California Psych

[eagle311]

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Hi,

I'm a DO student in the Northeast and would like to return home to Cali post med school. Can be anywhere, not aiming for a top program and I don't mind working in an underserved area. Does anyone know exactly how competitive it is for psychiatry? I have wanted to do Psychiatry since day 1 so my application is pretty much geared toward that. What kind of STEP I and COMLEX scores should I aim for?

Thank you all

 

[TexasPhysician]

Unfortunately you are one of many. Cali is the most competitive state across the board. Some years, you have better odds going Ivy League.

I knew many in my Texas med school that were very intelligent that applied/ranked Cali over anywhere else (various specialties).

Apply to many back-ups outside of Cali.

 

[Shufflin]

My 2 cents, having trained in Cali, is to think outside the state. The Cali programs interview the same top 100 or so applicants in the country. Yes, this means the top guys get lots of the interview slots, and they all see each other on interviews as I had (more or less). These guys rank the lower tiered Cali residencies as backups. What ends up happening is that there's no more backups in Cali. So they rank programs in neighboring states. Now we're seeing Arizona and Oregon programs getting more applications and becoming more difficult to get into due to the "Cali effect."

Apply broadly, as in east of Arizona.

(In terms of scores, try to break 230 Step 1 to get some Cali love)