Finding out resident's schools?

[NRAI2001]

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Is there any way to look at an institution and their residents and see from what schools they re from? Like if i really wanted to do a residency in a certain hospital or university, could i look up to see what types of schools their residents where coming from?

 

[njbmd]

Hi there,
You cannot make any generalizations about doing a residency at any institution based on the medical schools of the current residents. It is not the medical school of the resident but rather their performance and interest in a particular program that determines match suitability. Residency applicants and matched residents tend to vary from year to year.

If you are interested in a particular program at a particular institution, your best bet is to contact the program director late in your second year to express your interest in their program and residency. This would be a good time to ask about fourth-year electives at their institution and good electives in general that make you a good resident there.

You might also contact some of the residents to see what things they find important in a good residency applicant so that you can make sure that you are competitive. Believe me, the current residents can have quite a say in who get ranked highly among the people who are interviewing.

Some residency programs are very regional and some like Hopkins, Stanford, Mass General have a national reputation. You can often glean this information by making contact with the program director. If a residency program tends to have a national reputation, it still may not be out of your reach provided you have done well in your medical school coursework, boards and have a good work ethic.

Most program directors want the best residents who want to be in their programs and are willing to work hard. If you can show this by good grades, good board scores and a good work ethic (your own department chair can attest to this if you get to know them) and a good Deans letter, you can generally convince the faculty and PD that you want to be there on your interview.

The websites of many residency programs will also list the medical schools of their residents but this is not universally true so again, the PD or program coordinator is going to be your source of information.

njbmd 🙂

 

[fantasty]

Is there any way to look at an institution and their residents and see from what schools they re from? Like if i really wanted to do a residency in a certain hospital or university, could i look up to see what types of schools their residents where coming from?

I agree with the more thoughtful points of njbmd, but yeah - a lot of residency programs do list there current residents and their schools on the web. If you really wanted to know, you can just go look.

 

[Brainsucker]

Some residencies take mostly from their own med schools. If you don't believe me, check this out: http://www.neuro.jhmi.edu/nustrn/residents/index.html

Also, I'm not sure about the details of other specialties and other schools, but I know that Columbia has a national reputation for training med students in neuroscience. I've heard this from my undergrad (UCLA) profs, a residency director in CA, and others, not just P&S folks.

Obviously, I'm concentrating on one specialty, but some of these points are probably applicable to various different specialties to different degrees. You'd do better to look at a bunch of residencies to figure out what would be good choices. Using neurosurgery again, if you look at Hopkins, the Barrow, UCSF, Columbia, and other programs, you'll see some of the same schools over and over. The main thing to notice is that programs like their own, though most aren't as inbred as Hopkins.

Anyway, you shouldn't set your sights on one residency as matching a competitive specialty is even more of a crapshoot than getting into med school. You wouldn't give up on med school if you couldn't get into Harvard/HST (or whatever your favorite would be), would you? Also look at things the other way: How many people from schools you're considering are matching in ortho, neurosurg, derm, ophtho etc? I realize that not all super-qualified students are interested in competitive residencies, but that's true at all schools, so it's not really much of a confounder. People might tell you that it's all up to you, it's just that Harvard a group of students that are preselected to be more competitive (MCAT is the best predictor of USMLE step I-there's a paper on the AAMC website) but that variation in numbers (between med schools) isn't so great to explain matching performance differences. What does? Med school.

 

[NunoBR]

Some residencies take mostly from their own med schools. If you don't believe me, check this out: http://www.neuro.jhmi.edu/nustrn/residents/index.html

Also, I'm not sure about the details of other specialties and other schools, but I know that Columbia has a national reputation for training med students in neuroscience. I've heard this from my undergrad (UCLA) profs, a residency director in CA, and others, not just P&S folks.

Obviously, I'm concentrating on one specialty, but some of these points are probably applicable to various different specialties to different degrees. You'd do better to look at a bunch of residencies to figure out what would be good choices. Using neurosurgery again, if you look at Hopkins, the Barrow, UCSF, Columbia, and other programs, you'll see some of the same schools over and over. The main thing to notice is that programs like their own, though most aren't as inbred as Hopkins.

Anyway, you shouldn't set your sights on one residency as matching a competitive specialty is even more of a crapshoot than getting into med school. You wouldn't give up on med school if you couldn't get into Harvard/HST (or whatever your favorite would be), would you? Also look at things the other way: How many people from schools you're considering are matching in ortho, neurosurg, derm, ophtho etc? I realize that not all super-qualified students are interested in competitive residencies, but that's true at all schools, so it's not really much of a confounder. People might tell you that it's all up to you, it's just that Harvard a group of students that are preselected to be more competitive (MCAT is the best predictor of USMLE step I-there's a paper on the AAMC website) but that variation in numbers (between med schools) isn't so great to explain matching performance differences. What does? Med school.

I think both JH and Columbia P&S are notoriously known (have nat'l reputation) for INBREEDING in neurosurgery residency.

 

[MN81]

Arkansas too...