in baltimore you've got hopkins and univ of maryland/sheppard pratt. i'm at the latter, so i can't speak much for the former other than saying hopkins is psychopharm heavy (last i heard they rotate their psych residents through an icu for crying out loud). maryland has the pros and cons of any larger program (we've got about 60 or so residents total, with each class being on avg 12 or so in size). thus far i've loved maryland. call is heavier the first 2 yrs, q4 on medicine (though moonlighting is used as well during the workweek), q5 to q6 otherwise. no call on neuro or consults. then, come pgy3 and pgy4, you're only used as in-house and telephone back-up for the junior residents once every few months. as you can imagine, i'm totally loving pgy3 right now. lots of time to read and focus on outpatients. and since the program is huge, you have your pick of urban community sites or the slightly more affluent population near sheppard pratt. we've also got pretty much any fellowship you can think of. the training program is very much soliciting feedback from us in trying to improve things as the quality of various rotations or didactics change with time (ie they once pulled all the residents from the baltimore va since the psych rotation there was subpar and essentially nonteaching). not sure about the reputation. in terms of research dollars, the program rakes in a decent amount based on size alone. it obviously doesn't have the name brand association as hopkins does, but many psychiatrists have probably heard of sheppard pratt at some time. and yes, you specified dc area, but i live in between dc and baltimore and dc is a relatively easy half-hour drive to the metro away.