said:

Do you know anything specifically about the many boston fellowships listed? There are several listed on sfmatch as being associated with Mass Eye and Ear, but the only one even mentioned on Mass Eye and Ear website is the one with Dr. Gragoudas. Anyway, just wondering if anybody knew anything about the many retina fellowships offered in boston.

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Yes there are a lot of fellowships in Boston & I only interviewed for one of them, so I don't know too much, but based on what I've heard, this is my humble opinion:

Mass Eye & Ear: clearly very famous, great institution & I would have happily gone there. I don't know much about how much surgery they get & what the conditions are like, but for CV shine, you can't beat that Harvard certificate.

Tufts: Great attendings & I think it would be a great program

Joslin: a 1 yr medical retina fellowship, with some very limited surgery. Definitely not enough surgery to consider being a retinal surgeon after just 1 year there, you would have to do another year or even 2 somewhere else. A great first fellowship for an international person who could then follow it up with a 2nd year somewhere else in the US, UK, Canada or Australia.

I don't know anything about them, but I would be very careful about some of the Boston fellowships in private practices with only 1 or 2 bosses. Find out in detail how much surgery you would get & how much scutwork would be involved.

someone sent me a private message asking about the NY programs, & I thought I'd post the answer here to help anyone else who was interested in doing retina



You also asked about the NY programs. Again in my humble opinion
Columbia: arguably the best. Led by Stanley Chang, an absolute genius who is not only one of the best surgeons in the world for complex retinal detachments, & has invented numerous things that have changed the face of retinal surgery, but he is also an incredibly nice guy. (Without mentioning names, there are some other famous retinal surgeons in other cities who are notoriously difficult to work with & unreasonably hard on their fellows & junior attendings)
Great amount of complex cases & generous surgical experience, plus awesome medical retina experience with Yanuzzi's VRMNY group

New York Eye & Ear Infirmary: also lots of great names, possibly the most surgical experience due to the larger resident clinic. Great new facilities, very modern retinal clinic facilities
Good location in the East Village

Cornell: Smaller program, but definitely on the upswing if Don D'Amico moves from Harvard to become the new chairman. Very nice location on the upper east side & Cornell has the best resident housing of all NY hospitals

NYU: Don;t know much about this, they were advertising a medical retina only fellowship

VRMNY: excellent medical retina fellowships for international fellows with Yanuzzi & Spaide & others
very fancy offices

hope this helps...

I know in the UK, (Moorfields Eye Hospital and Manchester Royal Eye Hospital) doctors comes from Australia, Spain, Singapore, New Zealand, Pakistan, India, and Scotland to do their VR fellowship.

Someone asked me in a PM about the programs in Michigan, Illinois, California, but I think it's better to keep the discussion on the forums, so everyone can learn


The Associated Retina Consultants / Royal Oak program in Michigan is very good, but they don't take internationals bc of billing issues. Kresge is excellent, lots of tough cases there in inner city Detroit. Henry Ford has a 1 yr program good for internationals.

All of the Illinois ones are good, esp Rush, U Chicago with Bill Mieler. Northwestern is very good.

California is very hard to get into as an international, except UC Irvine, but often it is booked up yrs in advance & you must have done a year in your home country. UC Davis have taken foreign fellows many years ago, but they didn't even reply to my application.
Doheny take lots of research fellows from internationally.
UCLA won't take internationals because of billing issues

One other tip for foreign fellows
Make sure you have done the ECFMG exams and got your ECFMG certificate. Most programs don't take you very seriously until you've got that done.
good luck

University of Toronto is good. They have two programs. One with St. Michael's Hospital and the other, with the University Health Network, Toronto Western Hospital. The St. Michael's vitreo-retinal fellowship is now two years, with 6 attendings. (When I trained 3 years ago, it was 1 year) The Toronto Western Hospital has the option of either a one or two year fellowship (last I've heard), and they have 4 attendings. Both hospitals have very good attendings, though my experience was with the St. Michael's group. A lot of pathology, though pediatric retinal surgery cases are usually with the TWH group. A lot of experience with simple to more difficult cases. You will also be responsible for resident teaching.

As a recent match, I will respectfully add/disagree with some of the above list. A lot of the listed places do have great departments with respected faculty, but may not have a great emphasis on training fellows. Some places with a great history of retina training have taken big downturns with chairman changes, etc.

Many of the above listed programs are purely medical, non-surgical. i.e. Scheie (last year at least). Some of the programs listed don't even have fellowships i.e. Seattle.

Of course, I lack the international perspective. I apologize for any USA-centrism

Here was my list of ~15 or so surgical retina places to which I applied. In no particular order. I had no desire to go to NYC or Boston, and perhaps other parts of the country, so that's one reason they're missing. Once you start getting interviews, I'd be happy to comment more specifically on each place.

Duke
Barnes (Wash U)
Emory
Beaumont (ARC)
Kresge
Kellogg (UMich)
Wills
UCLA
Iowa
Casey (Oregon)
Rush
Vanderbilt
UW Madison
USC
Northwestern
Tufts
Cal Pacific
Bascom
UCSD
Vancouver

You weren't impressed by MCW, UIC, or UofChicago?

smiegal said:

You weren't impressed by MCW, UIC, or UofChicago?

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My approach was to apply to what my retina department regarded as the top ~10 programs for retina training and then some other quality programs that were attractive in location. My retina department of course is biased given where they trained and the professional associations they have.

Those programs you listed *are* quite good.. I know MCW has produced some outstanding retina folks in the past, and UC now has Bill Mieler, who I've been told from many sources is simply an outstanding person in general.

However, I couldn't imagine myself interviewing at any more than 10 places. Even that may have been excessive. And filling out the applications and getting the retina department administrative staff to send out each batch of recommendation letters is a nightmare. The places I did end up going to visit, which I will be happy to tell you more about in depth when the time comes, are:

USC
UCLA
Oregon
Emory
Duke
Wills
Vanderbilt
Kellogg
Iowa
Cal Pacific (SF)

Some because they are top programs, some because they were geographically convenient.

I hope that helps. By no means am I slighting programs I didn't list.

How difficult is it for one to pursue a retina fellowship? I really don't know the numbers so it would be great if somoene can break the difficulty down in numbers or math. Also, what do fellowship programs? Reseaarch? Board scores from Med school? etc. etc..

GuP said:

How difficult is it for one to pursue a retina fellowship? I really don't know the numbers so it would be great if somoene can break the difficulty down in numbers or math. Also, what do fellowship programs? Reseaarch? Board scores from Med school? etc. etc..

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Hmmm... I'm not sure "what do fellowship programs?"

I'm guessing you want to know what they look for? =)

I'd argue that recommendation letters are the most important. Publications and how you spent your time in residency also count, as they give an indication of what you will contribute to the retina field. They request board scores from med school, and a very small number look at OKAP scores.

I think the match statistics are available somewhere else on this site. Most of the ophthalmology subspecialties are conducted through SFMatch.

RetFellow said:

Hmmm... I'm not sure "what do fellowship programs?"

I'm guessing you want to know what they look for? =)

I'd argue that recommendation letters are the most important. Publications and how you spent your time in residency also count, as they give an indication of what you will contribute to the retina field. They request board scores from med school, and a very small number look at OKAP scores.

I think the match statistics are available somewhere else on this site. Most of the ophthalmology subspecialties are conducted through SFMatch.

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Thanks! I was in a rush when typing. I will look for those stats.

Just curious, has anyone heard back from any programs regarding interview offers???
I've only heard back from only two schools of about 20 apps sent out.

ryangeraets said:

Just curious, has anyone heard back from any programs regarding interview offers???
I've only heard back from only two schools of about 20 apps sent out.

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I'm told by some sources that USC, UCLA, Tufts, Beaumont, Vanderbilt and Duke have given offers/rejections.

has anyone heard from Duke yet?

asd1 said:

has anyone heard from Duke yet?

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Email from Duke yesterday and mail from Iowa today.

Does anyone know how many candidates the fellowships typically invite for interviews?

Has anyone heard from Columbia, Wilmer or Bascom Palmer yet?

Anyone have anything to say about Yale, USC, Wills or NYEE?

Haven't heard much buzz around here lately.

Good luck all!

AmPmEye said:

Has anyone heard from Columbia, Wilmer or Bascom Palmer yet?

Anyone have anything to say about Yale, USC, Wills or NYEE?

Haven't heard much buzz around here lately.

Good luck all!

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USC's interviews are tomorrow. So if you applied this year, and haven't heard... um... well... . Sorry.

Is it typical for fellowships not to contact candidates not invited for interviews?

RetinaFellow said:

Is it typical for fellowships not to contact candidates not invited for interviews?

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I'd say that most (75%?) fellowships are gracious in denying interviews and inform applicants. Usually they wait until after the interview, in case there is a last minute cancellation and room for an alternate.

RetFellow said:

The places I did end up going to visit, which I will be happy to tell you more about in depth when the time comes, are:

USC
UCLA
Oregon
Emory
Duke
Wills
Vanderbilt
Kellogg
Iowa
Cal Pacific (SF)

Some because they are top programs, some because they were geographically convenient.

I hope that helps. By no means am I slighting programs I didn't list.

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Thanks for the replies.
Since you've visited these programs, can you compare USC (sorry for the obtuse post, I was invited there, only my first interview though so I can't make any comparisons), UCSD and UC Davis? Particularly for someone interested in combining surgery with academics?

How about Wills and Oregon?

I've got others, and I'd love to know how other applicants have evaluated their interview offers, and how they were able to effectively compare programs.

Thanks

PDT4CNV said:

Nice attitude to have. Glad I didn't apply there.

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Just stating the facts. AmPmEye did in fact interview there, and I congratulated him for visiting an excellent program. Sorry you couldn't consider it as a launch point for your budding retina career.

This year is apparently quite competitive, talking with current applicants and faculty. Fewer people are getting *all* their desired interviews, because there are many even-level qualified applicants to choose from.

Good luck to all of you.

RetFellow said:

My approach was to apply to what my retina department regarded as the top ~10 programs for retina training and then some other quality programs that were attractive in location. My retina department of course is biased given where they trained and the professional associations they have.

Those programs you listed *are* quite good.. I know MCW has produced some outstanding retina folks in the past, and UC now has Bill Mieler, who I've been told from many sources is simply an outstanding person in general.

However, I couldn't imagine myself interviewing at any more than 10 places. Even that may have been excessive. And filling out the applications and getting the retina department administrative staff to send out each batch of recommendation letters is a nightmare. The places I did end up going to visit, which I will be happy to tell you more about in depth when the time comes, are:

USC
UCLA
Oregon
Emory
Duke
Wills
Vanderbilt
Kellogg
Iowa
Cal Pacific (SF)

Some because they are top programs, some because they were geographically convenient.

I hope that helps. By no means am I slighting programs I didn't list.

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Would you care to comment on OHSU, as I am interviewing there shortly?

Also, do you have any advice as to what sorts of questions I ought to ask on interviews, or things we should be prepared for in general.

sanctuary302 said:

Would you care to comment on OHSU, as I am interviewing there shortly?

Also, do you have any advice as to what sorts of questions I ought to ask on interviews, or things we should be prepared for in general.

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Just for everyone's information, I've been responding privately to individuals requesting information about programs. I just prefer one-on-one communications--nothing I'm hiding. So if you're also interested in a certain program, please just drop me a line.

Has anyone heard from these places yet:

Kresge
Toronto
U Chicago
MCoW
Emory
Columbia

Kresge has sent out invitations. Emory has sent out half their invitations.

i noticed that many people left Wilmer off their list of top retina fellowships. i've heard mixed things about the retina fellowship there, mostly because people say they don't get enough surgical cases and it's more like medical retina. anyone agree/disagree?

I personally don't know anything about Wilmer. I have more questions myself. Anyone have anything to say about UC Irvine's program? I have some decisions to make and I am trying to make up my mind about Irvine, UC Davis, Loma Linda ( I know they're new), Northwestern, Univ. N.Carolina and Yale.

Good luck to you all.

I have an interview dilemma: vanderbilt vs. toronto western hospital. Any advice?

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the responses and PM's.

Curious what people think of Cornell, and Mass Eye and Ear.

I am intrigued by them, but I have sensed some hesitation about the training in some east coast programs.

Also interested in the fellowship training at Bascom Palmer. Excellent reputation. They seem to have an unusual setup in regards to training.
Anyone able to cut through the speculation and shine some light on how things are done in Miami?

Thanks again for the feedback, I hope you guys are enjoying your interviews.

sanctuary302 said:

I have an interview dilemma: vanderbilt vs. toronto western hospital. Any advice?

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If I may, go for the Toronto Western Hospital interview. Though I trained in St. Michael's Hospital, I know TWH also has a lot of cases.

hi guys,

i'm interviewing for residency now but running into fellowship applicants has made me wonder...

what are the things one should do during residency to get a good retina fellowship?

thanks!

Does anyone have any information on the St. Michael's fellowship in Toronto? Specifically, how it compares to US fellowships?

work your butt off, get involved in research, learn the heck out of general ophthalmology as well, make it clear to your retina attendings that you want to do a retina fellowship, develop good anterior segment surgical skills, and go to a program where they have a retinal fellowship and have a good reputation

I called SF match about this...

The program directors are notified Wednesday morning and are given one day to contact us. If we aren't contacted on Wednesday, then we can call them on Thursday for our match result. There is no notification if we do not match aside from our having to call SFmatch on Thursday to be told we're out of luck. The scramble then begins sometime after Thursday... Hopefully it doesn't come to that.

Good luck!
Ryan

So, how'd everyone do?

AmPmEye?
PDT4CNV?
ryangeraets?
sanctuary302?

Anyone else I may have missed.

Ok, I guess no one matched, or everyone is extremely secretive of where they matched

Well, good luck to this upcoming year's applicant pool. Can you believe people are already getting started on the application process?