Fellowship Competitiveness Poll (class of 2009-14)

[IlDestriero]

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Few people come on here and brag about failures, so let's see if we get any interesting data from an anonymous poll. (Your vote is anonymous in the above poll.)
Feel free to post if you want to share your story or those of your classmates.
For those that applied for a fellowship since "things got more competitive" what's your experience?
It's basic and flawed, but it's data.

Edit: If you didn't secure a fellowship, it would be helpful to know which one, but it's too late to change the poll options. Sorry.

 

[PMPMD]

CCM apps went up significantly over the past few years. My fellowship (CCF) increased class size from 5 to 8 because of this, as did the CCM program at my residency (UH, 1-->2). These went into effect for 2011-12. Not sure if this is what you're looking for.

 

[IlDestriero]

That's good info. Our applicants went up with the peds match as well as the number of people that we have to interview.
The purpose of the poll is to try to get an idea if people are having much trouble getting fellowship positions in anesthesia. I don't think anyone really knows how competitive anesthesia fellowships are. (Outside of individual programs).
Maybe there's unpublished peds match data, but not all the positions are available through the match, so that data is also incomplete.
Residency directors may also have some data.

 

[PMPMD]

I would think data would be harder to come by for the non-match specialties. For CCM, I applied to my top choice, and waited to see if I got a spot (I did). Had I not, I would have sequentially applied to a few more places. Anecdotally, for the 2 programs where I trained, they've only had more applicants than spots for the past 2 years or so (for CCM).

 

[HollATme]

This is meaningless without knowing WHAT fellowship the person in question was interested in.

 

[afteranesthesia]

What would be considered the best critical care fellowships in the country? I'll only be an intern next year, so I have some time, but this is something I'd like to kind of get an idea of now.

 

[IlDestriero]

I don't think we have the numbers to make it any more specific than this. I'm not looking to get it into A&A anyway.😉
I wouldn't say it's meaningless though, if nearly everyone that wants a fellowship gets one, that's useful info. If people who don't match want to post, they can. However, most don't want to post about their failures. Look at the board failure posts. A handful of people post, but thousands read the threads. I'm sure many many others also failed. ~20% fail each year. We don't hear from them often.
Feel free to develop a better poll.
I'd change it, but I don't think you can change the poll options after its created.

 

[kazuma]

I don't think we have the numbers to make it any more specific than this. I'm not looking to get it into A&A anyway.😉
I wouldn't say it's meaningless though, if nearly everyone that wants a fellowship gets one, that's useful info. If people who don't match want to post, they can. However, most don't want to post about their failures. Look at the board failure posts. A handful of people post, but thousands read the threads. I'm sure many many others also failed. ~20% fail each year. We don't hear from them often.
Feel free to develop a better poll.
I'd change it, but I don't think you can change the poll options after its created.

I agree. There are thousands of lurkers out there and an anonymous poll has the potential to draw some data from those people without them having to publicly admit to their failure to obtain a fellowship.