Geographic Mobility for Residency/Fellowship/Professorship

[sushi18]

I’m a California resident who went to T20-30 CA schools for both undergrad and med school, and wants to end up in academic medicine. I’ve heard that getting into residency at an institution where you would want to do fellowship, and doing fellowship somewhere increases your chance of professorship at the same institution (of course as long as you don’t piss people off). I want to stay in CA for residency to be closer to family, but ultimately am really excited about a particular highly competitive program on the East coast for fellowship and then would like to come back to CA as a professor at the same place I do residency.

Basically my question is, when it comes to residency applications which will be coming up in a few years for me, would it behoove me to really gun for the prestigious East Coast residencies in order to maximize my chances for fellowship? Or is it just as fine as long as I excel in residency at a T20 in California? Honestly, I’m just not sure how snooty/unwelcoming of California residents some of the East Coast fellowships are and it’s not encouraging to look at the list of current fellows and see basically all East Coast Ivy League schools.

I’d also love to hear from people who’ve already been through the process regarding whether they recommend traveling to the East Coast to do a sub-I in IM to show willingness to travel. I’ve heard mixed advice when it comes to IM

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[collegestud2013]

IM is too big of a field for an away rotation to be very helpful. After all the credentialing and onboarding at a new institution, you'll spend the first few weeks just learning the system, and thus it's harder to make a good impression that way. In your case would just apply broadly to academic IM programs in and out of California.

 

[Putkernerinthehall]

IM is too big of a field for an away rotation to be very helpful. After all the credentialing and onboarding at a new institution, you'll spend the first few weeks just learning the system, and thus it's harder to make a good impression that way. In your case would just apply broadly to academic IM programs in and out of California.

Same for Peds or can away rotations be helpful, in your (or others') opinion ?

 

[Tenk]

Since your end goal is west coast, stay on the west coast. Networking > some fellowship on the east coast.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

It’s all dependent on 1) whether there is even a job at the institution and then 2) whether you are better and have more to offer than the other candidates who are also looking for a job.

No one just creates a job for you because you are nice.

This is coming from someone who was born and raised in So Cal… and I haven’t lived there now going on 2 decades.

 

[operaman]

No easy answer here. Generally speaking, if you want to end up west coast, then stick around there for training if possible. Not only the networking a huge part of things, but training itself is a long time, at least 6-8 years depend on what you end up doing. That’s a huge chunk of your adult working life and maybe better to spend it where you’re happiest anyhow. There’s no secret special medicine being practiced on the east coast; it’s basically the same at all the major centers.

Maybe just fellowship on east coast makes sense especially if it’s prestigious and special enough. You might also have a sense of whether your residency would be interested in having you as faculty and if there was a possibility of a position being open when you finished fellowship.

But there are some elite fellowships on the west coast as well and they almost certainly put more grads into CA positions and would have the inside track.