IM residency, Cardio fellowship questions

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SashKoshOMGosh

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Hey guys,

I am an incoming MS1 at LECOM and I am curious how hard it will be and what goes into getting an IM residency in Florida being from a school in PA. My family is moving to FL and I would eventually like to join them there or move to New Orleans. I want to go into cardiology (I did LECOM's post bacc program and fell in love with Cardiology), but I know nothing about how competitive it is or how to best tackle getting there. I know USMLE/COMLEX scores are important, but how important is research, extra-curriculars, LORs and med school GPA? If I can gain a competitive IM residency, does that line me up for a good cardio fellowship and if not how does matching for a fellowship usually work? Is it hard to land a residency outside of the region where you attend medical school? If so, what is the best way to overcome this? I can't bear the thought of having to live in the north any longer than necessary (I'm from Georgia and can't take the weather and need sunlight in my life, haha). Is there any benefit to doing your 3rd and 4th year rotations in the region that you would like to residency match with?

If there are any female IM residents going into cardiology, I'd love to hear your experiences since I know it is still a very male dominant field and women only make up around 12% of all cardiologists. I know a recently retired female DO cardiologist who faced a lot of discrimination in the 80s, but I'm not sure how things have changed. It won't change my mind and I will fight for the title, but I'd like to know what I'm up against. Also, is becoming a DO instead of an MD going to hurt my chances of becoming a cardiologist? Sorry for the plethora of questions, but I want to start my med school career off right and give myself every advantage I can now. Thank you so much for your replies!

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Yes it will hurt your chances but it is still doable. The biggest hinderance to a competitive IM fellowship is your residency. UF in Gainesville is very DO friendly for IM and will allow you to match cards. You can't match into just match into cards from any community IM program. Your best bet is matching into a residency that also has a cardio fellowship attached.

Take both the usmle and comlex. You may not get back to Florida for training but midwestern IM university programs are generally DO friendly.
 
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Speaking VERY generally..... being one of the more competitive IM specialities you will have you're work cut out for you but certainly not impossible. At this point all you can do is focus on getting through med school with good academic history and into a decent IM residency. Once in residency what you did in med school really won't matter that much, unless of course you failed a year or had huge red flags. Otherwise your reputation at your IM program can make or break you. If you are a hard-working, teachable IM resident who people enjoy working with and seen as a team player then in my opinion that goes a long way into staying somewhere for fellowship.
 
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I am a DO and now in my chief year of cardiology fellowship. If you are interested in cardiology my recommendation is to structure your 3rd and 4th years at places that have IM medicine residencies and cardiology fellowship spots. Research is a huge plus with program directors for some reason. Audition rotations > boards > research > GPA >LOR > extra-curriculars > personal statement. The most important thing IMHO is to do well on your rotations in 3rd and 4th years at the places you want to go that have internal medicine and cardiology. Then do well on your boards.
 
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Hey guys,

I am an incoming MS1 at LECOM and I am curious how hard it will be and what goes into getting an IM residency in Florida being from a school in PA. My family is moving to FL and I would eventually like to join them there or move to New Orleans. I want to go into cardiology (I did LECOM's post bacc program and fell in love with Cardiology), but I know nothing about how competitive it is or how to best tackle getting there. I know USMLE/COMLEX scores are important, but how important is research, extra-curriculars, LORs and med school GPA? If I can gain a competitive IM residency, does that line me up for a good cardio fellowship and if not how does matching for a fellowship usually work? Is it hard to land a residency outside of the region where you attend medical school? If so, what is the best way to overcome this? I can't bear the thought of having to live in the north any longer than necessary (I'm from Georgia and can't take the weather and need sunlight in my life, haha). Is there any benefit to doing your 3rd and 4th year rotations in the region that you would like to residency match with?

If there are any female IM residents going into cardiology, I'd love to hear your experiences since I know it is still a very male dominant field and women only make up around 12% of all cardiologists. I know a recently retired female DO cardiologist who faced a lot of discrimination in the 80s, but I'm not sure how things have changed. It won't change my mind and I will fight for the title, but I'd like to know what I'm up against. Also, is becoming a DO instead of an MD going to hurt my chances of becoming a cardiologist? Sorry for the plethora of questions, but I want to start my med school career off right and give myself every advantage I can now. Thank you so much for your replies!

I support the order that mochajonz put things in, but note that audition rotations pretty much only matter for osteopathic residencies, so just remove audition rotations from the list and it works for MD residencies. Nearly all my classmates who matched a DO IM residency rotated where they matched, but nearly none of my classmates who matched at an MD IM residency did.


Edit: Although really, the best thing you can do for the next two years for ANY specialty including cardiology is study hard and maybe do research if you feel like you have time. After you've become a good student and got a good step 1 score and everything, THEN worry about how to become a cariologist.
 
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I support the order that mochajonz put things in, but note that audition rotations pretty much only matter for osteopathic residencies, so just remove audition rotations from the list and it works for MD residencies. Nearly all my classmates who matched a DO IM residency rotated where they matched, but nearly none of my classmates who matched at an MD IM residency did.


Edit: Although really, the best thing you can do for the next two years for ANY specialty including cardiology is study hard and maybe do research if you feel like you have time. After you've become a good student and got a good step 1 score and everything, THEN worry about how to become a cariologist.

Well auditions are still important for LORs and if you get one from a well known PD that will go miles on the ACGME side. One of our clinical deans was a former PD and he stated the two largest things he looks for is board scores and LORs.
 
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Well auditions are still important for LORs and if you get one from a well known PD that will go miles on the ACGME side. One of our clinical deans was a former PD and he stated the two largest things he looks for is board scores and LORs.

Yeah but it's the letter that's important, not the audition itself, unlike in the osteo world.
 
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Yeah but it's the letter that's important, not the audition itself, unlike in the osteo world.

Meant to say a deeper message. On the ACGME side, MD medical schools have far more associated residencies with them. They would just need to do a sub-I with their affiliated residency and that would be enough. In some cases PDs would be well known enough that an audition would not be necessary and in most cases hurt the applicant. Compare this to DO schools with sparse GME and the AOA PDs don't have nearly the same influence toward ACGME program directors. I'm not saying your wrong about the audition rotations, what I am saying is that the audition rotation serves as a way to help make connections with well known faces (of course getting a letter of recommendation as a result). It is important caveat to realize as to why one is doing an audition.
 
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Meant to say a deeper message. On the ACGME side, MD medical schools have far more associated residencies with them. They would just need to do a sub-I with their affiliated residency and that would be enough. In some cases PDs would be well known enough that an audition would not be necessary and in most cases hurt the applicant. Compare this to DO schools with sparse GME and the AOA PDs don't have nearly the same influence toward ACGME program directors. I'm not saying your wrong about the audition rotations, what I am saying is that the audition rotation serves as a way to help make connections with well known faces (of course getting a letter of recommendation as a result). It is important caveat to realize as to why one is doing an audition.

But that's why the LOR category already exists in the ranking that mochajonz provided above, and is separate from auditions, so that we could consider the importance of each separately. To avoid confusion.

Anyway all this talk of letters from well known program directors makes me wonder if you have extremely lofty goals or if you're overestimating the difficulty of matching into a decent university program.
 
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But that's why the LOR category already exists in the ranking that mochajonz provided above, and is separate from auditions, so that we could consider the importance of each separately. To avoid confusion.

Anyway all this talk of letters from well known program directors makes me wonder if you have extremely lofty goals or if you're overestimating the difficulty of matching into a decent university program.

Just echoing what others have stated in the past. I could be overestimating the difficult of getting into a university program.
 
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Just echoing what others have stated in the past. I could be overestimating the difficult of getting into a university program.

Good boards and decent LOR's will take you far enough (assuming there's no major flaws in your app you have to make up for), even if they're from regular attendings at your home institution. If you do research you'll get a step further. It won't make you the first ever DO at Stanford or whatever, but you can get into fine, respectable programs with that. The argument has been made that it's not enough to get competitive programs in "desirable locations" but that largely depends on whether or not you see the country like this:

america.jpg
 
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Good boards and decent LOR's will take you far enough (assuming there's no major flaws in your app you have to make up for), even if they're from regular attendings at your home institution. If you do research you'll get a step further. It won't make you the first ever DO at Stanford or whatever, but you can get into fine, respectable programs with that. The argument has been made that it's not enough to get competitive programs in "desirable locations" but that largely depends on whether or not you see the country like this:

View attachment 219524

It is still an advantage to have a letter written from someone the PD knows. This is all I am saying. It doesn't mean you cannot match well if you don't have one. It also doesn't mean you will be getting that interview at MGH. However, it still helps this has been said many times on here.
 
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I am a DO and now in my chief year of cardiology fellowship. If you are interested in cardiology my recommendation is to structure your 3rd and 4th years at places that have IM medicine residencies and cardiology fellowship spots. Research is a huge plus with program directors for some reason. Audition rotations > boards > research > GPA >LOR > extra-curriculars > personal statement. The most important thing IMHO is to do well on your rotations in 3rd and 4th years at the places you want to go that have internal medicine and cardiology. Then do well on your boards.

Thanks for great reply, my husband is second year now, ready to take his step and comlex, we plan on doing externships, and he wants to do IM with cardio fellowship, it has been his passion for long time. Do you know if there is anything special to put into personal statement to have better chances for the future?
 
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Good boards and decent LOR's will take you far enough (assuming there's no major flaws in your app you have to make up for), even if they're from regular attendings at your home institution. If you do research you'll get a step further. It won't make you the first ever DO at Stanford or whatever, but you can get into fine, respectable programs with that. The argument has been made that it's not enough to get competitive programs in "desirable locations" but that largely depends on whether or not you see the country like this:

View attachment 219524

As a visible minority with an accent, I've had a few unpleasant experiences in "what" and "Disneyland". One was an actual dangerous situation involving drunk frat boys following me and yelling racial slurs.

For some of us, it's a necessity to match within the blue boxes.
1280px-United_States_presidential_election_results_by_county%2C_2016.svg.png
 
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As a visible minority with an accent, I've had a few unpleasant experiences in "what" and "Disneyland". One was an actual dangerous situation involving drunk frat boys following me and yelling racial slurs.

For some of us, it's a necessity to match within the blue boxes.
1280px-United_States_presidential_election_results_by_county%2C_2016.svg.png



Of course, you should try to match in a place that feels right for you. As a side note, I didn't know that oklahoma and west virginia were the only states to seemingly not have any blue counties. TIL.
 
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As a visible minority with an accent, I've had a few unpleasant experiences in "what" and "Disneyland". One was an actual dangerous situation involving drunk frat boys following me and yelling racial slurs.

For some of us, it's a necessity to match within the blue boxes.
1280px-United_States_presidential_election_results_by_county%2C_2016.svg.png
Please understand that what I'm about to say is in no way intended to minimize or deny these experiences you've had... but do you really think racial slurs never get used in blue counties? In some places we're talking about a blue vs red split of, say, 53:47. Statistically you're only slightly less likely to face that kind of hate speech in 'red' areas than in 'blue' areas, if at all. And that is assuming that all 'red' voters are racists/homophobic/xenophobic etc, which is of course an unfair assumption that paints many wonderful people with an awfully broad brush. Hateful people are everywhere, and so are good people. Let's not forget that that horrific murder of two men who tried to intervene when two teenagers were being accosted by a white supremacist... happened in Portland, OR.

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As a visible minority with an accent, I've had a few unpleasant experiences in "what" and "Disneyland". One was an actual dangerous situation involving drunk frat boys following me and yelling racial slurs.

For some of us, it's a necessity to match within the blue boxes.
1280px-United_States_presidential_election_results_by_county%2C_2016.svg.png

I've got thrown racial slurs and I live in a totally blue state based on your map. Not one these people were white either...
 
Thanks for great reply, my husband is second year now, ready to take his step and comlex, we plan on doing externships, and he wants to do IM with cardio fellowship, it has been his passion for long time. Do you know if there is anything special to put into personal statement to have better chances for the future?

As long
As a visible minority with an accent, I've had a few unpleasant experiences in "what" and "Disneyland". One was an actual dangerous situation involving drunk frat boys following me and yelling racial slurs.

For some of us, it's a necessity to match within the blue boxes.
1280px-United_States_presidential_election_results_by_county%2C_2016.svg.png

The only time i got racial slur thrown at me was Berkeley, CA. The Midwest has been a fine place so far
 
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