Fellowship after doing residency in a community program.

[Manunitedforlife91]

Hello everyone. Trying SDN for the first time, would like to get some inputs with whole residency-fellowship match fiasco.

I'm a first year IM Resident at one of university affiliated community programs and gung-ho on going into cardiology post residency. The university itself has fellowship spots but I was wondering if it is at all possible to match at one of prestigious places after doing residency at a place like mine. My program is fairly new and haven't really had graduates out to see what places they go into. The university itself is pretty old and the main program from the university is decently established.
Realistically speaking what would you say my chances are to get into fellowship from a new program if I work extremely hard, get some studies published and have good LoRs??
Given how competitive fellowships are these days do you think I would have even remote chance of matching at a big program or even at a decent place?

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[mayn]

Hey man. From what I've learned about the fellowship process, the few most important things in landing a good fellowship program are what you would expect:

-Where you went for med school (AMGs preferred over IMGs)
-Where you went to for residency (big name places generally preferred over smaller community programs)
-Research (number of posters, number of manuscripts, quality of research)
-Visa status (citizens/greencard holders tend to have a big advantage)
-Who you know (if you know someone who knows the PD of a program and can put in a word, etc)
-LORs and general application (step failures, LOR from some famous cardiologist can all swing your application one way or the other)

The order of the above factors can vary depending on who you talk to, but if you're an AMG with no visa issues and at a decent residency you tend to have a more straightforward route to a decent cardiology fellowship if you do some basic research.

What you should do is work on research and performing well in residency. Go to as many conferences as you can and present posters, try to work on some manuscripts, try to do stuff besides just case reports. Try to find someone in your department who can go to bat for you when its time to apply (i.e make a few phone calls or write a stellar LOR). I would also apply very broadly if you're an IMG and require a visa. It's doable!

 

[USIMGCardsFellow]

Hello everyone. Trying SDN for the first time, would like to get some inputs with whole residency-fellowship match fiasco.

I'm a first year IM Resident at one of university affiliated community programs and gung-ho on going into cardiology post residency. The university itself has fellowship spots but I was wondering if it is at all possible to match at one of prestigious places after doing residency at a place like mine. My program is fairly new and haven't really had graduates out to see what places they go into. The university itself is pretty old and the main program from the university is decently established.
Realistically speaking what would you say my chances are to get into fellowship from a new program if I work extremely hard, get some studies published and have good LoRs??
Given how competitive fellowships are these days do you think I would have even remote chance of matching at a big program or even at a decent place?

I was in your exact situation - IM resident at a community hospital that has an affiliation with a large university program in the city and wanting to do cards. I did match at the university program and if you want advice here are the things I did that I think helped. (also for reference my USMLE scores are very mediocre 220 avg)

- Research: I had 6 pubs, 3 were retrospective studies one accepted at a national level and 3 case reports. Regardless of what program you go to you should be able to get at least a large case report volume and try to submit to quality conferences generally regionall ACC/ACP meetings have a low bar for accepting cases for posters
- Strong support for in house staff: both of the in house cardiologists I rotated with really called and emailed my top programs and clearly were helping me out and I think you really need that
- Try and become a PGY3 chief. I can tell you it really really helped a lot in my interviews and was always brought up
- Do an away at your university affiliate: I did two rotations at the program I matched at and I know the fellows were really lobbying for me and I really tried to make myself always seen: when we werent rounding i was in the ECHO reading room or cathlab - don't want to waste any time. However, definitely dont want to be TOO intrusive on the fellows.

Best wishes and know that it is possible, just work hard - hard work pays off maybe not initially but eventually it always does