Cardiology Fellowship Application

[Green_Goose]

Fellowship application season is nearly upon us and I am torn on whether or not to apply to my desired specialty (cardiology) this cycle or take a year to do research and be a nocturnist/hospitalist/cardiology hospitalist etc. I am in a reputable medicine program and have decent scores, however my research output is abysmal, probably about a tier above non-existent. I worry this lack of research productivity will drag the rest of my application down. I'm currently engaged in some minor projects but still searching for greater involvement. My PD actually suggested that I take the extra year to do research/work, so I wanted to see if anyone here had more thoughts or advice. Thanks!

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[shouldigomd]

Bad advice from your PD in my opinion. If you have decent scores from a decent medicine program you will match. There is no penalty for applying and seeing what happens outside of losing some $$. If you don't match then you can do the extra year of research or whatever. Every cardiology PD / program is different but my program did not look fondly on those who took a year off for whatever reason.

 

[Green_Goose]

Bad advice from your PD in my opinion. If you have decent scores from a decent medicine program you will match. There is no penalty for applying and seeing what happens outside of losing some $$. If you don't match then you can do the extra year of research or whatever. Every cardiology PD / program is different but my program did not look fondly on those who took a year off for whatever reason.

That's helpful to know, thanks for sharing. Was there any reason in particular that your cardiology PD viewed years off unfavorably? Did they assume the applicant failed to match after their PGY2 year? Also, which one do you think is worse - applying after PGY2, failing to match, and then having to apply again after PGY3 year - or avoiding the risk of not matching after PGY2 entirely and just waiting a year?

 

[shouldigomd]

That's helpful to know, thanks for sharing. Was there any reason in particular that your cardiology PD viewed years off unfavorably? Did they assume the applicant failed to match after their PGY2 year? Also, which one do you think is worse - applying after PGY2, failing to match, and then having to apply again after PGY3 year - or avoiding the risk of not matching after PGY2 entirely and just waiting a year?

You are not avoiding any risk by not applying... you are taking a risk when not applying. Failing to match isn't a metric that is linked to your application. Programs simply see how far out you are from graduation and many view that as failing to match depending on your excuse. Generally speaking it gets harder to match for each year out you are.

 

[dgdg]

I agree, just apply now and see what happens. Then fall back to the year off and pad your creds.
The money involved in applying now and not matching is negligible compared to whatever you will make in any physician career path.

Frankly from college all the way through residency, I found that my assigned advisors gave really bad advice far too often, were prejudiced (not racially), or simply indifferent. I recognized it at the time and sought out my own mentors (like you are doing here). Maybe it was just my bad luck on assigned advisors, but I achieved my goals in spades despite them.

Don't let one poor advisor derail your career goals.

 

[dozitgetchahi]

I agree, just apply now and see what happens. Then fall back to the year off and pad your creds.
The money involved in applying now and not matching is negligible compared to whatever you will make in any physician career path.

Frankly from college all the way through residency, I found that my assigned advisors gave really bad advice far too often, were prejudiced (not racially), or simply indifferent. I recognized it at the time and sought out my own mentors (like you are doing here). Maybe it was just my bad luck on assigned advisors, but I achieved my goals in spades despite them.

Don't let one poor advisor derail your career goals.

Yeah I’d agree.

I feel like most of the good advice I got about moving to the next level (med school, residency, fellowship, etc) I found online, or at least word of mouth from other colleagues. Whereas a lot of the advice I got from advisors, PDs, mentors etc was misinformed, untrue, or otherwise outdated or unhelpful. (I don’t think most of these people were trying to give bad advice, but I just don’t think most of them understood the process very well, or were out of date.)

Best advice is to try to gather as much information from as many places as possible and go from there. One person only knows so much.

 

[Green_Goose]

Thanks all for the pointers. I feel like I had decent support for applying to college, med school, and residency, and I could just supplement that with whatever I found online. Fellowship is probably the first time I've felt this clueless.