California programs

[gardilimo]

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ok for those of us not in the know, or not on the West Coast (judging from the recent threads regarding CA schools), it would behoove us to know what anybody knows about any of the programs out there...

AKA: which ones are more bio or psychotherapy oriented
when do you start hearing from these programs (UCLA, etc)
what are the cities like that they are in (eg, Davis, Irvine)
how competitive/what type of applicant is e/ looking for
how can you compare and contrast all the LA programs?
how non-traditional/culturally competent is e/ and how family friendly?

THANKS SO MUCH in advance...it would be helpful to have all this info in one place...🙂

 

[ginnywc]

I would say, in general, UCLA-NPI, UCSF, and maybe Stanford vs. UCSD are the top 3, respectively.

Other than the above 3-4, it really depends on whether you are looking for community versus academic versus semi-academic programs.

When I interviewed 2 years ago, my thoughts were

Community
San Mateo seems to offer a lot of moonlighting money (community)
Cal Pac -- I didn't interview there, but sounds like a strong community program

Semi-academic
UCLA-Harbor -- very strong program, but now I am not sure how would the close down of King-Drew impacts this program
UCLA-SFV -- less strong than Harbor, but still a good program in LA
UCLA-Kern -- I actually liked the program, but it was in Bakersfield, not LA
Cedars-Sinai -- Wonderful program, they do enough research there as well
UCSF-Fresno -- The PD was really nice, and enough variety of training hospitals. But once again, it's not in LA or SF


Academic (or at least right next to a school)
UCI -- It was a good biologically training program, PD was really good, and I think that's the reason in my year, there were tons of people going to Psych from UCI....
UCD -- Didn't go interview
USC -- Didn't go interview

I am sure some other residents will put in their inputs on each program.

 

[gardilimo]

great response! thanks!

so i was reading that harbor is very community oriented...does that mean they work you to the bone? do you know where in LA they are located and is it feasible to have a life and a normal commute and still go there?

my PD told me that UCSF is the most competitive residency out there right now, in many specialities and in psych as well. i guess that could be true in some respects? he is from San Fran but is now in the North East so maybe he is out of touch (or just in love with SF)...

 

[Braingames]

I had a talk with my PD at my home school yesterday and his alma mater is UCLA and he is out here in the west so knows a fair amount. Anyway here is some things I took away.

UCI-he highly recomended this program. Especially strong point is it is the only hospital with a major psych facility for the whole orange county and surroundings. So you get the obvious very good mix of upper class, middle class but he said what people dont know is it also serves a large poor section since there are some poor areas interspersed in there-so you get one of the most diverse patient populations.

It has a good emphasis on therapy-more so than most other cali progrmas other than maybe UCSF-

UCSD-very biological-the most of the CA programs-heck stahl is out of there right! He said its a great program what mroe to say-other than biological emphasis with little therapy training

USC-big county hospital in LA serving very much underserved population. Good diversity of training and well balanced biological v. therapy appraoch. Not much else

Those were the only 3 I asked about since those I really did not know a heck of a lot about. Not sure that helps but any info helps!