Is it almost always necessary to leave your local area of residence?

[Damian1990]

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I'm a first year local college student, currently in liberal arts. Psychiatry has caught my interest over the years and after some research, this seems like the most suitable occupation for me.

But I don't know how far I'd be willing to travel in order to pursue my goal of a psychologist. I currently live just outside of Philadelphia, PA where there is an excess of colleges. I'm not sure about the amount of medical schools. I don't want to leave the PA-NJ area, but is it most likely necessary I will have to?

 

[whopper]

The NJ/PA (And if you want to include NYC since its not far) is a heavily laden area in terms of training. There are plenty of medical schools & residency training programs in that area.

Philadelphia has quite a few, some of which are very good. You might not have to leave the area.

Now what exactly are the odds of staying in the area? Hard to say, especially since you are not at a point where you have your board scores, & letters of reccomendation from a medical school. Psychiatry however as of now is one of the easier fields to get into. This could of course change, though I doubt it. The personalities that tend to want to go into psychiatry from medschool tend to be the exception, not the norm.

 

[MDhasbeen]

Chances are good you'll be able to stay in the area if you really want to. Philly alone has a fairly wide range of med schools, from UPenn to Temple to Drexel to PCOM. Then, for residency, all but PCOM will have their own psych programs not to mention Albert Einstein and perhaps others I can't remember off the top of my head. How happy you might be at each of the programs is entirely a different issue. If you're more research-oriented, you'll need the higher stats/MCAT etc. to get into UPenn. Ditto for residency. But if you seek nothing more than solid clinical training, the area is full of it.