Does Medical School Reputation Matter for Derm Residency?

[ppancreas]

Hi derms out there- I am vying to be a derm myself. So far, I've gotten into:

St. Louis U
University of Florida
University of California: Irvine

I might get into Washington University....


Will going to one of these schools over the others help me get a derm residency? Do derm residency programs care about prestige of the school?

Jen

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[MOHS_01]

It did not matter at my program -- we tried to look at the individual, not their pedigree... I believe that you would find that to be the case at most places.

 

[PathOne]

The answer is no... and partly (indirectly) yes.
Specifically, none of the schools mentioned would give you more or less of an edge when/if applying for Residency.
In fact, grads from ANY LCME-school can and do get residency. Only real problem would be if you're an IMG, because there's so many highly qualified AMG's in the applicant pool.

If you look at statistics, there's probably more Residents from the top medical schools. However, it's difficult to say if that's because PD's have a preference for them, or because they're simply overall better qualified - although the latter is probably most true.

However, the one thing that would be an advantage, is to choose a school which has an active and reputable Derm dept. and solid Derm electives at affiliated hospitals. That would overall be very helpful for you. But in the whole, your resume, research experience, LoR's, USMLE scores etc. are much more important than the school name on your diploma.

 

[ppancreas]

I admit to acronym ignorance.

Please explain:

LCME
IMG
AMG
PD - I assume the head of the derm residency?


Thanks

 

[PathOne]

No worries... There's too many abbreviations, I agree.
LCME = Liaison Committee on Medical Education = the body that accredits medical schools in North America. All US medical schools are and must be accredited by this body.
IMG = International Medical Graduate = Somebody who graduated from a medical school outside North America, i.e. from a non-LCME accredited school. They can be US citizens or citizens from other countries, and essentially have the same rights to seek residency as US graduates. However, their education can of course be very different from the training received at US schools.
AMG = American Medical Graduates = Graduates from LCME-acreditted schools. It's easy to distinguish between AMG's and IMG's, because all IMG's need to apply for residency through the Educational Committee for Foreign Medical Graduates (yes, usually referred to by another acronym: ECFMG).
PD = Program Director = the individual responsible for Residency program in a specific medical department.

Also note, that you can't just decide that you want to train residents, or how many people you'd want to train. Residencies need to be approved by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME - sometimes referred to as "Green Book"). Actually, you can check which hospitals offer training in specific fields by going to:

http://www.acgme.org/adspublic/

(for instance, you're able to see that in 2006-7 there's 113 Derm programs, with 1,086 Residents, and that there's a total of 106,477 filled Residency spots)

Hope this helps,