Help making a program list for gen surg?

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swoopyswoop

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I think you have a lot of positives for the application. Unfortunately the P and the relative paucity of research will likely hurt your interview yield at some of the top places.

I would suggest when it comes time for interviews a little more of a geographic focus as right now you're pretty all over the map.

I'd drop Loma Linda, Rush, Monte, and North Shore unless you have some compelling reasons.

If you are planning on keeping all the top tier places, I think you'll get a fair but not great number of interviews from there; I'd also worry that even if you land the interview your a priori odds of ending up at the top of their rank list are lower.

So I think you need to probably try and add about 8-10 programs from the following list:

Northeast/Midatlantic:
BU
BID
Tufts
Brown
Dartmouth
Mt Sinai
RWJMS *or whatever they're calling it these days
Pitt

SE:
UAB
UVA
UNC
Wake
Duke
Louisville
Florida

Midwest:
U Chicago
Indiana
Wisconsin
Iowa
OSU
Cincy
Case
CCF

West: You can maybe add UCLA UCSF but those obviously fall in the highly competitive category again.

I think based on the programs you have listed, I'd break them down thus far in terms of competitiveness: (**This is purely meant to be in terms of how hard it will be to land interviews and match there, not meant to be a ranking of the program quality**). The problem is right now your list is too tipped toward the "A" category. Need to add some more B to B+ level competitiveness programs (which are what I have tried to list above).

A+:
JHU
Brigham
Mass Gen
UMich
UPenn

A:
Vanderbilt
Stanford
Columbia
NYU
Northwestern
UWashington

A-:
USC
UCSD
Yale
Emory
UT-SW
Baylor

B:
Loma Linda
GWU
Rush
Loyola
North Shore- LIJ
Montefiore


--

I think you will likely do very well overall and get a lot of good interviews. Just need to be careful to have some mid-tier programs in the mix to play it safe.
 
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I'm not sure how to determine that other than straight up asking the program...
 
I'm not sure how to determine that other than straight up asking the program...
Look at the alumni or recent graduates pages where they usually list placements for the last ~5 classes they've graduated
 
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As for geographic preferences - I prefer NYC/Chicago. What was your reasoning behind removing Loma Linda, Rush, Monte, and North Shore? I'll definitely look into the programs you listed!

While you can certainly prefer NYC and Chicago, if you are truly interested in Pediatric Surgery, you need to be open to many more places. I would focus primarily on programs that have pediatric surgery fellowships or place people in them consistently. You can often see that as mentioned above on program web sites. You also need to be ready to go to a program that has a research year (or two) built into it to help you reach your goals.
 
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I think you have a lot of positives for the application. Unfortunately the P and the relative paucity of research will likely hurt your interview yield at some of the top places.

I would suggest when it comes time for interviews a little more of a geographic focus as right now you're pretty all over the map.

I'd drop Loma Linda, Rush, Monte, and North Shore unless you have some compelling reasons.

If you are planning on keeping all the top tier places, I think you'll get a fair but not great number of interviews from there; I'd also worry that even if you land the interview your a priori odds of ending up at the top of their rank list are lower.

So I think you need to probably try and add about 8-10 programs from the following list:

Northeast/Midatlantic:
BU
BID
Tufts
Brown
Dartmouth
Mt Sinai
RWJMS *or whatever they're calling it these days
Pitt

SE:
UAB
UVA
UNC
Wake
Duke
Louisville
Florida

Midwest:
U Chicago
Indiana
Wisconsin
Iowa
OSU
Cincy
Case
CCF

West: You can maybe add UCLA UCSF but those obviously fall in the highly competitive category again.

I think based on the programs you have listed, I'd break them down thus far in terms of competitiveness: (**This is purely meant to be in terms of how hard it will be to land interviews and match there, not meant to be a ranking of the program quality**). The problem is right now your list is too tipped toward the "A" category. Need to add some more B to B+ level competitiveness programs (which are what I have tried to list above).

A+:
JHU
Brigham
Mass Gen
UMich
UPenn

A:
Vanderbilt
Stanford
Columbia
NYU
Northwestern
UWashington

A-:
USC
UCSD
Yale
Emory
UT-SW
Baylor

B:
Loma Linda
GWU
Rush
Loyola
North Shore- LIJ
Montefiore


--

I think you will likely do very well overall and get a lot of good interviews. Just need to be careful to have some mid-tier programs in the mix to play it safe.
Rwjms is still Rwjms, but instead of being umdnj Rwjms, it's Rutgers Rwjms. If the Op is serious about trauma, I wouldn't recommend Rwjms. My program is the far superior Rutgers program (in all aspects imo) for trauma, but our peds isn't a strong area, but the nyu attendings also work at our affiliate and we rotate with them, so I'm guessing we will place someone into peds in the next few years if someone wants it
 
where do your mentors have contacts? that is a good place to start.
 
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