Best PCCM Programs?

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swk11

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How do you guys go about deciding which PCCM programs are among the best? How do you decide which programs to apply to? Speaking with faculty at your own institution? Is there any list out there that does an okay job of ranking programs (at least maybe in tiers)? Do you just have to go by feel? I'm a big list maker and it might be fun to see what people think about the relative strength of each program ^.^

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Take my advice with a grain of salt as I'm going through the process. I don't think there's a consensus "best" PCCM program list or "best" any fellowship list for that matter. Contrasted to my experience when applying to residency, many of us looking into fellowship programs have completely different priorities and our check lists for programs vary greatly from individual to individual. For residency, many of us were looking for a strong program that would train us to be strong internists and set us up for good fellowship placement, if that was within our future goals. In just a matter of 2-3 years, a lot of us are are now in deeply committed relationships, have kids, have developed specific clinical/research interests in our sub-specialties of choosing. A lot of this has changed our opinion on what we feel is the "best" program for us, especially now with new geographic limitations. So in short, the only person who can answer this question is you. Do you have specific clinical interests (more pulmonary or CC?), perhaps you're interested in a subdivision of PCCM (e.g. pulmonary hypertension, interventional pulmonology, cystic fibrosis, transplant, ILD) or clinical vs translational vs basic science research vs clinical educator vs training to go into practice. When making my list of programs it was pretty much word of mouth from advisers and also geographical limitations for personal considerations. I can't comment on the perceived strength of programs in each of the areas above because I haven't seen them yet, but after seeing my interests and personal considerations evolve over the past 2-3 years I feel pretty compelled to say there's no "best" program.
 
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Don't know that I could have said it better. There is no "best" program. There MAY be a best program for any given candidate, made up of the following:
1) Does it offer good training to achieve your career goals (research, clinical, dedicated sub-subspecialties)?
2) Is it in an area of the country where you would enjoy living?
3) Does your personality match that of the program / program director? This is a highly-underrated metric but is super important, as a supportive PD can make or break the fellowship experience.

I find many folks using the USNWR rankings to identify "best" programs. These are, in my experience, mostly irrelevant for training.
 
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