So I have a hypothetical scenerio, i'm wondering what other people would do in this situation. If you know you want a career in academics and it came down to matching into a community program vs not matching at all, would you take the community program or would you try to strengthen your application somehow and reapply. I'm wondering how the name of the place you train impacts your longterm career prospects. Any insight into this? Should the attitude be get in wherever you can and go or should one be a little more picky given the long term implications. Obviously if you can go to mass general its a no brainer but if the circumstances are such that you don't think you will match into your top choices, should you just take what you get...or are the long term complications something one needs to consider.
Community program vs not matching...
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It depends on things such as how competitive was your residency program, what kind of research you want to do (basic vs clinical), how much of clinical vs research work you anticipate doing in the long run etc. From my perspective, I will probably do my clinical training now. Of course going into an academic institution (with protected time for research) makes a big difference for your academic career. But in many fellowships in "academic" institutions you can hardly learn to do any meaningful research in 3 years. You can learn doing research anytime (after fellowship), but not necessarily clinical training. I was asking same question at one point, and this is just my opinion.
I think the question is how does where you do fellowship impact job opportunities. I really dont know the answer to that and was hoping people could weigh in...
I come from a good program (not a top tier but its solid) and I want to do clinical research. I definitely want to be able to a good mix of clinical and research in the long run. The question is how to make that happen for myself. I don't want to make the wrong decision about fellowship and then close doors....
Think of it like a play in football...never leave points on the field. If the other team gets a penalty when you a kicking a field goal dont take the penalty and take the points off the board with the hopes of scoring a touchdown. There is no guarantee you will score...and you may end up with neither a field goal OR a touchdown.
...in non-football speak. Beefing up your CV does not guarantee anything. You can be SOL next year with the hopes that you match in a big name place and match nowhere. Match as best you can THIS year and have your backups lined up for this year.
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bird in hand is better than 2 in the bush
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If it gives you a first down you take thenpenalty
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If it gives you a first down you take the penalty
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The thing is, (to torture the metaphor further) you won't know if you got the first down until after the Super Bowl. At which point, who cares?
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Interview, rank and match this year. If you don't, your chances aren't going to get much (any?) better down the road. Decide if you want to be a cardiologist first, figure out what kind of job you're going to have later.
You're making this much more complicated than it needs to be.
No one can predict your future. My question for you is why are you applying to community programs if you want to do academics?
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Disclaminer: Not a medicine resident but am in OB in a community program. Wanted to train at an academic center and have a career in academic medicine but matched at a relatively unknown community program. Was down about it, then started to invest myself in my program and matched a fellowship at well known university program.
Name does matter. People training at MGH, Hopkins, UCSF etc will have a leg up on everyone else just based on the reputation of their program.
But not matching, either on purpose or just because of the how the match worked out is worse in my opinion. Every year you are out, makes it that much tougher to match. There are exceptions to this rule, but I can't imagine doing that much stuff in a year span to make your application that much stronger. If you can get published in the NEJM sure, but generally, your Step scores are what they are and so is the rest of your application.
Work your ass off, match a fellowship and enjoy life.
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You should not wait. Waiting usually hurts you, especially if they find out you applied before in the past. There is a prejudice in cardiology against reapplicants...some people think if you were any good then you would have matched the first time you tried. It is NOT impossible to match as a 2nd time applicant, but it is hard to do anything in 1 year that will improve your application very much. In 2 years, you could do substantial research and publish it, but only with some luck and mentoring...and at that point people may have concerns about how long you were away from clinical medicine. It's not fair b/c programs take MD/PhD students into residency all the time, and programs take "short track" IM --> cardiology fellows all the time, who had 1 year less of medicine residency and 2-3 years in the lab, but if you are free floating applicant without a guaranteed spot, taking a year off in the setting of applying to cardiology I think is risky. You should just get in to whatever program you can, and worry about the academic stuff later, if you want to be a cardiologist.
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