Getting cards from a less competitive program

[indymed]

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Say you go to a bottom tier IM program, excel do research, good letters of rec, is it still harder to get a cardio spot than if you come from the top tier programs? How importaant are faculty evaluations during the im residency? If you had to rank the top evaluation characteristics such as grades, letters, program competitiveness, research, what would be the most important in attaining a cards fellowship?

 

[NDESTRUKT]

i would say still pretty challenging even with a lot of research. the interesting thing is many of the cards fellows at my school have only a few papers - maybe 1 first author and 2 or 3 2nd/3rd authors. the fact is, they knew the faculty and/or the well known faculty wrote letters and contacted the people they knew to help them get into fellowships.

many of those who go to top tier programs will publish maybe 1 or 2 papers, but they worked with extremely well known faculty and were hard working, excellent general internal medicine residents. that's enough to get you a spot. no one's going to deny a resident from program X (yale, johns hopkins, whatever) who is extremely hard working and has the backup of someone like eugene brunwauld or eric topol.

 

[indymed]

So I suppose you have to know someone huh? That's disappointing, but I guess realistic. Wouldn't it be great if being a great im resident, with good letters from good physicians, research were enough to get a cards fellowship? There are lots of great hospitals out there that don't get their name out there for whatever reason. ah well...

 

[NDESTRUKT]

you guys also have to remember there are plenty of lesser known hospitals with their own fellowship program who will take their own...so maybe that's an option too to think about.

in the end if you are from a lesser known univ program but have good research, your shot of ending up in a lesser known cards program may still be good as well.

 

[joti]

i would say still pretty challenging even with a lot of research. the interesting thing is many of the cards fellows at my school have only a few papers - maybe 1 first author and 2 or 3 2nd/3rd authors. the fact is, they knew the faculty and/or the well known faculty wrote letters and contacted the people they knew to help them get into fellowships.

many of those who go to top tier programs will publish maybe 1 or 2 papers, but they worked with extremely well known faculty and were hard working, excellent general internal medicine residents. that's enough to get you a spot. no one's going to deny a resident from program X (yale, johns hopkins, whatever) who is extremely hard working and has the backup of someone like eugene brunwauld or eric topol.

I cannot agree with you anymore. I have my own personal experience to reveal.
I am a very disappointed guy, but at the same time I know I have to be persistent.
Now Cheif Resident in a mediocre University program. Have excellent LORs. Already have 3 papers (2 research papers and case report). One paper is in revision in Circulation (this might be my trump card). Had 12 abstracts last year. Presented in AHA, ACC, TCT, SCAI, ESC last year including oral presentation in AHA. 4 papers is in submission process. I did all these during my residency. Last year I did not get a single interview. I dont have any visa issues. I think the major issue here is FMG status.

I really doubt how many programs open the ERAS application. The most frustrating part is the amount of money we have to spent for the application and negative response. Anyway I am ready to fight till the last moment. I fought this my much through out my career. I have only one choice too. Cardiology!
My mentor is really surprised. He thought last year my CV was one of the best (considering the fact that all these was done during residency without taking an off year for research).

Any input about how to strenthen my application will be greatly appreciated. I know there are lot of experienced guys in this forum.

Thanks

 

[ProgCoordinator]

I gotta tell you guys: A) I look at every single application and we received nearly 1,000 annually. B) Knowing someone may get you an interview, but it will not guarantee a fellowship position. Anticipating such things, we build 'favor' interview slots into our calendar so we can still see all of the candidates that we've chosen without having to sacrifice.

High quality research and/or publications can trump a less glamorous IM program. Not saying that coming from IM training with Duke or UCSF doesn't help, but it's not the only way to get your foot in the door.

Your PD's LOR is very important.

We have a very formalized system of review and it does not hinge on where anyone went to med school or whether a candidate is on a visa. We also labor over our rank order list the same way you do. There is no formula (e.g. We have X number of slots and we will fill X-1 of them internally). Obviously, I speak from the perspective of our program; a top-tier, highly competitive, university-based program.

I hope this helps and relieves a bit of pressure.