How to go about applying to transitional year vs. prelim medicine programs?

[datpremedgirl]

Hi all,

Current M4 here planning on going into anesthesia. So I have been trying to figure out how go about applying to transitional years vs prelim medicine programs, and am having trouble finding information online. It seems that TY years are more "cush," but at the same time, I will have to be competing against applicants who are going into derm, ophtho, rad onc, etc. On ERAS, there are hundreds of programs listed for TY and prelim medicine years and I was wondering how I should even go about choosing which ones to apply to. Ideally, I would just like to apply to 10 or so in order to minimize the number of interviews I have to go on. However, I am also having trouble gauging how competitive certain programs are since I have heard that certain community programs can actually be insanely competitive. For those of you who have had experience with this, how did you guys go about choosing which ones to apply to, and did you guys do TY or prelim medicine (or maybe even prelim surgery?) programs? Thanks for any advice!

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[Hoya11]

Hi all,

Current M4 here planning on going into anesthesia. So I have been trying to figure out how go about applying to transitional years vs prelim medicine programs, and am having trouble finding information online. It seems that TY years are more "cush," but at the same time, I will have to be competing against applicants who are going into derm, ophtho, rad onc, etc. On ERAS, there are hundreds of programs listed for TY and prelim medicine years and I was wondering how I should even go about choosing which ones to apply to. Ideally, I would just like to apply to 10 or so in order to minimize the number of interviews I have to go on. However, I am also having trouble gauging how competitive certain programs are since I have heard that certain community programs can actually be insanely competitive. For those of you who have had experience with this, how did you guys go about choosing which ones to apply to, and did you guys do TY or prelim medicine (or maybe even prelim surgery?) programs? Thanks for any advice!

Which prelim/TYs to apply to depends on what your overall plan is for your next step.

I'll tell you my thinking:

I didn't want to move twice, For intern year, I wanted to either stay in DC where I went to med school, or do the intern year in the same city as my advanced program.

So I applied to the Prelim medicine at my med school program and another in DC - just in case I wanted to say.

Your very likely to get into a big academic prelim medicine program.

So then, for every advanced program that I was seriously considering, I interviewed at a 2-3 local prelim programs (whether they be TY or pelim medicine).

So I interviewed for a few in NYC and Boston which is where I knew I wanted to go, in addition to the two in DC that i mentioned before.

Sometimes, when you interview for the residency spot at an advanced program, they link the interview day to the prelim program (if your interested in that) so you can do both interviews in the same day.

Then when I did my ranking, I did

1. Boston Program
- Boston prelim program A
- Boston prelim program B
- Boston prelim program C
- DC prelim program A
- DC prelim program B

2. NY Program

- NY prelim program A
- NY prelim program B
- NY prelim program C
- DC prelim program A
- DC prelim program B

In the end I inteviewed at 3 in NYC, 3 in Boston, and 2 in DC for prelims

I ranked 10 advanced programs, with most of them being in Boston or NY.

The ones not in Boston of NY were either far down my list or had categorical options.

Hope this helps