Competitiveness of "Primary Care Track" IM residencies?

[deleted436726]

I'm an unmatched USMD MS4 who will most likely be dual-applying EM and IM next year. Although I would love to do EM it's obviously getting more and more competitive, hence the need to have a realistic backup plan.

As is the case with EM I love the idea of being a generalist and so I would also be quite happy doing primary care. I see that there are quite a few IM residencies (mostly in larger/university-based settings?) that offer a separate primary care track that is applied to separately. How competitive are these, given the current perception of primary care (especially among medical students)? Does it make any sense to also apply to a program's traditional categorical track, and if so, are these separate interviews/ranks?

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[Dwan]

I'm an unmatched USMD MS4 who will most likely be dual-applying EM and IM next year. Although I would love to do EM it's obviously getting more and more competitive, hence the need to have a realistic backup plan.

As is the case with EM I love the idea of being a generalist and so I would also be quite happy doing primary care. I see that there are quite a few IM residencies (mostly in larger/university-based settings?) that offer a separate primary care track that is applied to separately. How competitive are these, given the current perception of primary care (especially among medical students)? Does it make any sense to also apply to a program's traditional categorical track, and if so, are these separate interviews/ranks?

For the majority of programs, they are equally competitive to the categorical track in terms of getting an interview (meaning you'll need to get an interview to the institution as a whole first, and you'll automatically be considered at every track you applied post-interview), which is usually the hardest part. You should definitely apply to every track you're interested in if you'd be happy to attend any (you can easily go into a PC career from the cat track as well). During interview day, they may match you with a PC track person if you applied to the PC track. There are only a select few programs in which you may be offered interviews for the primary care track separately (e.g. Yale, UCLA), despite not getting a categorical invite, but ones like these affiliated with strong IM residencies are still highly competitive.