MD Hedging your bets when applying to competitive specialty?

[toffeecake9]

for everyone applying to a competitive specialty, do u hedge your bets?

eg. like for dermatology, the match rate is around 75%, so just wondering if it's too risky to tailor all activities to that 1 competitive specialty.

but then i guess the downside is, if u spread efforts between multiple specialties in the prelude to the match, eg. doing stuff for IM AND dermatology, with IM as backup, would it (a) come across as ambivalent/ uncommitted, and (b) cause one's focus be spread too thin, & ironically reduce chances of matching into preferred specialty?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Tenk]

No. Go big or go home.

 

[Disciple of Sattar]

What is this tailoring your activities crap. This isn't the pre-med show anymore. Do things you are interested in doing.

 

[Aerus]

What is this tailoring your activities crap. This isn't the pre-med show anymore. Do things you are interested in doing.

There's definitely a lot of app tailoring. You could be interested in clinical practice and happen to like the skin as an organ system but hate research. That wouldn't really fly if you wanted to go into dermatology though.

 

[deleted480308]

Don’t tailor at all for the second but apply to the second. If you have any business applying to derm you will get IM interviews even if all your research is skin rashes

Include a few locations that are total assumptions of easy to get in

 

[toffeecake9]

Don’t tailor at all for the second but apply to the second. If you have any business applying to derm you will get IM interviews even if all your research is skin rashes

Include a few locations that are total assumptions of easy to get in

thanks for the solid advice, lol i'll have to look into what those locations are..