Any residency if you want it bad enough?

[DendWrite]

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I know that there's often a lot of threads about med school prestige and how that may or may not affect students' chances at getting into competitive residency programs. However, I have met / heard of a lot of very talented P.I.'s and physicians who got into top residency programs (like Hopkins and MGH) while going to med schools that were not even in the top-20 (and they weren't URMs).

So my question is, say you want a neurosurgery / derm / other competitive surgical residency and you are not at a top-20 med school. If you shine grades-wise and on the wards and get a top Step 1 score (along with some research in your field of interest), don't you still have a great chance at getting into one of these residencies? Would you say that the benefit of attending a top-20 school is that there is perhaps a little bit more "cushion" in that even if you don't do stellar on everything you might still get in? But then again, it seems like at a top-20 school it might be harder to stand out grades-wise with more competition, so how do you think this is a factor?

 

[J ROD]

Numbers are better than prestige.....

 

[Mobius1985]

If you shine grades-wise and on the wards and get a top Step 1 score (along with some research in your field of interest), don't you still have a great chance at getting into one of these residencies?

Absolutely.

Would you say that the benefit of attending a top-20 school is that there is perhaps a little bit more "cushion" in that even if you don't do stellar on everything you might still get in?

But then again, it seems like at a top-20 school it might be harder to stand out grades-wise with more competition, so how do you think this is a factor?

That cushion might be due to contact with well-known academic physicians who might write you a LOR, compensating for a slightly lower class rank. Overall, I think it's better to be a stellar fish in a little pond than a mediocre fish in a big pond.

 

[Contrarian]

Absolutely.

That cushion might be due to contact with well-known academic physicians who might write you a LOR, compensating for a slightly lower class rank. Overall, I think it's better to be a stellar fish in a little pond than a mediocre fish in a big pond.

That said, are there truly any "small ponds" as far as med schools go?

 

[ILikeDrugs]

So my question is, say you want a neurosurgery / derm / other competitive surgical residency and you are not at a top-20 med school. If you shine grades-wise and on the wards and get a top Step 1 score (along with some research in your field of interest), don't you still have a great chance at getting into one of these residencies?

St. George matches:
PGY1 Ducato, Michael St. Francis Med Ctr Uni. of Illinois COM at Peoria Neurosurgery

PGY1 Patel, Amit Addenbrooke's Hospiral Cambridge University Hospital Neurosurgery

11 for radiology and 2 for radiology oncology.

No derm matches though.

Nuff said. But who knows how many hoops those two had to jump through, if any. 👍

 

[kevster2001]

Probably. But if you look at Harvard Neurosurgery's resident list, its basically pure pedigree. You're just at a disadvantage but definitely not out of the running.