MD & DO ANY HELP APPRECIATED! need help with eras: how to create program list?!

[tictac123]

sry if this is in the wrong place...looking for help! im trying to put a program list together for eras but not sure what factors i should be looking at, especially when gauging competitiveness since im a very below average applicant. my understanding is that university is usually more competitive than university affiliated and then community is least competitive...if a program has more IMG/FMGs and DOs, does that also mean it's, on average, less competitive than programs with more USMDs? also, is FREIDA or ResidencyExplorer or TexasStar better to look at? how many programs should i apply to esp since this year, there will probably be more applications per applicant? how strict are the "usmle score cutoffs for interview consideration"?

i am a USMD applying internal med with:

199 step 1 (first attempt)

228 step 2 (first attempt)

1 accepted abstract at a nat'l conference

Gold Humanism Honor Society member

2 Honors during 3rd year and Honors in 4th year Sub-I with what I think should be 4 great LORs

ive talked to my advisor awhile ago and she said to look at mainly community/university affiliated programs and said its a bad idea to apply to just IM without also applying something like FM...but my other advisor said IM is okay if i focus on less competitive programs... any other help would be so appreciated by this overwhelmed and slightly neurotic med student haha i promise to pay it back down the line!

i know to apply broadly but im worried i wont match or wont have any control over location...just want to give myself the best chance to have a successful match!

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[ciestar]

Big question i have is: do you want to be in a certain geographic area? What type of program are you looking for? Academic programs are probably out.

 

[tictac123]

Big question i have is: do you want to be in a certain geographic area? What type of program are you looking for? Academic programs are probably out.

Ideally east coast but really no limiting factors in terms of location! And in terms of type of program, honestly just trying to go to the best one I can that will give me good training with options for fellowships down the line if I so choose. Trying to gauge my competitiveness and see if I should just focus on more community and university affiliated programs overall?

 

[popopopop]

Ideally east coast but really no limiting factors in terms of location! And in terms of type of program, honestly just trying to go to the best one I can that will give me good training with options for fellowships down the line if I so choose. Trying to gauge my competitiveness and see if I should just focus on more community and university affiliated programs overall?

If you have the money, why not apply to both types of program? A lot of my own programs are reaches, but I rather have the option of cancelling interviews later than not. I feel many students will over apply this year regardless.

 

[ciestar]

If you want east coast, apply broadly within that region!

 

[tictac123]

If you have the money, why not apply to both types of program? A lot of my own programs are reaches, but I rather have the option of cancelling interviews later than not. I feel many students will over apply this year regardless.

If you want east coast, apply broadly within that region!

thank you guys for the responses! I think I will focus mainly on community and university affiliated programs broadly on east coast but also some university programs if I have a connection!
@popopopop you mentioned the over applying...i also think that is true so when you guys say I should apply broadly (and I completely agree), how many programs does that mean approximately? would it be absurd to apply to 60-70+? my friend who is older than me and IMG said she applied to 100 and I know it might be different for IMGs but with my scores, I want to make sure I match and I'm very fortunate that money isn't much of a limiting factor when it comes to applications.

 

[popopopop]

thank you guys for the responses! I think I will focus mainly on community and university affiliated programs broadly on east coast but also some university programs if I have a connection!
@popopopop you mentioned the over applying...i also think that is true so when you guys say I should apply broadly (and I completely agree), how many programs does that mean approximately? would it be absurd to apply to 60-70+? my friend who is older than me and IMG said she applied to 100 and I know it might be different for IMGs but with my scores, I want to make sure I match and I'm very fortunate that money isn't much of a limiting factor when it comes to applications.

Honestly, I'm an average applicant and hitting 100+ for IM after being selective for geography and having a few northern states as backups. I have heard of people doing this at my school in the past so it's not something new. I'm not very selective in terms of location, just trying to stay in the south essentially. I'm quite familiar with my instate programs and can selectively not apply to programs I know are malignant or traditionally won't take people from my school. However, out of state programs are harder to discern so I'm not sure how to cross it off my list besides what's available on freida, resexplorer, or their website. Each program I feel like crossing out feels like I'm closing a door to a program that might have been a potential interview, so I end up leaving it. I might prune my list further or add more, who knows.

 

[Espressso]

This takes a lot of time, but if you're starting from scratch this is what I did. I went to this pdf from the 2020 nrmp website: https://mk0nrmp3oyqui6wqfm.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/MM_Results_and-Data_2020-1.pdf

It organizes programs based on state from last years match. Go through each state you're remotely interested in. slowly work your way through and for every program you see in those states, jot it down in an excel sheet with the program name, city, state, and program number. Think of this as your mega compile list.

Then when you've gone through all the states in the regions you're interested in, go to the excel sheet, and for each one, search the program on Frieda and on residency explorer AND also on their own personal website. For each program, look for avg/min board scores, class make up (md/do/img), in house fellowships, etc etc. basically anything that you think are important factors for you to apply vs not apply to that program. I like to also open up google maps to see exactly where tf is the program. Sometimes the program will be like "Philly" but when you look it's wayyy outside of philly.

Once you get all that information, you can start stratifying the programs into shoe-ins, target, reach programs. and then go from there. Delete some, etc etc.

I'm similar to @popopopop in that my current list is ~100 for IM as well. I've heard anecdotally that programs will be more stringent on "regional ties/bias" this year with virtual interviews, so who knows.

 

[popopopop]

This takes a lot of time, but if you're starting from scratch this is what I did. I went to this pdf from the 2020 nrmp website: https://mk0nrmp3oyqui6wqfm.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/MM_Results_and-Data_2020-1.pdf

It organizes programs based on state from last years match. Go through each state you're remotely interested in. slowly work your way through and for every program you see in those states, jot it down in an excel sheet with the program name, city, state, and program number. Think of this as your mega compile list.

Then when you've gone through all the states in the regions you're interested in, go to the excel sheet, and for each one, search the program on Frieda and on residency explorer AND also on their own personal website. For each program, look for avg/min board scores, class make up (md/do/img), in house fellowships, etc etc. basically anything that you think are important factors for you to apply vs not apply to that program. I like to also open up google maps to see exactly where tf is the program. Sometimes the program will be like "Philly" but when you look it's wayyy outside of philly.

Once you get all that information, you can start stratifying the programs into shoe-ins, target, reach programs. and then go from there. Delete some, etc etc.

I'm similar to @popopopop in that my current list is ~100 for IM as well. I've heard anecdotally that programs will be more stringent on "regional ties/bias" this year with virtual interviews, so who knows.

Lol, this is eerily similar to what I PM him shortly after too. I was telling him how I found a program in Corinth, MS with a 14k population. There are pros of this I guess, but I'd imagine more cons. One thing I also did was look at previous ABIM pass rates. The majority of programs have high passrates, but there are some skirting 60-70% and are enough of an outlier that I would investigate further to see if it's worth leaving on the list or not.

 

[curbsideconsult]

Why is your other advisor telling you not to also apply to FM? If you're worried about matching at all you should definitely apply FM, but rank all of your IM programs first. None of the options presented are mutually exclusive. You can shoot your shot AND apply to "lower ranked"/community programs AND apply FM.

 

[tictac123]

Why is your other advisor telling you not to also apply to FM? If you're worried about matching at all you should definitely apply FM, but rank all of your IM programs first. None of the options presented are mutually exclusive. You can shoot your shot AND apply to "lower ranked"/community programs AND apply FM.

I think she is confident that I’ll be okay without having to apply FM. She advised me to apply about 35-45 programs with a mix of community programs but I’m definitely going to apply to more!

I have over 100 programs on my tentative list as of now, focusing on region and then applying broadly in terms of type of program (community, university affiliated, university). I’m wondering if anyone else has any sort of feedback or more advice. I know I’m feeling the stress as applications are due soon! Thanks to anyone who reads this!!