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esperanzarising9 said:
That’s higher than I expected! But I’m guessing it’s a self-selective group. What does matching into PGY1 versus PGY2 mean?
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Most derm residencies send you to a separate Post-Grad-Year-1 preliminary internship in medicine (or a Transition Year a.k.a. TY) before you join their derm program as a PGY-2.

A small handful are full programs that take you in immediately as a PGY1 and put you through their customized first year experience instead. These are insanely competitive.
 
Does it say if the students took a gap year between M3 and M4?
 
esperanzarising9 said:
So PYG2 is the most popular option? And PYG3 is when people match into derm after completing 2 years of residency in a different field?
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No. PGY-2 is when people start their derm residency. The vast majority of programs are in this category. It requires a general intern year. Typically a medicine prelim or Transitional Year.
 
efle said:
Using the 2020 data for US MD, looks like there were 370/470 who matched PGY2 and another 23 who matched PGY1. So roughly a 83% success rate.
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Keep in mind, charting outcomes lists only those who submitted rank lists for that specialty (ie those who got interviews). If you applied to derm and got 0 interviews, you wouldn’t show up in the data. That said, that’s probably a small number of applicants. Most people who are not felt to be competitive are likely encouraged not to apply or self-select out of the applicant pool.

Fwiw, the year I applied, 40% of derm applicants from my school didn’t match. However, several of the unlucky students were told ahead of time they were not strong candidates.
 
esperanzarising9 said:
What kind of tier was your med school? Also do you think tier matters when matching derm?
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Pedigree certainly helps, don’t let anyone tell you it doesn’t, especially at the tippy top academic programs. During one of my interviews at a “brand name” academic program, they touted how many of their residents came from top 20 med schools. However, coming from a lower ranked school doesn’t preclude you from matching, even at big name programs. Letters, research, and academic record all matter much more than school rank.

My med school usually hovers in the USNWR (for whatever that’s worth) 50-60s, so pretty solidly middle tier. We did have a decent sized and well respected derm department though.
 
esperanzarising9 said:
Why is it then that high tier and low tier schools have about the same number of people who match into derm? At least this was true for the match lists I looked at
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I said that their road was easier at high tier schools. They all work their butts off to get a derm worthy app though
 
esperanzarising9 said:
Why is it then that high tier and low tier schools have about the same number of people who match into derm? At least this was true for the match lists I looked at
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There are way more students who don't go to high-tier schools than students who do. There are around 150 MD schools and another 40(?) DO schools. "High tier" includes 20-30. Say 50, even. If your observation is true, it means that half of derm matches come from at most 50 schools, and the other half come from 100 MD schools plus 40 DO schools. Plus—educated guess but not sure—the higher-tier schools probably have smaller class sizes on average.
 
esperanzarising9 said:
So do you think it’s about the same level of difficulty to match into derm from a high tier as low tier?
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No. Think of it this way, the higher tier your school is the more leeway you get with how many boxes you check. Someone from Drexel (throwing out a random school) will need to check all the derm boxes (Scores, grades, research, excellent LOR's, etc), wheras someone from Penn could probably get away without necessarily having all of the boxes checked as long as the rest of their app was in order.
 
esperanzarising9 said:
So do you think it’s about the same level of difficulty to match into derm from a high tier as low tier?
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No, that was the implicit point of my post. It's as if half of the spots are "reserved" for high-tier schools (maybe 1/4 of the applicant pool) and half are reserved for the low-tier schools (the other 3/4). Obviously this is not how it actually works, but it's approximately how it ends up.
 
Someone double check me I'm on mobile rn, but I'm pretty certain that while surgical subspecialties show little to no skew towards the Top 40 NIH schools in Charting Outcomes, I'm pretty sure Derm was an outlier with a huge skew (like close to 50% from Top 40 instead of only 33%)
 
efle said:
Someone double check me I'm on mobile rn, but I'm pretty certain that while surgical subspecialties show little to no skew towards the Top 40 NIH schools in Charting Outcomes, I'm pretty sure Derm was an outlier with a huge skew (like close to 50% from Top 40 instead of only 33%)
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Yep, 49%. Neurosurgery and Plastics are both over the 40% line as well. Vascular is 37%. Ortho is like 30 something %. Surprising to me is ENT is only 30%.

Edit: Ortho doesn't surprise me because there are so many spots. ENT has 270ish spots so I guess that's an ok amount. My theory is the smaller the field the more likely the representation is from the Top 40 NIH schools.
 
"Top" schools tend to have "top" students who get "top" scores. Thus "top" scores self select into competitive specialties; that's all.

When you get your Step 1 score, there's a ton of Ortho/Derm/Plastic gunners who score subpar and decide to do medicine instead. Also, you'll get a few people who ace Step 1 and all of a sudden are interested in competitive specialties.
 
For every point of more attractiveness on a 1-10 scale can I do 1 less derm publication?
 
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