Advice..univ vs community

[cutslikeaknife]

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For those of you already in PRS, and for those of you who are applying PRS...I need some advice.
I am getting ready to rank General Surg programs hoping to advance into a Plastics fellowship eventually. My dilemma is this: my "home" program is a small community hospital with university affiliations that I would feel very comfortable at doing a general surgery residency. It seems to be a no-brainer to go for a university program to better my chances for fellowship in 5-6 years, but here's the twist: 2 of the chiefs (one being an IMG) graduating this year got plastics fellowships, and pretty much everyone in the past has gotten the fellowships they wanted, without doing a year of research. Everyone tells me that even though the program is community, the chairman is so well-connected that it doesn't make a difference. On the other hand, when I interviewed at USC last month, the plastics guy there told me I had no choice but to go to a univ program to get a PRS fellowship based on the fact that I am an FMG. Besides the obvious of performing well during residency and scoring well on ABSITEs to increase my fellowship chances, what are your thoughts on this situation? Any advice is greatly appreciated!

 

[droliver]

I would strongly reccomend you go the University route. There is a real bias for that among programs & your FMG status would make a program look for any excuse to dismiss your application when looking for some arbitrary way to sort thru the HUGE #'s applications coming in.

 

[surgerydoc]

I would strongly reccomend you go the University route. There is a real bias for that among programs & your FMG status would make a program look for any excuse to dismiss your application when looking for some arbitrary way to sort thru the HUGE #'s applications coming in.

Dr.Oliver,

I am IMG in 3rd yr surgery at a decent university hospital down south. I did 3 yrs surgery at a community hospital and then moved to 3rd in a university hoping that it would help me get into plastics.
My absites are average 58,73 and then 27 in consecutive yrs.

I am studying hard this year. I will be applying in a few months. We dont have plastics in our place and neither is the plastics dept active.

I can get some decent LOR`s --but what are my chances.....
do u think doing hand first would improve my chances of getting plastics?
last but not least, i have a few contacts in some community Plastics programs.How big of a difference would it make at the end of the day if i eventually want to go into a small teaching/ community hospital with my own private practice

Please let me know; i`m sorry if i have asked you too many questions.

Thank you very much