Hi all, I am a PGY-3 interested in pursuing a forensics fellowship. Outside of the typical places that are named as good/top (Case, SUNY Upstate, UC Davis) what are some others I should be looking into nationally? How about in New England specifically? Finally, what are some factors you would consider important outside of location when assessing programs to apply for? Thank you!
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Good Forensic Programs (Particularly NE)
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Neither of the New England programs are that great. U Mass used to have Applebaum but that was ages ago.
Brown and Yale have much better reputations.
Yale has a good program, maybe a tier lower than the Resnick-line programs (including CWRU’s fellowship which was founded by Resnick as well as those founded by his academic heirs at UC Davis (Scott) and SUNY Upstate (Knoll.))
Brown is probably a bit weaker than Yale.
UMass had a strong program historically but word on the street is their fellowship has closed. Harvard (MGH) is famous for the strength of its clinical training and research, but consensus over the years in this forum is that forensics is a relative weakness there.
Various factors make a forensic fellowship strong or weak. Look for programs where you get to spend a lot of time being directly supervised by nationally prominent forensic psychiatrists. You also probably don’t want to be doing tons of correctional treatment (you could’ve done that fresh out of residency sans fellowship) or serving as a trial competency evaluation mill. Ask about the kinds of cases you’ll be doing, approximately how many of each you’ll be doing, and the process for getting experience with civil cases.
The fellowship year flies by, and you’ll want to be ready for much more than managing depression in inmates and doing competency evals.
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Are you sure about UMass? I know someone who just graduated from their fellowship program and UMass is/was affiliated with MA Recovery Center and Bridgewater. The MGH program is pretty weak with only one core faculty member being forensically trained and they don’t even have a fellow every year due to difficulty obtaining attendings and rotation sites (when I was considering doing a forensic fellowship I was strongly discouraged from applying there by people in the field, including a close friend of the program director’s, and they also weren’t accepting fellows that year). As an addiction fellow I was supervising their forensic fellow who was doing a C/L rotation, on any addiction consults he got to give some insight into the quality of training (i.e., doing general and addiction C/L rotations as a forensic fellow and being supervised by another fellow…). There’s also been perpetual talk on the street of the MGH fellowship potentially closing down permanently.
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I heard through the grapevine they didn’t participate in the match last year and my quick look at ERAS shows they’re not registered to participate in this year’s application cycle either.
The program’s website lists application deadlines from 2024.
That’s pretty bleak. Why would a forensic fellow do addictions or consultation-liaison work?
My thoughts exactly. It’s listed as core rotation on their fellowship website and I think it has to do with their program director primarily being a C/L psychiatrist at BWH.
