help with residency likelihood

[bdp612]

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Hey everyone, thanks for any help that you can provide.

I'm a significant other of a med school student trying to learn the likelihood of getting into surgical residencies in the Northeast. Ideally New York / Massachusetts, but general Northeast is fine. I know there are many factors that go into this and advice won't be perfect, and that "surgical residency" is very general, but I'm just looking for an idea.

Let's say the applicant is coming from UCF, with a 90% test average, and multiple research publications with at least one first author. I don't know much about boards scoring but let's say 80th to 90th percentile.

Thanks very much!

 

[AdmiralChz]

Have your “significant other” post here him or herself, for starters. You shouldn’t post on behalf of others, as they might not want to poll an online forum especially with so many identifiers (specific school with pretty specific scores).

Second this probably belongs in the general surgery subforum on applications.

 

[Mad Jack]

Lol, "let's just assume 80-90%" on the boards.

That's not how it works.

Come back when you have board scores, because they certainly aren't a given. They are a different animal than anything you will ever do in the entirety of the rest of your life, and other factors correlate relatively poorly with them. If you score as well as you take for granted, you'll match in the Northeast. If you don't, you might not. Everything else in your application adds up to less than the value of your board score so long as you have no red flags, basically, so telling us all this other stuff means nothing without scores.

 

[bdp612]

Thanks for the quick replies, and apologies if the forum choice was incorrect.

AdmiralChz: I chose that school because it is comparable in rank to the school the applicant actually attends. Additionally I have hidden gender and the year of the applicant. Though I understand the whole thing would be easier if the applicant were posting this question, I just don't want to get into why I'm the one doing it, so to all posters, please just reply if you feel comfortable doing so.

Mad Jack: This is good info, thank you. The boards are far off, so we are just trying to get an idea of what it would take ahead of time. What is the lowest percentile you would guess an applicant would need to guarantee a NE surgical residency? What kind of board percentile would give us a 50% chance?

Thanks again.

 

[TraumaLlamaMD]

There are a lot of surgical programs in the Northeast, running the gamut from very competitive academic programs all the way down to the very opposite. If geography is the only criteria your SO has and he or she has no major red flags, chances are good... but geography is rarely the only factor. If he or she wants an academic-oriented program, or emphasis on certain subspecialties, or a specific state or city, chances go down accordingly.

 

[ThoracicGuy]

Thanks for the quick replies, and apologies if the forum choice was incorrect.

AdmiralChz: I chose that school because it is comparable in rank to the school the applicant actually attends. Additionally I have hidden gender and the year of the applicant. Though I understand the whole thing would be easier if the applicant were posting this question, I just don't want to get into why I'm the one doing it, so to all posters, please just reply if you feel comfortable doing so.

Mad Jack: This is good info, thank you. The boards are far off, so we are just trying to get an idea of what it would take ahead of time. What is the lowest percentile you would guess an applicant would need to guarantee a NE surgical residency? What kind of board percentile would give us a 50% chance?

Thanks again.

It also depends on what they want to do with their life after general surgery. Do they want to do a fellowship? Do they want an academic job? Are they willing to go to a crappy program just to be in the NE?

 

[bdp612]

Thanks to both of your responses. The quality of the residency and the subspecialty are definitely huge factors that we would be weighing, though my partner is not sure which surgical subspecialty yet. I don't know if my SO will land on just one subspecialty in the end -- if I had to guess based on what I'm hearing there would be 3 to 5 that would be exciting for him/her, so maybe that would grant us some flexibility even after narrowing down.

We both highly want to be in the NE, but my partner is concerned that it will limit the options too much which has been stressful to think about, so that is in a nutshell why I started this thread. Just trying to gain some understanding and get our expectations at the right level.

As for what's beyond surgery (fellowship, academic job), no clue yet. If that informs what type of residency we would choose then I'm sure my partner will think about it and that it will become a factor as well.

 

[ThoracicGuy]

Thanks to both of your responses. The quality of the residency and the subspecialty are definitely huge factors that we would be weighing, though my partner is not sure which surgical subspecialty yet. I don't know if my SO will land on just one subspecialty in the end -- if I had to guess based on what I'm hearing there would be 3 to 5 that would be exciting for him/her, so maybe that would grant us some flexibility even after narrowing down.

We both highly want to be in the NE, but my partner is concerned that it will limit the options too much which has been stressful to think about, so that is in a nutshell why I started this thread. Just trying to gain some understanding and get our expectations at the right level.

As for what's beyond surgery (fellowship, academic job), no clue yet. If that informs what type of residency we would choose then I'm sure my partner will think about it and that it will become a factor as well.

If there is a chance that you want a competitive fellowship, you should try to go to as good of a residency program as possible. That will help to give as many options as possible. That means you may need to look outside the NE. Think of it this way, you can live somewhere else for 5-7 years, get training, then go for fellowship (which has a high possibility of not being in the NE). Then when you are all done you can look for a job in the NE and live there the rest of your lives if you want.

Don't get so set in a location that you limit your training because you were looking at it with tunnel vision.