How to get a residency at a prestigious hospital?

[Law2Doc]

---

Members do not see this ad.

in every specialty there is a very different hierarchy of which places are tops, and you won't know it unless you are in or researching that specialty by talking to multiple clinicians in the field (and would pretty much reveal what specialty you are in by being knowledgable about the hierarchy). Generally you find out what places are tops by talking to academics in th field, it's a very word of mouth kind of thing. And it can change year to year based on moving faculty. Every one of the top ranked places has at least one specialty residency which is not similarly ranked in the field. Some have several. The fellowships all know this and the US News ranking for med schools isn't of much import to them-- you aren't going to get the same cache coming from X hospital in ortho as you might from X hospital in IM. There will be hospitals that you perhaps never heard of as a premed or even as a med student if you are applying in a different field that happen to be top ten in a given field. And so on.

Drizz claims to know the hierarchy for rads, but unless he did similar pre-application research for other specialties, he's just BSing about knowing the hierarchy in other fields. Again, he's been espousing the brand name is better philosophy pretty consistently since he was a premed, and hes pretty invested in that viewpoint. and yet the truth of the matter is that all US allo places end up being pretty good launching pads in every specialty, if you have the numbers. He downplays it as a mere " 40%" of slots, which honestly is probably closer to 60% of the slots that aren't going to folks who stay at their home school.

I also might point out that to some extent PDs have their own strong views on the training you get at your particular med school school than the brand name. I happen to know a very highly ranked med school whose grads aren't even interviewed anymore by one well regarded residency because a couple of years in a row of residents from that place turned out to be poorly trained headaches for the PD. so the prior years batch of grads probably plays a much bigger a role of how you are going to be regarded than the brand name might. I know residencies that are happy with certain schools residents and go back to the same well over and over again, and places that after a couple of weak years start getting the cold shoulder from PDs.

 

[drizzt3117]

That was one of the longest posts that used the most vague anedoctal references i've ever seen. You dismiss my evidence based data with "I know a (unnamed) PD who says a certain (unnamed) residency (in an unmentioned field) doesn't interview students from an (unnamed) med school because they were mediocre... Yeah ok. I guess med students from X med school must match well everywhere, where do I sign up?

I know a lot about the hierarchy in many (but not all) fields because of several reasons, first of I have about 12 1st or 2nd degree relatives in medicine as residents and attendings in the fields of IM, rads, plastics, urology, gen surg, derm, rad onc, and peds. All of them are interested in academics or are already faculty members at universities, so I have a lot of people I discuss different specialties with. I've also recently done countless hours of research in this because I've been doing paid consultant work for residency apps this summer.

I saw a lot of vague generalizations but didn't see a single example of a top medical school with "very mediocre" or "downright bad" residency programs, except the actual examples I give. I'll note my posts are usually researched and evidence-based, or examples from my own experience, in which case I'll give more details. People can choose to believe what they wish.

 

[Verum]

If you don't mind me asking, what medical school did you go to?

 

[Law2Doc]

That was one of the longest posts that used the most vague anedoctal references i've ever seen. You dismiss my evidence based data with "I know a (unnamed) PD who says a certain (unnamed) residency (in an unmentioned field) doesn't interview students from an (unnamed) med school because they were mediocre... Yeah ok. I guess med students from X med school must match well everywhere, where do I sign up?

I know a lot about the hierarchy in many (but not all) fields because of several reasons, first of I have about 12 1st or 2nd degree relatives in medicine as residents and attendings in the fields of IM, rads, plastics, urology, gen surg, derm, rad onc, and peds. All of them are interested in academics or are already faculty members at universities, so I have a lot of people I discuss different specialties with. I've also recently done countless hours of research in this because I've been doing paid consultant work for residency apps this summer.

I saw a lot of vague generalizations but didn't see a single example of a top medical school with "very mediocre" or "downright bad" residency programs, except the actual examples I give. I'll note my posts are usually researched and evidence-based, or examples from my own experience, in which case I'll give more details. People can choose to believe what they wish.

A lot if people on here like to remain anonymous, which is why one cannot be less vague. We have been through this before on other threads.

You have been consistent in your viewpoints since you were a premed, so I'm not even going to try to change your mind, just give others on here the more balanced sense that they aren't going to be locked into a non prestigious residency by virtue of attending one of the 120 US allo med schools outside of the top ten or so. They aren't, if the do well on Step 1, networking, rotations and other things that actually matter. Nor is the person who attends the top program for med school set for life if they don't perform.

 

[drizzt3117]

If you don't mind me asking, what medical school did you go to?

I went to Wisconsin for med school and am going to Ucla for residency.

 

[drizzt3117]

That's a weak argument; no one is asking for names but saying "um I heard most people who had high step 1 matched at top places" is totally useless without knowing the "top places", step 1, specialty, and what med school they went to.

A lot if people on here like to remain anonymous, which is why one cannot be less vague. We have been through this before on other threads.

You have been consistent in your viewpoints since you were a premed, so I'm not even going to try to change your mind, just give others on here the more balanced sense that they aren't going to be locked into a non prestigious residency by virtue of attending one of the 120 US allo med schools outside of the top ten or so. They aren't, if the do well on Step 1, networking, rotations and other things that actually matter. Nor is the person who attends the top program for med school set for life if they don't perform.

 

[mvenus929]

Are the classes graded and scores kept on file or totally unranked?

We're still graded, and our scores are kept on file, but the only thing they are used for besides determining whether we passed the course or not is AOA. We don't even have that vague wording in our Dean's letter to indicate where in the class we're ranked.

 

[drizzt3117]

We're still graded, and our scores are kept on file, but the only thing they are used for besides determining whether we passed the course or not is AOA. We don't even have that vague wording in our Dean's letter to indicate where in the class we're ranked.

Are you sure about that? It's part of the required format of the MSPE.

https://www.aamc.org/download/139542/data/mspe.pdf

 

[thesauce]

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.

University of Washington, Columbia, Cornell, and Duke for Radiation Oncology. Yale and Hopkins have only recently been on the rise.