Help me rank Gen Surgery Residency Programs

[TFA2MD]

Help me rank these Gen Surgery Programs, location is not important.
HCA jfk
Mercy health Darby
New york presberryian nymc

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[LucidSplash]

Help me rank these Gen Surgery Programs, location is not important.

Wellspan York PA
Albany Medical Center
New York Presbyterian Queens
New York Metropolitan Health New York Medical college
University of Illinois Peoria
HCA Miami miller JFK
SLU

Probably going to need to let us know more about what you think your ultimate end goals are.

 

[TFA2MD]

I would like to go for fellowship later. Probably Surgical Oncology, but not decided yet.

 

[DOVinciRobot]

I would like to go for fellowship later. Probably Surgical Oncology, but not decided yet.

Then you need research years. An HCA program will be unlikely to get you into competitive position for a Surg onc fellowship.

 

[Lem0nz]

I would like to go for fellowship later. Probably Surgical Oncology, but not decided yet.

Then make a list 50 programs longer.

 

[TFA2MD]

Wellspan York PA
Lehigh Valley Allentown
University of Illinois Peoria
Albany Medical center
New York Presbyterian Queens affiliated to Cornell
New York Presbyterian Health New York Medical college
HCA JFK Hospital
Lincoln Medical Center New York
Nuvance Health
SLU st Louis
Mercy Health Darby PA
Rutgers Community Health
@LucidSplash @Lem0nz

 

[LucidSplash]

I really only have personal knowledge of a couple of these places and I’m vascular not surg onc. My understanding of the surg onc match being extremely competitive that if you have even a thought of wanting to do that you’ll need a place where you can do two years of dedicated research but @Lem0nz will have more insight as HPB. So my thought is that if you have even an inkling you want to do one of those fellowships, make sure it’s a place where you can do research. Of course there are always outliers who match without the usual recs but I would not start out by planning to be an outlier. I myself did Gen surg at a “communiversity” or Academic-affiliated program (not on your list) that wasn’t a research powerhouse but had a good rep and several of my co-residents went on to impressive fellowships, but they were all rockstars in their own way, and around 40-50% of grads went into general surgery. Both the fellowship peeps and Gen surg peeps were extremely competent general surgeons when they graduated residency because that place makes sure you are when you graduate, they don’t believe in leaving it up to a fellowship finishing school. All that is to sayI think you can be successful at a non-academic program but surg onc is obviously one of the toughest fellowships and you want to stack the deck with the opportunity to do bench research, which less traditionally academic programs may not have.

 

[Lem0nz]

Wellspan York PA
Lehigh Valley Allentown
University of Illinois Peoria
Albany Medical center
New York Presbyterian Queens affiliated to Cornell
New York Presbyterian Health New York Medical college
HCA JFK Hospital
Lincoln Medical Center New York
Nuvance Health
SLU st Louis
Mercy Health Darby PA
Rutgers Community Health
@LucidSplash @Lem0nz

Lucid nailed it. You need to go to a seven year program, ideally university of somewhereism. Not seven year optional, but seven year expected of everyone. If it had a strong surg onc program and/or an established fellowship even better but not necessary. A track record of matching into surg onc (and a reproducible list of achievements in publications during residency) is almost the only thing you really need to look for. They should have put a resident into surg onc each year or every other year for the last two decades. That’s the program you want to increase your signal to noise.

I wish a lot of other things mattered but in the current climate they just don’t.

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

Lucid nailed it. You need to go to a seven year program, ideally university of somewhereism. Not seven year optional, but seven year expected of everyone. If it had a strong surg onc program and/or an established fellowship even better but not necessary. A track record of matching into surg onc (and a reproducible list of achievements in publications during residency) is almost the only thing you really need to look for. They should have put a resident into surg onc each year or every other year for the last two decades. That’s the program you want to increase your signal to noise.

I wish a lot of other things mattered but in the current climate they just don’t.

How competitive are these 7 year general surgery programs? In other words, how many publications would be expected of somebody from a lower tier MD school? Would research gap in medical school be necessary?

 

[Lem0nz]

How competitive are these 7 year general surgery programs? In other words, how many publications would be expected of somebody from a lower tier MD school? Would research gap in medical school be necessary?

Unfortunately saying all of that I don't really have a ton of experience with that. I went to a community program and am one of the outliers Lucid talked about. You do *not* want to be an outlier if your heart is set on surg/onc or peds surg. The struggle is amplified like ten fold.

I'm led to believe that great grades, letters, and just one or two pubs is usually adequate in the setting of high step scores. Without high step scores, does get harder and you'll need other things in your application to stand out.

 

[DOVinciRobot]

How competitive are these 7 year general surgery programs? In other words, how many publications would be expected of somebody from a lower tier MD school? Would research gap in medical school be necessary?

2-3 actual publications is likely enough based on where the academic surgery inclined students at my shop. But it depends based on a number of factor. Somewhere like Michigan/Hopkins/Penn? You’re going to need to be stellar across the board.

 

[Dr.LeoSpaceman]

How competitive are these 7 year general surgery programs? In other words, how many publications would be expected of somebody from a lower tier MD school? Would research gap in medical school be necessary?

I'm on faculty at one of these types of places. They are competitive, but it's also not about number of publications. Much more about demonstrating potential/vision for how you will maximize what is being offered in this type of training. From a research perspective, someone with 2 publications stemming from a project where they were the driving force (came up with an idea, potentially found a way to get it funded, did the legwork, etc.) is likely better off than someone with 10 middle-author papers where they abstracted some info from charts. Quantity will get you through the screening process and into an interview. But it's how someone talks about what they've done, and the vision they have for their future that gets them ranked highly.

Environment is also taken into consideration. If you were at a medical school that didn't have the same opportunities for research mentorship, and you were still able to get something done, that can be taken into account.

Research gaps are not required, and just like in residency, the only thing worse than not having taken research time is taking time and not having something meaningful to show for it.

 

[TFA2MD]

Thank you all. But could you please rank the programs keeping aside the fellowship dependency.

 

[LucidSplash]

Thank you all. But could you please rank the programs keeping aside the fellowship dependency.

No. We can’t. We’ve told you what is important with regard to surg onc, specifically research. Beyond that, no one has personal knowledge of the ins and outs of every program out there or even just all the programs on your list, because no one has trained at them all or worked at them all. No one knows the specifics of each program or enough about you or your personality to know how to rank these programs in any meaningful way, because any ranking scheme would have to take into account what is the best fit for you to succeed to the top of your potential, a large portion of which depends on you.

Even if you had someone who had personal experience with those programs, or 100 someones, they would all rank them differently because they valued different things.

Good luck. But no one here can make this choice for you.

 

[Terrainport]

agreed - this primarily depends on what your career goals are and also if you want academics or PP

 

[ThoracicGuy]

Thank you all. But could you please rank the programs keeping aside the fellowship dependency.

I could rank them... Alphabetically, How long they have been training residents, or even how many letters are in the names. All would be about the same usefulness as any other ranking. As @LucidSplash stated, you need to figure out which places offer the chance to do what you want to end up doing, then of those places, which do you like best. Could you make a 'mistake' in ranking? Sure. Would it likely matter? Probably not.

 

[Dr.LeoSpaceman]

Could you make a 'mistake' in ranking? Sure. Would it likely matter? Probably not.

I feel like this is the key. If you do your homework and are honest with yourself when making the list, it's unlikely that choices made while ranking are going to materially influence where you're at in 10 years. Journey could certainly look different, though. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

 

[Valhallax]

Then make a list 50 programs longer.

I agree, Surg Onc is very hard to get into. To maximize your chances you are best to go into the lab for 2 years with a surgical oncologist (or medical oncologist) who is NIH NCI funded.

So if you really want Surg Onc perhaps don't go to the places that are community or private based (i.e. HCA) and focus on big academic programs that regularly put people into surg onc fellowships. Sure you can get into surg onc with only 3-5 first author papers during residency, but to really maximize your chances your going to want to aim for a big lab, 10+ first author papers over your 7 years, lots (I did approx 3 a year during residency) of presentations at Academic Surgical Congress, SSO, AACR, and American College of Surgeons. You'll want to aim for 75%+ on the absite each year as a minimum.

One of the most important questions to ask all of your programs is to give you a list of their last 5 years of graduating residents and where they went to fellowship, then you can see what the program is capable of (if you are interested in a competitive fellowship).

 

[Severus21]

Thank you all. But could you please rank the programs keeping aside the fellowship dependency.

Agree with what others have said. Only you know where is going to make you happiest to train. Which is important because you won’t do your best work at a place you dislike. Also look at research opportunities or where prior residents have matched for fellowship.