By and large, it seems that med students don't get much exposure to different specialties until 3rd and 4th year. However, if I settled on a trying for a competitive specialty like radiology or ortho during my third year, wouldn't it already be too late? How would I fit in the research that seems to almost be required for these sought after residencies? If I try to cover my bases and do some ortho-related research during the summer between m1 and m2, and later decide to go for an ENT residency, am I screwed?
By when should I have already picked a specialty?
- Thread starter TheMan21
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Most medical students start their residency application in summer between 3rd and 4th year that's when you pick the specialties you are applying to.
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So then research isn't as big of a deal as it seems to be on SDN?
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It depends. If your considering hyper competitive residency you want to be set early in so you can have some research in and other things. Otherwise later 3rd year.
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lots of people take a year off to do research once they know what they want to do. Take a look at charting outcomes to see how important research is to your specialty of interest.
I didn't know this. Thanks.
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6 or 7
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For the non-early match things, you will have all of third year and a couple of 4th year elective months to decide. 4th year starts in June at most places, and you don't apply on ERAS until September. It's better if you explore things earlier than this if you can -- some people do some amount of "shadowing" of things they think are interesting in 2nd year just to ease the decision process. If, in your example you decide you like ENT, you simply need to do well in your surgery rotation and set up ENT elective(s) early in 4th year, and you are fine.
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Depends on the field. For some, you want to squeeze in some targeted research, even if it means delaying 4th year by a year. For others, if you did research in ANYTHING during the summer after your first year, that's probably enough. For the non-research intense fields, you don't need to do research at all, just get as good evals/Step 1 score as you can.
Most folks I've talked to about this suggest running your life in the first couple of years of med school AS IF you will decide you want to do something competitive. That means doing your best in everything and staying involved even if right now you think you want to go into something less competitive, because you never know when you might change your mind.
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You should also know that some schools are now providing their students with opportunities to take some electives in their 3rd year in addition to the set rotations (peds, surgery, ob, etc.) so that they will be able to make a more informed decision when it comes time to apply for residency in 4th year. The only one I know off the top of my head is Tufts.
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Most schools don't do this though, because residencies still want to see, first and foremost, how you did in the core rotations, and you need these by and large for Step 2. So most places make you finish these up in 3rd year and that doesn't leave much room for electives. But that's okay, you can take electives in early 4th year and decide you love something and you still will get ERAS and LORs in on time. But that means you have to have an inkling of what you should use those 4th year electives for by the time you are supposed to sign up for electives. Which may be sometime in 3rd year before you have finished up the cores. So use your "spare" time wisely in the first two years. I didn't do this, but some people I know did shadowing during the first two years in some of the non-core specialties, and it seemed to make their decision process more streamlined.
