How to get a residency at a prestigious hospital?

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Yes. Especially because I believe you do an Internal Medicine Residency first, then a Nephrology fellowship. IM residencies aren't as competitive as something like Derm, but the top programs are still very tough to get into.

Same stuff applies here as to most residencies, do well on Step 1, have research, get solid letters of recommendation (from well-known people in the field if possible), do well in 3rd year, etc...
 
How much does going to a top medical school contribute to getting into a competitive residency? In other words, what rating does resident adcoms give to medical school?
 
Verum said:
How much does going to a top medical school contribute to getting into a competitive residency? In other words, what rating does resident adcoms give to medical school?
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That's a tough question to answer, I'm not sure if anybody knows and it varies from school to school. I think it may help a little bit at some schools, but at others it won't matter. If you do the things I mentioned above, it won't matter too much what school you go to.
 
Verum said:
How much does going to a top medical school contribute to getting into a competitive residency? In other words, what rating does resident adcoms give to medical school?
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Personal quality always is more important than institutional quality, but if your school has a strong department in the specialty of your choice or a long history of strong matches in that field it can definitely be of some value. I'd take 10 points on the step 1 or a couple extra honors during clinical year over institutional reputation, personally.
 
Yes. AOA status, high Step 1 score, and good clinical evaluations and good interviewing skills with a great personality helps. I agree that the individual accomplishments trump the school name. If you're a stellar medical student, you're likely going to get into an awesome program. Going to a high powered medical school will help with connections and give you an extra boost, but it won't get you in if you are a mediocre student.
 
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mmmcdowe said:
Personal quality always is more important than institutional quality, but if your school has a strong department in the specialty of your choice or a long history of strong matches in that field it can definitely be of some value. I'd take 10 points on the step 1 or a couple extra honors during clinical year over institutional reputation, personally.
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Meh that depends on what your step is and how many honors you have. I'd much rather have a 255 from a top 3 than a 265 from an unranked sch.
 
The thing is, almost everyone applying to the competitive specialties has 250+ or AOA or in many cases, both. IMO factors like school rep, connections, and research are more impt once you are a competitive candidate.
 
no. if you aren't in a tier 1 school, just give up. dentistry or pharm might be better. podiatry is also a viable option
 
Does going to a prestigous program make you a better doctor at the end? :idea:
 
thegame11 said:
Does going to a prestigous program make you a better doctor at the end? :idea:
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It depends what your goals are; if you're going for academics it definitely helps. Even in private practice it can help, actually 3 of the 4 plastics attendings at the community hospital I'm doing TY at did fellowship at mayo.
 
Flapjacks said:
People from the Carribbean's get into Mayo, Hopkins, MassGen, Harvard Residencies:

SGU: https://apps.sgu.edu/ERD/2012/ResidPost.nsf/BYPGY?OpenView&RestrictToCategory=PGY1&Count=-1

This year 2 Mayo, 3 Harvard, 1 Hopkins.
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Not exactly. "Hopkins/Sinai" is a small community internal medicine program that has no actual affiliation with Hopkins. It is full of FMGs from India, and is not a desirable residency for AMGs at all, really. Some of the cardiologists or some other such specialty hold appointments at both Hopkins and Sinai, and so there is the loosest of loose connections there that the hospital trumpets like crazy. It's actually kind of laughable, and people in Baltimore all understand that Sinai is not at all related to Hopkins.

Of the Mayo matches, only one is to Rochester. The other is the Jacksonville location, which is not nearly the same as far as competitiveness/prestige.

The "Harvard" matches are all at similarly hardly-affiliated hospitals not in Boston. They are as much "Harvard" as Sinai is "Hopkins." That is to say, essentially not Harvard.

This is why premeds should not put so much stock in match lists . . . a lot of the time they really don't understand what it is they're looking at.


Out of all those matches you listed, the only good one is the Mayo IM one. The rest are noncompetitive community programs.
 
drizzt3117 said:
The thing is, almost everyone applying to the competitive specialties has 250+ or AOA or in many cases, both. IMO factors like school rep, connections, and research are more impt once you are a competitive candidate.
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As long as we are talking about the people applying to the top programs in the those competitive specialties (which may or may not be programs affiliated with "prestigious hospitals" for pre-med readers out there), I agree.
 
am i the only one that suspects that this carib match list is intentionally overplaying the school affiliations? I know that stamfords connection with columbia is fairly meagre at the residency level, as far as i have seen.
 
mmmcdowe said:
am i the only one that suspects that this carib match list is intentionally overplaying the school affiliations? I know that stamfords connection with columbia is fairly meagre at the residency level, as far as i have seen.
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Just like SGU claims 94% Step 1 pass rates?
 
Verum said:
How much does going to a top medical school contribute to getting into a competitive residency? In other words, what rating does resident adcoms give to medical school?
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If a program has never accepted someone from your school, they're much less likely to accept you. But, just because you went to a school that they accept a large number of applicants from doesn't mean you'll get into the program.
 
mvenus929 said:
If a program has never accepted someone from your school, they're much less likely to accept you. But, just because you went to a school that they accept a large number of applicants from doesn't mean you'll get into the program.
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Your predecessors can make or break it for you. If a residency has good luck with students from X school, they will go back to that well again. But the door swings both ways and if a couple of students in prior years were lacking, that can rapidly taint your chances of following. The door swings both ways so it's very hard to gauge.
 
Law2Doc said:
you'd still get into a brand name residency with either. That's sort of like saying you'd rather be dating a beauty pageant winner instead of a model.
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That wasn't my experience this cycle. People from better schools that had otherwise very similar apps got better interviews and matched at more desirable programs, at least in rads. YMMV with other fields.
 
^Speculation.

I hope you don't do research.
 
Its based on people's word and the data size sounds small.

You can continue to take stock in hearsay if you want.
 
Verum said:
How is it speculation if the poster is a resident and has seen it happen? Medical school does matter.
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Well, if i recall, the above poster has been consistent about stating that school name matters since way back before he was a med student, and he is a bit locked into that view since he chose a med school based on that view and now apparently feels his choice mattered for him for residency. He is invested in that opinion. However its a very low power analysis and he really doesnt appreciate that the top scorers from many other programs do just as well, if not better.
 
Flapjacks said:
Its based on people's word and the data size sounds small.

You can continue to take stock in hearsay if you want.
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Hearsay is information gathered by one person from another person concerning some event, condition, or thing of which the first person had no direct experience
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Driz said it was his own experience which means he directly experienced it.
 
I made a post with a detailed analysis about this before, but 60% of the residents at the top 10 rads programs are from top 25 schools. Self-selection undoubtedly played a huge part here, but IMO it makes a difference. YMMV.

Law2Doc said:
Well, if i recall, the above poster has been consistent about stating that school name matters since way back before he was a med student, and he is a bit locked into that view since he chose a med school based on that view and now apparently feels his choice mattered for him for residency. He is invested in that opinion. However its a very low power analysis and he really doesnt appreciate that the top scorers from many other programs do just as well, if not better.
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Flapjacks said:
Its based on people's word and the data size sounds small.

You can continue to take stock in hearsay if you want.
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The NRMP does track this info and does note that being a graduate of a top 40 med school improves your chance of matching into competitive specialties.
 
drizzt3117 said:
I made a post with a detailed analysis about this before, but 60% of the residents at the top 10 rads programs are from top 25 schools. Self-selection undoubtedly played a huge part here, but IMO it makes a difference. YMMV.
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Well, some percentage of people stay at their home schools for residency (where they have networked/auditioned for 4 years) and a lot of the top med school grads are good test takers by definition, so those results are probably accurate even if school name/prestige itself doesn't play much of a role. I see no evidence showing that the guy with a 250 from the next tier or two doesn't compose that remaining 40%.
 
The thing is, most of the people interviewing at the top programs are from top 25s. I interviewed at 19 programs, mostly top 20, and there were perhaps 2-3 of 16 people per group from non top 25s. Also, I had the complete interview lists for 5 programs and there were a similar percentage of non-top 25ers. For example, at UCSF, there was only 1/9 from a non-top 25 at the interview day (although he did match there). Furthermore, the non-top 25 people who interviewed had huge scores and research, most were MD/PhD or took a year off.

Law2Doc said:
Well, some percentage of people stay at their home schools for residency (where they have networked/auditioned for 4 years) and a lot of the top med school grads are good test takers by definition, so those results are probably accurate even if school name/prestige itself doesn't play much of a role. I see no evidence showing that the guy with a 250 from the next tier or two doesn't compose that remaining 40%.
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drizzt3117 said:
The thing is, most of the people interviewing at the top programs are from top 25s. I interviewed at 19 programs, mostly top 20, and there were perhaps 2-3 of 16 people per group from non top 25s. Also, I had the complete interview lists for 5 programs and there were a similar percentage of non-top 25ers. For example, at UCSF, there was only 1/9 from a non-top 25 at the interview day (although he did match there). Furthermore, the non-top 25 people who interviewed had huge scores and research, most were MD/PhD or took a year off.
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All I can tell you is that the many people I know who had high Step 1 scores from non-top tier med schools all ended up matching into top programs. So I reassert that it's more about you than where you are coming from. Again, you have for years been invested in this notion that the top ranked places fill with graduates of top programs, and yet brush off "40%", even without ignoring the folks who remain at their home school as insignificant. Also bear in mind that many top med schools actually have very mediocre residencies in many specialties, so I'm not sure how you are measuring tops for residency -- the hierarchy is different for virtually every specialty, and no top place is good in everything ( and some actually have very bad reputations in several fields).
 
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Considering there are over 150 med schools, having nearly 2/3 of the residents being from only 1/8 of the schools means an overwhelming amount of the residents are from top programs. After that, almost all of the remaining people were from highly regarded schools with a national reputation like Tufts, Brown, BU, GTown, Dartmouth, NYU, USC, etc or state schools in the same state.

Yes the home school effect can be large; more than half my future co-residents will be from the home med school, but it doesn't appear to be as large for a place like Bascom Palmer, which may have one home resident but most of their residents are from top schools.

Lets hear some of these top tier med schools with mediocre residency programs that you've been constantly alluding to... I'll grant Columbia rads and maybe MGH/UCSF peds, although I think both are still good if not top tier programs.

Law2Doc said:
All I can tell you is that the many people I know who had high Step 1 scores from non-top tier med schools all ended up matching into top programs. So I reassert that it's more about you than where you are coming from. Again, you have for years been invested in this notion that the top ranked places fill with graduates of top programs, and yet brush off "40%", even without ignoring the folks who remain at their home school as insignificant. Also bear in mind that many top med schools actually have very mediocre residencies in many specialties, so I'm not sure how you are measuring tops for residency -- the hierarchy is different for virtually every specialty, and no top place is good in everything ( and some actually have very bad reputations in several fields).
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drizzt3117 said:
Lets hear some of these top tier med schools with mediocre residency programs that you've been constantly alluding to... I'll grant Columbia rads and maybe MGH/UCSF peds, although I think both are still good if not top tier programs.
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Hopkins PM&R is pretty terrible, from what I hear.

Edit: as in quality of training, not in terms of malignancy (it may be malignant, I do not know)
 
GuyWhoDoesStuff said:
Hopkins PM&R is pretty terrible, from what I hear.

Edit: as in quality of training, not in terms of malignancy (it may be malignant, I do not know)
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I imagine FM at some of the top places isn't amazing either, but w/e. EM is sort of another one that's tricky but a lot of the top programs are still at top schools.
 
drizzt3117 said:
I imagine FM at some of the top places isn't amazing either, but w/e. EM is sort of another one that's tricky but a lot of the top programs are still at top schools.
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FM is one that's a total crapshoot, it seems.
 
What does a person need to do to get into AOA? If a student is in the top x% in their class, would he or she automatically be accepted into AOA? Or does this depend on a faculty decision/vote as well? I know with Phi Beta Kappa at my school, for example, most of the students who graduated as valedictorians year after year were not accepted into Phi Beta Kappa, so I'm betting that faculty decisions came into play there. Does the same go for AOA, or is it a number game in that case?
 
Really depends on the school. At mine it was strictly the top 16% by gpa. Some it's mostly step 1, some it's qualitative.

An MD Hopeful said:
What does a person need to do to get into AOA? If a student is in the top x% in their class, would he or she automatically be accepted into AOA? Or does this depend on a faculty decision/vote as well? I know with Phi Beta Kappa at my school, for example, most of the students who graduated as valedictorians year after year were not accepted into Phi Beta Kappa, so I'm betting that faculty decisions came into play there. Does the same go for AOA, or is it a number game in that case?
Click to expand...
 
An MD Hopeful said:
What does a person need to do to get into AOA? If a student is in the top x% in their class, would he or she automatically be accepted into AOA? Or does this depend on a faculty decision/vote as well? I know with Phi Beta Kappa at my school, for example, most of the students who graduated as valedictorians year after year were not accepted into Phi Beta Kappa, so I'm betting that faculty decisions came into play there. Does the same go for AOA, or is it a number game in that case?
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Here's a link to the algorithm my school uses for selection of AOA, just to give you an idea of how complex this process can be.

http://utswaoa.wordpress.com/join/criteria-for-selection/
 
An MD Hopeful said:
What does a person need to do to get into AOA? If a student is in the top x% in their class, would he or she automatically be accepted into AOA? Or does this depend on a faculty decision/vote as well? I know with Phi Beta Kappa at my school, for example, most of the students who graduated as valedictorians year after year were not accepted into Phi Beta Kappa, so I'm betting that faculty decisions came into play there. Does the same go for AOA, or is it a number game in that case?
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At my school, you have to be in the top 25% (per AOA requirements), but you're nominated by your classmates for the position, and then selected by a committee of some sort. I don't think it's the best way of doing it, since the nomination process seemed to be a complete waste of time (people picked people they knew, even knowing they weren't in the top 25%).
 
What school is that? Are the classes graded and scores kept on file or totally unranked?
 
drizzt3117 said:
Really depends on the school. At mine it was strictly the top 16% by gpa. Some it's mostly step 1, some it's qualitative.
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JABWS said:
Here's a link to the algorithm my school uses for selection of AOA, just to give you an idea of how complex this process can be.

http://utswaoa.wordpress.com/join/criteria-for-selection/
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mvenus929 said:
At my school, you have to be in the top 25% (per AOA requirements), but you're nominated by your classmates for the position, and then selected by a committee of some sort. I don't think it's the best way of doing it, since the nomination process seemed to be a complete waste of time (people picked people they knew, even knowing they weren't in the top 25%).
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Thank you all for your replies! I have a question related to what I read from your link, JABWS. If any of you or anyone else could reply, I'd appreciate it! Regarding publications, during the matching/application process for residency programs, would publications before medical school help? Or would we only be able to list publications during medical school?
 
An MD Hopeful said:
Thank you all for your replies! I have a question related to what I read from your link, JABWS. If any of you or anyone else could reply, I'd appreciate it! Regarding publications, during the matching/application process for residency programs, would publications before medical school help? Or would we only be able to list publications during medical school?
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ANY publications help. I would guess the more recent the better, but if you did some cool stuff in Undergrad (1st author stuff in a nice journal) it would definitely help.
 
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