electives at kessler and Cornell/columbia

[inscape2004]

first off, hello, everyone, my first post and all... This seems to be a great resource for someone like myself, who is a 4th year fairly sure he is applying into PMR but with not a single upperclassman through the years that has actually applied to PM&R or knew anything about it other than "oh, dont those guys like do physical therapy or something?" or "oh yeah, rehab ... thats that magical place where many pts wind up when they are discharged from our (medical, surgical, etc) service. " This place has been a great source for background info.

Anyway, I wanted to do electives at above institutions this year. of particular interest are Spine, sports, musculoskeletal. What's good where? I would love to hear some testimonials of people having actually done electives at those places (seen some things on kessler, but Cornell/columbia is still a total mystery to me). Any "big names" in these fields that are also worth working with (I also do need an LOR)?


Another question: I am really considering Cornell/columbia as a potential place to do residency I would love to hear the "down low" I know like the basics about it and that it has no elective time, but how heavy is it on inpatient and how good is musculoskeletal and interventional aspects of training? how good is sports and spine? let me know please

thanx very much will be looking forward to your feedback.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[axm397]

Can't really comment on Columbia/Cornell - but I did an elective at Kessler. Unfortunately, I only did inpatient rotations (SCI and TBI) BUT - I do know that their sports medicine program is very strong. The sports fellow when I rotated there - was from Mayo - he was great. He was a good teacher and he really knew his stuff. If you do a rotation there - you get the opportunity to do local sports physicals, go to games, etc.

Dr. Malanga is definitely a name in the field - see if you are lucky enough to get him as an attending. (UMDNJ students get first pick though, and you may be a bit late for requesting attendings. Also, the paperwork is a bitch.) Kessler in general is a name in PM&R. I'm not sure if I would rank Columbia/Cornell OVER Kessler.

Columbia/Cornell - when I interviewed there - mentioned they had some role in the NYC marathon. I'm not sure when that is - and whether that corresponds with your rotation time -

One last thing - if you are ONLY doing a sports/spine/MSK elective - I would at least make the effort of learning about what rest of PM&R is about. It seems that many people want to go into sports/spine/MSK for various reasons ($$ being a big reason) these days - BUT many PDs and academic physiatrists are very in-patient oriented. Just like they advised against limiting yourself to one specialty during medical school applications/interviews, I would strongly suggest you NOT seem rigid/too focused on one thing. It's fine to be interested, but be careful when going on interviews. I think I had about 5 sports/spine/MSK interviewer out of about 40 total interviewers.

Good luck!

 

[inscape2004]

hi, . I am currently doing two weeks of SCI, and will be doing two more weeks of Electrodiagnosis. Will do TBI at some point too, I guess. Your point is certainly well taken. I probably need to get cracking on the paperwork if I ever want to get the stuff together in time for october (hope that aint too late to get letters). thanx for input, appreciate it. Anyone else out there w/juicy stuff on columbia/cornell?