greets fr. nyc said:
here's a few ways to look at a match list depending on what stage you're at in the med school career process.
1st) most personally: are the programs that graduates went to places that you could see yourself in? Often times, prior graduates working as residents in hospitals serve kind of like " ambassadors" for their respective med schools. so in some ways, a good impression / strong work by previous years reflects well on student's results later on.
2nd) in some ways you can look at the number of people going into highly competitive specialities (tho that is sometimess different from year to year.)
**but in general / traditionally the most competitive spots have been = dermatology, orthopedics, plastics, ENT (otolaryngology) , radiology, neurosurgery = due to paucity of spots and desireability of these specialites to past classes of medical students and/ or because of lifestyle, income, types of procedures, etc etc.
**and as stated before, some specialities are very popular depending on the year: for example this year, anesthesia, general surgery, emergency medicine were VERY hot. Familiy medicine was not. (You need to look at the spots unmatched, roughly, as published by the NRMP: national residency matching program administration).
**and depending on the history & current clinical / research excellence, some programs/hospitals in supposedly "non-competitive" specialities like pediatrics or internal medicine WILL ALWAYS be VERY COMPETITIVE for residency:
for exmaple for peds = Children's Hospital, Boston; CHOP, Babies and Children's in NY, Children's LA, UCSF, Hopkins, etc. or for internal medicine on the national scene: e.g. MGH, Hopkins, UCSF, Chicago, U Mich, Mayo, Columbia, Baylor, UTSW, Univerisity of Washington, Northwestern, UCLA, blah blah blah.
but then that's a case and point... have you ever heard of the MGH? or McGaw? or how about the Brighams and Womens' Hospital? What about Hospital for Special Surgery? Or how about Barnes-Jewish Hospital or Massachussets Eye and Ear Infirmary? Or the Wills Institute? ALL of these hospitals are MAJOR players in their own specialty.
***another way to look at programs is examine things from local level: let's say in NYC.... all the major med schools are considered strong based on the quality of graduates they turn out and WHERE THEY END UP. however, of course the big ones like Cornell, Columbia, NYU will always attract more students from outside of the local area based on "name" recognition or for historical reasons (e.g. the place Bellevue hospital has had in American medicine, etc).
...it's pretty complicated!
***....and one must take into account that the competitiveness of the hospital/prgoram may not be totally consistent with how that program is truly viewed within that specialty itself!!!!! HERE'S AN EXAMPLE IN TERMS OF RADIOLOGY of TWO NY PROGRAMS:
...you might see cornell radiology as being a desireable name, but if you compare it pound for pound to the quality of NYU's radiology department and program, you'll see NYU is clearly stronger.... do both turn own competent radiologists? yes. but there's no comparison, academically speaking....
you clearly find this out after you've spoken to fellow med students, your mentors, your professors; researched each program thoroughly on-line and in the library; and have been to each of these programs for perhaps a month-long elective. And it'll be obvious that NYU has the stronger program because on the sheer numbers of researchers in radiology; the QUALITY and QUANTITY of the research and how the research IS TRANSLATING to direct CLINICAL improvements; the number of both crazy experimental AND in use state-of-the-art MRI's or CT scanners; the long history of NYU in radiology throughout the decades, the quality of the teachers, the esprit de corps of the residents and their collegiality with the attendings.... etc, etc.
(you see, it can be very tricky at the outset of finding what makes a great residency program sometimes. that's why people do away rotations at other institutions to really see if the hype or the negative rap is really worth it.)
so how does one make any sense of it all?
*******a very very general rule is to look at the subspecialties rankings of US News or some other report within each state.... ***** again, the actual rank is not so important as whether or not such a program shows up on the list... you might see specialities like cards, gyn, neurosurg, ortho, peds, etc. but with sooooo many hospitals in the US, only a finite number of hospitals can fit into a top 50 list or whatever.
for example look at Cedars-Sinai in LA... ever here about it??? but if you are in cardiology, you most certainly have. Or perhaps the Lahey Clinic, if you are in GI, then you most certainly know it's a quality place to train.
....but what about specialties like anesthesia???? or radiology (like the above example)???. or for matter, general internal medicine????
these specialities ARE NOT EVEN RANKED by any magazine, and hence the difficulty in easily knowing which are strong programs and which are mediocre programs.
now this seems all pretty confusing, i admit, but that's the way it is at first glance...
...but once you get to know
1) where the research, the new knowlege is being made: you should know "the literature" and who's producing it, so to speak
2) how residents fit into the picture = i.e. the quality of the training for residents themselves (you get this by talking to current residents and students who have been there, and by reading forums, etc)
3) where past residents have been from and where they have gone,
4) lifestyle and geographic preferences,
5) happiness factor of residents and attendings,
6) certain sub-sub-specialities that may be very unique to that institution
7) stability of a program (for example, is the chairman leaving? is there a major exodus of faculty? Is the department losing money?) .
-- then, you'll be on your way to knowing what makes a great residency program and hence a great match list or not.
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MS4 and <2 months.... hallelujah!
