General Surgery...how competitive?

Hi:

Just wanted to add that as with any specialty, at the top programs it is always very competitive.

This means: AOA (including, ideally, honors in surgery, medicine and ob/gyn), two digit board scores over ~90, some good research experience (ideally with publications) with plans to do more during residency (1-2 years during residency) and obviously the other "usuals" (good recommendations from people in surgery, good interview skills, etc.).

Most people would also add the Brigham&Women's Hospital and Mass General to the list in the previous post.

Word of warning: in addition to Duke, Hopkins and Penn are also malignant programs ... but there are always those people that are into that. I am starting at Cornell this June -- it is a fantastic program with the advantage of NOT being malignant.

Hope this helps.

 

It is my impression that those who matriculated into surgery programs from my school were not so much in the top of the class as they were the hardest workers. The people at the very top of the class did IM, EM, Ophtho, Derm, or Rads. Those who did gen surgery knew how to get along with surgeons well. They also understood and related to the "culture of surgery." It's been purported that surgeons can sniff each other out from a mile away. There may be some truth to that.

 

In re. to the initial query "how competative is general surgery?", the answer is it depends. Some programs are supercompetative (AOA, good letters,good school,& research papers prerequisite) & some are available to above-average students without much on their CV.

What makes a program a good fit for someone has to take into consideration what 1) their career goals are (academics vs private practice) 2) whether or not a post-graduate fellowship will be desired 3) quality of life/location issues. To go into community practice in general surgery, extensive exposure to endovascular techniques, exotic oncology & endocrine cases, and state of the art trauma care are not required and you might pick a program with less call, less trauma, & less of an academic/university bent. Now while I feel broad-based exposure in the aforementioned areas makes you a more-well rounded surgeon, they probably involve knowledge/skills that won't be relavent to the overwhelming majority of your cases you will ever see.

As Kimberli pointed out, certain places have centers of excellence for certain subspecialties. What you must be careful with in her examples cited is that with all those places Pitt, CHOP, Kleinert & Kutz (KY), etc.. is that all those fields are essentially fellow driven specialties at those centers. It is not the gen. surgery residents doing the good pediatric cases @ CHOP, the exotic transplants @ pitt, the Hand transplants @ Louisville, etc...
I'm @ Louisville & we do not even routinely rotate on the hand service during our training (only ortho & NES do as junior residents, & Kleinert & Kutz have something crazy like 28 hand fellows each year to do their work) except by special request.

I think more important benchmarks for programs are 1) a survey of where the influential publications are being produced & 2) the caselogs of the residents. Louisville was interesting to me for the very influential work here for the last 20 years here in trauma/critical care & oncology, both of which are core general surgery fields without fellows competing for the cases (here). The graduating chiefs here the last few years have finished in the 99%+ of of every case category except head & neck CA(75%) and have in fact had to literally not count as many as several hundred cases in order to not get spiked by the residency review commitee for having too many cases . You can't get too much training in my opinion during this brief 5 year period & this is a positive , not a negative to me about Louisville.
About half the programs cited in the best of list in this thread I would not have even considered due to a combination of mandatory lab years, an abundance of fellows, or poor clinical/training reputations.

 

Kimberli,

nice points as usual

1)I too find it unusual for a 4th year resident @ Hopkins to drop out. Obviously there must have been either long term personal issues or perhaps some of competence not outlined on the show.

2) as Kimberli pointed out, there are some outstanding private/ community programs around including Carolina Medical Center (charlottne,NC), Baylor-Dallas Medical center (not to be confused with the Baylor medical center & school in Houston), & Carraway Medical Center (Birmingham,AL) that I know about. The Carolina & Baylor programs are as competative as anywhere & usually require you to be AOA to be a good candidate!

3) I don't know if turnover is much higher for surgery than some of the primary care fields as a whole. The people who have left my program have been 1) older people with children who did not realize the upheaval on their family career 2) a few who have changed specialties to ortho,neurosurgery, & a plastic surgery integrated program when more attractive positions for them open up (most of these people interview for those out of medical school, but failed to match) 3) girls who suddenly wanted to start a family 4) one had a head & neck cancer that recurred & 5) people with some severe personal problems who transfered closer to home
Very few people with "normal" backgrounds & career paths have tended not to be successful (at least here)& you can pick out all the ones that left as "damaged goods" of one sort or the other.

4) places like Hopkins have their purposes & you can probably see some real bizarre pathology there like you would @ the Mayo clinic. Those places by & large are not the best places to get trained in surgery, but rather they're places to go for 1)an academic pedigree, 2) to position for fellowship training, or 3) to do outstanding fellowship training. I don't know that they are more "malignant" (whatever that means) than anywhere else. Certain programs do tend to have certain personalities however.

 

Please pardom my ignorance, but I've seen the term AOA used here a few times. What does it mean.

 

There are some AOA societies in Canada but I don't believe that they are in all of the med schools. Because it isn't in many of the schools, most Canadian schools don't really put that much emphasis on it.

 

The australian olive association eh! That ought to get you into a good residency program.

thanks for the info. I was slightly puzzled.

 

woah hold on.....let me get this straight.....she kept working even though she has GBM....I assume you mean Glioblastoma multiforme...if so that's about the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life...they're letting her perform surgery despite the fact that she has an aggresive invasive brain tumor...I think thats where we need to call in some tough love.

 

Who elects new members? Upperclassman from your own school's chapter or members from chapters around the country? How do they decide? Is this just another silly frat. or something that I want to work towards? I'm starting school in the fall so I'm a little clueless....excuse my ignorance.

 

Amen to that.

 

Nice resurrection! 8+ years old, you are really digging into the archives!

 

that resident with the GBM is probably long dead by now

 

Yeah I hear its basically a death warrent.

 

You missed the point. Don't bump an 8 year old thread for no reason.

 

Wow sorry, the SDN ayatollahs are out in full force today.

 

^ grave digger

 

anybody know the average step1 scores of high vs. middle vs. low tier residency programs? I realize that choosing residencies has more to do with fit than scores but I'd like to get a general idea of which programs I'd be competitive for vs. high-reach programs. (ie. assuming 215 will probably not get you into MGH)