DG is female? WTF? This is the third time in a week that I'm surprised to see that a poster I thought was one sex is another - the other two being Law2Doc and dragonfly99.
I've always thought that match lists are highly overrated anyway. You have no sense whatsoever as to how many people ended up where they really wanted to go, in their preferred specialty. I mean, if I ranked BID tenth for IM, and that's where I matched, but I really wanted to be at UF in anesthesiology, would you honestly call that a good match? Sure, it would look more prestigious on the surface to other people who didn't know that I wanted to enter a different specialty in a different state. But most people would be pretty d*** upset about matching at their tenth choice in a different specialty when they hoped and expected to match to one of their top three choices in their preferred specialty. This is my long-winded way of telling all of you premeds and preclinical med/grad students to take match lists with a whole shaker of salt. Those match lists don't tell you squat if you don't have the necessary info to interpret them properly, and you almost certainly never will.
Penn State: ENT - Portsmouth, VA (military) Internal Medicine - U Washington Pediatrics - Stanford Pediatric Neurology - Stanford Psychiatry - UCLA Semel Institute for Neurosciences
Consider this: the world of science is small, and internet anonymity is no protection. With all due respect, nearly everyone on this forum is a current or future colleague, and you should treat them as such. Honestly, I'm just trying to help, and earnestly suggesting that folks should not be confrontational or defensive. I admit, I make mistakes in tone, too (see the sociopolitical forum). But would you write a response to a faulty review for a publication you submitted in such a manner?
Thanks for your post and I'm sorry for overreacting. You do make a good point that I'd like to echo: a PhD from a prestigious institution will certainly enhance your residency application tremendously, but by no means is it a substitute for a strong clinical record (i.e. solid Step 1 scores and clinical clerkship grades). Residency is (predominantly) a clinical job and no hospital will hire someone who is perceived to be a liability in taking care of patients, no matter how good their PhD, pubs, etc are. For the younger MD-PhD students out there, this is a good thing to keep in mind as you progress through your program into the final years of clinical training. Good luck to all of you in future matches!
Don't forget about Step 2CK scores... programs are now wanting to see those before ranking applicants!
It's easy to understand how that could happen; he and I look so alike. All kidding aside (and my advance apology for a bit of a thread hijacking), the assumptions people make about other people's genders are kind of interesting. Several posters have told me they thought I was a guy, for example. I have no idea why. Do my posts give off some kind of aura of masculinity?
have to disagree with you a bit on that -- you do not need step2CK to match at 99%+ of programs (there may be one or two out there that require it, but they are rare). If you have a great step1 score, there is generally no need to have step2CK scores in time for your ERAS application. The exception to this is that if you have poor step1 scores, you may want to think about taking step2 CK early enough to have on your ERAS so that you can "make up" for a sub-par step1 performance.
I think there's a general bias to assume posters especially on an MD/PhD forum that they are male rather than female. It's interesting to see quite a few matching in neurosurgery. Do they really intend on continuing in research?
True, not in this year's match. But come next year, UCSF programs at least will REQUIRE Step 2 before ranking applicants, or so our dean's office informs us. I am sure many programs are heading the same direction, just look at this year's program director survey results. So be sure to find out from programs you are applying to whether they will require Step 2 scores. Scary, but true...
Ugh... Boooooooooooo. If programs start frequently requiring Step II CK scores it's gonna screw up MD/PhD post-PhD scheduling more than it already is.
Yale: Dermatology - Northwestern Internal Medicine - MGH Internal Medicine/Primary - UCSF Med/Peds - Brigham/Boston Children's Neurology - Columbia Neurology - Partners (MGH/Brigham) Neurology - St. Joseph's-Phoenix Neurosurgery - Cornell Ophthalmology - Columbia Pediatrics - Boston Children's Postdoc
Vanderbilt (source: correlate) Emergency Medicine - Vanderbilt Internal Medicine - Brigham Pathology - MGH Pediatrics - CHOP Radiation Oncology - MSKCC Radiation Oncology - Vanderbilt Surgery - WashU Surgery - Arkansas Postdoc Miami (source: correlate) Internal Medicine - Albert Einstein Stony Brook (source: website) Internal Medicine - Mt. Sinai Internal Medicine - Stony Brook Surgery - Lenox Hill Case Western (source: e-mail) Anesthesiology - Johns Hopkins Dermatology - CWRU Emergency Medicine - Denver Health Internal Medicine - Stanford Internal Medicine - Vanderbilt Neurology - UT Southwestern Neurology - WashU Ophthalmology - Michigan Otolaryngology -Temple Pathology - Johns Hopkins Pediatrics - Children's Hospital Boston Radiation Oncology - Cleveland Clinic Radiation Oncology - Stanford Radiology - CWRU Radiology - UT Southwestern Industry Deferred
Here's our 2009 matchees: Internal Medicine - UCSF (guaranteed cards fellowship/research track) Internal Medicine - Columbia (guaranteed cards fellowship/research track) Internal Medicine - Columbia (guaranteed cards fellowship/research track) Internal Medicine - Penn (research track) Neurology - Columbia Pathology - UCSF Psychiatry - Yale Psychiatry - Cornell Psychiatry - Pitt Rad Onc - Stanford Radiology - Columbia Radiology - SUNY Brooklyn Emergency Medicine/Wildnerness Medicine - UCSF-Fresno One straight to post doc Also not to add more flames to fire about the whole Cornell MD-PhD thing...but that program is definitely great. No doubt about it. It is likely the best run program in the country. And if you want to stay in research you can do no better, in my opinion (and this is coming from a Columbian). For some reason, though, they consistently don't match as well as many other top MD-PhD programs. I think this is more a reflection of what specialties people are going into as well as program directors' overall impression of the clinical training at Cornell's med school. Many programs don't care you did a PhD (in fact, it may even hurt you, in fields such as general surgery and emergency medicine. For example: the guy in our class who is going to UCSF-Fresno decided he wants totally out of research and that's the best wildnerness medicine program in the country...but it took a lot of convincing them that he wasn't some "basic science" guy in order to get in). I think that at Tri-I you might get awesome PhD training but the clinical training isn't seen on the same level as many of the top med schools that also have great PhD programs (even if their PhD programs are not on the level of Rockefeller). And, in the end, my impression is that clinical training/clinical rotation grades/step 1 scores end up mattering the most in residency match unless you are applying in something very research focused (i.e. pathology or research track internal medicine). I might catch some heat for saying that, but it's my impression after watching the Tri-I match list during the last seven years in NYC. This also comes from gauging people's impression of the clinical training at Cornell residency programs during application season (i.e. the line "you go to Columbia for the department, you go to Cornell for the apartment"). This could all be Columbia bias, but I thought I'd put it out there...at this point I'm off to Cali anyways so I'll probably stop thinking about any of this.
The anesthesiology PD at my school wants Step 2 CK scores as well. I'm not sure if they're absolutely required, but at minimum, they're highly encouraged.
Hooray for this guy!!! I grew up in that wilderness and I can tell you that the quality of care in the region has sky-rocketted since UCSF decided to put their EM/WM program there. Wilderness doctors are important. I also just want to throw out on this thread early that the match and residency program are some of the most complicated and difficult to understand processes in medical training. Some pre-meds/med students/matchees do understand that, but mostly unless you are privy to the selection discussions you cant really understand why certain people go certain places. Go easy on the match lists...there are a lot of factors to consider.
Here our 2009 UCSF MSTP match list: Anesthesiology - Duke Internal medicine - Columbia Internal medicine - UCSF Internal medicine - Emory Internal medicine (prelim) - UT Southwestern Neurology - UCLA Neurosurgery - Vanderbilt
MCW (source: PM) Pediatrics - Northwestern Pathology - Arizona Northwestern (source: website) Anesthesiology - Wisconsin Internal Medicine - Northwestern Neurology - Baylor Neurosurgery - Baylor Pathology - Brigham Pathology - UCLA Pediatrics - U of Washington Radiation Oncology - Vanderbilt Urology - Brigham
Can someone defend the whole Derm thing? It makes no sense to me. Someone who dedicates their training to research then goes and lives on the beach to take skin bxs? Sure the money and hours are good but if we wanted money and good hours we wouldn't be in medicine. BTW, do any straight MDs get into Derm anymore? I thought there were only 10 spots in the country and I see almost all of them on these lists.
Dude, what business is it of yours what field someone picks? Enrolling in a MD/PhD program doesn't require signing a contract not to pursue a competitive, non-research intensive field (and there IS research in derm, btw). And if you took all of 2 seconds to look it up you would see many more than 10 spots in the country, and that MD/PhDs are not over-represented in that group. And don't speak for me when you say that we wouldn't be in medicine to earn good money. Anyone who would dedicate so much time and effort for training that didn't consider the financial benefit of doing so is either embarrassed to admit it (which is bad) or just stupid (which is worse).
I guess if you say they are...I may be wrong. I looked at the data though and could not find the stat I was looking for...what percentage of practicing dermatologists graduated MD/PhD compared to the total % of practicing MD/PhDs? I see that derm is indeed the 6th most popular choice for MD/PhDs though...still behind radiology however. I just can't stand people who say "oh how can you waste all that NIH money for your training and not go into IM/Rad OnC/Path etc." It's our life...we should be able to do whatever we want without being judged by what others think we need to do with my PhD. The disgruntled population of MD only derm applicants that feel disenfranchised by us need to get over themselves... PS I am not going into derm.
I don't understand your question, but in short we don't have the answer for "practicing" dermatologists (or for that matter practicing physicians of any specialty). Also see this (flawed) study which suggests that MD/PhDs are only (my emphasis) 1.63 times more likely to go into academics than a straight MD. http://dermatology.cdlib.org/141/commentary/academic/wu.html
I don't really blame anyone for going into Derm. Think about it, most of the PhDs don't even stay in science!! And that's the bulk of NIH's research staff money. It goes into training future consultants of McKinsey's (if that). One thing you don't realize until you go into 3rd year is that if you are truly commited to a career in clinical medicine, it's really hard to do research UNLESS you pick a mainly clinic/outpatient or path/rads style practice. Patients are really complicated, and require a ton of time for management (which may be of truly intellectually trivial things, like putting a PEG line in, raising their potassium, adding PRN tylenol, etc.) Any inpatient involvement will eat up a signficant part of your time, unless your residents/fellows are really competent. And impatient residencies are BRUTAL sometimes in terms of hour, and the mere scut-level work you have to do, like writing progress notes, dsums, doing clinic, getting translator, blah blah. If you are a "thinker", this kind of "work" really wears you out.
That's what I thought...that data doesn't exist (I want to compare the % of MD/PhD dermatologists to total MD/PhDs).
I've thought about this myself. Though it doesn't exactly answer your question, see this post: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showpost.php?p=6765284&postcount=3 You can compare what percentage of med students choose Derm versus what percentage of MD/PhDs choose derm. You have to either use D&G's data or you can also use BSullivan's data linked in that post. Using D&G's data, 5.5% of MD/PhD students choose derm while it makes up 1.3% of overall matches. The question is what is the outcome of those MD/PhDs. We don't know. What is the outcome of MD/PhDs in ANY specialty? We don't know. Are MD/PhDs who go into IM more likely to do a majority research career than MD/PhDs who go into Derm? We simply have no idea. We have no idea whether MD/PhDs who go into those traditional MD/PhD or "research" specialties actually end up doing more research than those who don't. Until we do have data on these points, I am very unhappy discussing how one specialty is more suited to a research career than another specialty. As for the question of how many MD/PhDs end up in academics. It's quite high. But I don't think that has anything to do with anything. So what if an MD/PhD ends up academics doing 100% clinical? If a specialty more lends itself to private practice, should that bias our data or our thinking towards a specialty that does not lend to private practice but produces a wealth of full-time academic clinicians? Absolutely. Melanoma is serious business. But there are many types of skin cancers. There are many infectious diseases of the skin. Some may laugh, but I had disfiguring acne as a teenager that still scars a good percentage of my torso. What about Eczema, the poorly understood and often poorly treated (i.e. steroids) autoimmune disease? There are many serious diseases of the skin, the largest organ system of the body, that need research and could benefit from new cures and treatments.
So, somewhere floating around the internet there is info from Skip Brass (from Penn) about which MD/PhD's enter academics in which field. Maybe someone knows about it and can dig it up. At CWRU this year we had 17 people finishing, so it was a bumper crop.
Tufts (source: correlate & website) Radiation Oncology - MDAnderson Prelim - Harbor-UCLA Industry Colorado (source: correlate) Internal Medicine - Colorado Anesthesiology - Colorado Dermatology - OHSU Internal Medicine - Michigan Pediatrics - U of Washington Minnesota (source: correlate) Neurosurgery - Stanford Internal Medicine - Vermont SUNY Upstate (source: correlate) Internal Medicine - Beaumont Radiology - Rochester Deferred Rochester (source: website) OB/GYN - Johns Hopkins Orthopedic Surgery - Cleveland Clinic Neurology - UCDavis Ophthalmology - UCSD Anesthesiology - Rochester Michigan (source: correlate) Pediatrics - Michigan Ophthalmology - Michigan Internal Medicine - Cornell Radiology - Johns Hopkins Pathology - Michigan UCLA (source: PM) Dermatology - UCLA Radiation Oncology - UCLA Psychiatry - UCSD ***NOTE*** I'm reformatting the big compendium - it will not be updated for a few months. In the meantime, I will use the first post as a digest.
Granted, I don't know how to appreciate a match list like most older MSTPs do, and granted, the match list itself doesn't tell you too much because people may have wanted to move to specific geographic locations, etc., but even still, this (especially the IM placements) seems like sort of a down year for UCSF, at least in comparison to D&G's compendium of prior results. Am I off-base on this? What are your impressions?
One person did not get an advanced year match (highly unusual), but there's much to be proud of for the others, and these are just as good as the previous five years.
I'm not sure why you think this. Is it because Harvard isn't in the list? UCSF and Columbia are two of the top IM residencies, and Emory is no slouch either (and was chosen partly for geographic reasons, per my understanding). Duke is an excellent place for anesthesiology and my understanding is that it will let my classmate do a significant amount of research. Not sure about the Neurosurgery match at Vanderbilt--may have been in part for personal reasons, but then again NS is competitive anywhere. I personally don't know much about that particular program. For me, UCLA was my top choice for a variety of reasons, which I won't get into here. Suffice it to say, I felt heavily recruited at many of the other top programs in the country (including Partners, Columbia, UCSF, Stanford, etc). UCLA has an outstanding combination of clinical training and flexibility for research time, the perfect combination for a physician-scientist! I couldn't be more thrilled at my match results. When the time comes, you'll hopefully see that there is much more to the match than pure academic reputation. There are a variety of places available and the goal is really to find where you will fit best and be the most likely to succeed.
Damn it, not this "their our match list sucks" vs. "our match list rules" argument again! EDIT: the irony.
I was going primarily on the IM placements I guess. But like I said, I don't have any understanding of how Emory and UTSW and Columbia compare to the traditionally big names. From what you said, it seems like everybody got what they wanted, or near it, which is awesome and really the best you can hope for. Congrats to you on UCLA! It is always amazing when people get their pick of the litter. I think you are totally right. At this stage in the game (first year MSTP at UCSF) I don't have a very good understanding of how to judge residencies aside from the pure academic reputation of the overall medical complex. It seems like a lot of people here comment so much on the Harvard/UCSF dichotomy that it is easy to lose sight of all the other considerations that come into play: time for research, physician-scientist mentoring, strength of a particular residency program at an otherwise weak/strong medical complex, etc. I hope with time I will gain the perspective that you also hope I gain . Thanks both of you for the quick reply.
Haha, relax princess. I just wanted to spark some fiesty debate. I didn't know you would get all crazy on me. With the data Skip has, those who choose Derm are 3.27x more likely to be in private practice vs. academia. This is third on the list only behind #1 Fam Med (6.58) and #3 Emergency (3.53) so you're in good company. You can see the rest of the data which is all pretty good here: http://www.med.upenn.edu/mstp/program.shtml click on "Planning for the Future Presentation (Feb. '09)- Director's Advice" under Mentoring and Advice.
About time he posted that data somewhere! I've always found Slide 11 to be skewed. Slide 8 gives 2202 responses, 66% of which are in academia. That's 1453 academic MD/PhDs. Drop to slide 11 and we have a suvery of "698 alumni in academia who do research". Does this mean over half of the MD/PhDs in academics do no research at all? I'd much rather see the 698 alumni in academia who do research broken down by specialty versus total MD/PhDs. Otherwise you don't know whether those specialties producing "academic physicians" are just producing clinicians. I think I'll e-mail him.
Ok...so I am totally biased here, but I have to give some props to my own program. I think this is a particularly strong match for this year's class both in numbers and where they matched, especially compared to other "top-tier" programs. Congrats UI MSTP Class 2009! ...can't wait for my match.
Harvard (source: HMS MSTP website) Dermatology - Mass General Hospital Dermatology - University of Pennsylvania Medical Center Internal Medicine - Brigham & Women's Hospital Internal Medicine – Brigham & Women's Hospital Internal Medicine - Brigham & Women's Hospital Internal Medicine - Brigham & Women's Hospital Internal Medicine - Brigham & Women's Hospital Internal Medicine - Brigham & Women's Hospital Internal Medicine - Mass General Hospital Internal Medicine/Research - NYP Hospital-Cornell Neurology - Mass General Hospital Ophthalmology - Baylor College of Medicine Pathology - Brigham & Women's Hospital Pathology - Brigham & Women's Hospital Pediatrics - Children's Hospital Boston Pediatrics - Children's Hospital Boston Radiology - UCLA Medical Center Vascular Surgery – University of Massachusetts Consulting Consulting Postdoc Postdoc
This is the data I was talking about and I'm glad someone found it. If you double-click the table on slide 18, you'll find that the spreadsheet with all the raw data is actually contained within the ppt file. Leave it to powerpoint to paste in a whole excel file. It appears that they only have data about research on those 700 or so in academia, with no data on the others. The part that I always thought was misleading was the "ratio" on slide 18. It makes much more sense to look at the raw percentages. So, of MD/PhDs going into a given field, this percentage ends up going into academics. % in academia Family medicine 38.5% Emergency medicine 53.8% Dermatology 55.7% Ophthalmology 56.4% Radiology 59.4% Ob/Gyn 69.2% Surgery 73.1% Anesthesiology 77.2% PM&R 80.0% Medicine 83.9% Radiation oncology 85.2% Neurology 86.7% Pediatrics 86.8% Psychiatry 88.3% Pathology 92.5%
Indiana (source: unofficial student website) Internal Medicine - Indiana Internal Medicine - Vanderbilt PMR - Indiana Psychiatry - Colorado Radiology - New Mexico UIC (source: correlate) Emergency Medicine - UIC Internal Medicine - Mayo-Jacksonville Internal Medicine - Vanderbilt Psychiatry - Pitt Unknown
It is hard to understand until you are applying. There is geography, sure, but also Harvard and Penn are not the best programs for everything. As people do their research and speak to their advisers they find out who insiders in the field regard as the best programs. For instance, Harvard EM is up and coming, considered mediocre at best. So you're interpretation of a program as a poor result may be dead wrong. Also, many mud-phuds are attracted to certain programs because of the desire for good mentors, people doing what they want to do, etc. A better assessment of how well a program did is what percentage of interviews were grated and what percent matched at their top choice. For instance, Penn's list from last year may not impress you, but almost all of us got our #1, and one got his #2 choice.
Derm has excellent research opportunities, in part because of the great hours, in part because the skin is so interesting! As an immunologist, I am fascinated by how inflammation leads to fibrosis and changes in pigmentation, and intrigued by melanoma vaccination studies. If I didn't find clinic a bit dry, I would have done it. Don't hate! Every field needs research. Besides, even for those who just do clinical stuff, that is NO WORSE than MD-PhDs that only do basic science. Theoretically, we were trained to bridge the gap, and if you are doing only clinical, or only basic science rather than translational medicine or a combo, you have wasted taxpayer dollars! Personally, I think the MD makes you a better PhD and vice versa, and though I'd love to do translational stuff myself, I'm not going to judge anyone.
Isn't this data skewed though, because people can't rank a choice if they aren't granted an interview? I have never seen data, anywhere, about what percentage of interviews were granted. Does it exist?
Soli, what prompted you to suddenly worry about your future a decade down the road, in this sweet week of spring break? It's hard to judge a match list without knowing the details about each program, and people's personal goals. I know the person matching to Duke, and it was his first choice. There are also interesting subspecialties within IM, many of them basic research friendly. Also, personal happiness and success are not necessarily proportional to the fame of one's institution. BTW, congrats on your match Vader!
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