I keep hearing that if you want to do an MFM fellowship, you better go to a residency program with well-known MFM faculty or your chances of matching are very low - in other words, it's all about the people you know, rather than the "name and fame" of the residency program you go into. Same for other subspecialties - go to a residency with a gyn-onc chairman if you want to do gyn onc, for example.
What are your thoughts on this?
Thank you.
As a rule, places with an in house fellowship and well known faculty will make it easier to match in that particular subspeciality. This is a general rule of thumb for all fellowships regardless of speciality.
At my program, a smaller community program, we have had people match REI, MFM, and Urogyn. We have a person applying for MFM now and they have gotten a good number of interviews without much issue. And we do not have any in house fellowships.
I'd say for Gyn Onc, it is pretty important to have at least one faculty member who is somewhat active in the Gyn Onc community as it isn't very big and word of mouth/calls can be very helpful. Again this isn't a lock.
Main thing is, go to a good program where you think you will do well. You still have to do well on CREOGS, work hard, and try to do some research regardless of where you match into in order to become a competitive applicant.
