Match advice - oncology interest

[Chqu22]

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Hi everyone!

I am looking for any advice on applying for SA rotating and oncology residencies! I am now a VM3 student and am very interested in pursuing oncology as a specialty, but I am still deciding between radiation and medical oncology. I am currently doing a dual DVM-MS degree, and am doing my MS research this summer with both a medical and radiation oncologist, and we are hoping to get a few publications out of it which I am very excited about!

My main concern is my GPA - I've been an A/B student but had a low GPA first semester of vet school. My GPA continues to rise as we get to more clinical/case-based classes and I still have two semesters to go. I hope my GPA will be a 3.3/3.4 by the time I apply for a rotating internship. My school recently decided that our clinical year rotations will be P/F, so those will not be able to raise my GPA. I was planning on mentioning this in the explanation statement! Any advice or feedback, especially someone who recently went through the match with a lower GPA, would be greatly appreciated!

With my research/MS program, I am hoping that it may help set me apart and I will have strong LORs from the oncology faculty at my school. I plan on doing externships at a few of the programs/schools I am most interested in during my fourth year, but I mainly have this summer to start thinking about institutions since we make our fourth-year schedule in the upcoming fall semester.

 

[supershorty]

The most important thing, as you already know, is going to be your LORs. There's only so much you can do to affect your GPA at this point - work as hard as you can to keep your grades high now. Your research will certainly help. You may need to apply more broadly in the match than someone with a higher GPA (meaning I wouldn't recommend that you only apply to the 'big' internships, whether you're thinking about private practice vs academia), but you don't need to have a 4.0 to match somewhere, especially for rotating.

Make sure that your letters are not just coming from oncology, though. When I was applying for rotating, I was encouraged by the faculty in my specialty of interest to have letters from them, but also letters from other major areas like surgery, internal medicine, ECC, etc. Rotating internships are looking for people to vouch that you'll be a good doctor all around, not just in the area that interests you. I think when I applied for rotating, I had 2 letters from surgery (one of whom hadn't worked with me on the clinic floor, but was on my PhD committee and knew my research well), 1 from medical oncology, and 1 from internal medicine , but I may be misremembering.

 

[supershorty]

I plan on doing externships at a few of the programs/schools I am most interested in during my fourth year

Also, for what it's worth, the faculty member who mentored me a lot during my 4th year didn't recommend doing this for academic institutions. Her feeling was that the odds that you'd work with someone who would be able to vouch for you as a potential intern were low, learning the flow of a different academic institution in a 2 week rotation was difficult, and that there was more benefit in using externships for places you'd get to do more hands-on stuff (this last point may not be as valuable to you as an onco interested person; I am a surgery bro). Depending on the institution, you may end up paying some tuition to do an externship there. Just keep that in mind.

I used my externships solely to go to practices where I got to do a lot, and I matched to my top academic choice for rotating, so it worked out fine.

 

[Chqu22]

The most important thing, as you already know, is going to be your LORs. There's only so much you can do to affect your GPA at this point - work as hard as you can to keep your grades high now. Your research will certainly help. You may need to apply more broadly in the match than someone with a higher GPA (meaning I wouldn't recommend that you only apply to the 'big' internships, whether you're thinking about private practice vs academia), but you don't need to have a 4.0 to match somewhere, especially for rotating.

Make sure that your letters are not just coming from oncology, though. When I was applying for rotating, I was encouraged by the faculty in my specialty of interest to have letters from them, but also letters from other major areas like surgery, internal medicine, ECC, etc. Rotating internships are looking for people to vouch that you'll be a good doctor all around, not just in the area that interests you. I think when I applied for rotating, I had 2 letters from surgery (one of whom hadn't worked with me on the clinic floor, but was on my PhD committee and knew my research well), 1 from medical oncology, and 1 from internal medicine , but I may be misremembering.

Thank you, that is all super helpful and a great reminder about LORs! I’m hoping to plan my rotations out to have ER/ICU and IM earlier on in hopes of an LOR to come from those as well. I’m not too picky at all about location so I am planning on applying pretty broad!

 

[Chqu22]

The most important thing, as you already know, is going to be your LORs. There's only so much you can do to affect your GPA at this point - work as hard as you can to keep your grades high now. Your research will certainly help. You may need to apply more broadly in the match than someone with a higher GPA (meaning I wouldn't recommend that you only apply to the 'big' internships, whether you're thinking about private practice vs academia), but you don't need to have a 4.0 to match somewhere, especially for rotating.

Make sure that your letters are not just coming from oncology, though. When I was applying for rotating, I was encouraged by the faculty in my specialty of interest to have letters from them, but also letters from other major areas like surgery, internal medicine, ECC, etc. Rotating internships are looking for people to vouch that you'll be a good doctor all around, not just in the area that interests you. I think when I applied for rotating, I had 2 letters from surgery (one of whom hadn't worked with me on the clinic floor, but was on my PhD committee and knew my research well), 1 from medical oncology, and 1 from internal medicine , but I may be misremembering.

Thank you, that is all super helpful and a great reminder about LORs! I’m hoping to plan my rotations out to have ER/ICU and IM earlier on in hopes of an LOR to come from those as well. I’m not too picky at all about location so I am planning on applying pretty broad

Also, for what it's worth, the faculty member who mentored me a lot during my 4th year didn't recommend doing this for academic institutions. Her feeling was that the odds that you'd work with someone who would be able to vouch for you as a potential intern were low, learning the flow of a different academic institution in a 2 week rotation was difficult, and that there was more benefit in using externships for places you'd get to do more hands-on stuff (this last point may not be as valuable to you as an onco interested person; I am a surgery bro). Depending on the institution, you may end up paying some tuition to do an externship there. Just keep that in mind.

I used my externships solely to go to practices where I got to do a lot, and I matched to my top academic choice for rotating, so it worked out fine.

Thank you for this! I honestly didn’t even know about schools having you pay tuition to do an externship with them so I will definitely explore that more. Maybe I’ll just do one rotation or so at another school, but use my other blocks for something else. I know I want to get more surgery experience so want to get a shelter med and an ER one planned that are hands on. Thank you, this is all such helpful advice!

 

[allygator13]

I'm radiology, not oncology, but just wanted to chime in about doing externships at other schools. I did this during my 4th year; I did one regular small animal radiology rotation at UPenn and an ultrasound rotation at NCSU. I didn't do it to have anyone to vouch for me for a rotating internship, I did it to get more imaging experience during the year and to network with the radiologists and residents there, which I think helped since I ended up getting a residency at NCSU. I did not have to pay anything extra to the schools for these externships either (though this was 2017-2018), just had to pay my own way for travel and housing. Just another perspective on this particular point.