Apply broadly for IM!

[Vandelay Industries]

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Long time lurker, first time poster...I want to give a quick shout out to all of the regular contributors on SDN. Your advice/experiences have very been helpful to me, and I'm sure many others. Here is a specific example of why...

It is so important to remember to apply broadly. I believe it is very easy to overestimate your application's strength in IM, purely based on the sheer # of applicants and the growing # of applications/applicant.

I am at a middle-tier state school, top quartile, >255 Step 1 & 2, a few publications/presentations, great evals and solid LOR's. No red flags. Good ECs, although not enough to land me AOA (based almost solely on community service at my school). I was advised by school administration to apply to 12-15 programs, that I would get bites anywhere, and that provided I had a few back up programs, I would be fine and likely "go wherever I wanted".

I applied to 20 programs, a good mix of middle and top tier programs. 6 of the 20 were top 10 programs. I was asked why I was applying to a several of the programs, as they were supposedly "beneath me".

Fast forward to now...12 interviews, only 1 at a top 10. Rejection/silent rejection/wait-list from the other 8. Fine by me, as I am very happy with the programs I have interviewed at, and am confident I will be happy on Match Day.

This could have ended very badly for me if I had followed administration's advice and applied to only top programs with a few back-ups. Chalk it up a combination of terrible advice, low school prestige (that admin doesn't recognize), a crazy # of applications/applicant, and some increased competitiveness. The point being - listen to the good advice on this thread and apply BROADLY and check your ego at the door. There are plenty of great programs out there, but due to sheer number of applicants for IM, not everyone with >250 steps and top quartile can go to top 10 programs.

 

[gutonc]

I went to a lower tier state school and the conventional wisdom (offered by one of the Assistant Deans) for getting IM interviews from Top X programs coming out of our school was: "You're going to need 3 extra letters after your name. It can either be AOA or PhD. But you'll need at least one of them.".

Despite med students' obsession with Step scores, they're pretty much a screening tool, at least for IM. And the majority of the advising that med students get when applying to residencies is crap. It tends to come from more senior faculty who, unless they are PDs/aPDs themselves, honestly have no clue about the current state of the "game". You'd be much better served with a mixture of SDN advice and talking to the residents and fellows at your school for their advice than most of the advising you'll get from faculty. Especially when it comes to programs outside of your geographic area that aren't "Top X". When I was applying, as soon as I asked about programs more than a 3 hour drive from the school, all I got was shoulder shrugs and "I guess it's a good place, I don't really know".

 

[Vandelay Industries]

Exactly. Which is why I am grateful that I placed more faith in program leadership than med school administration. Frustrating, especially given the fact that our pre-application counseling is done with the administration... individuals that are have never been in program leadership, or haven't been in 10+ years.