Match List question (not your typical "who has best matches questions"

[Eilat87]

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Hello everyone, so I've looked at several match lists from various schools and I've noticed that alot of the East Coast schools don't have a lot (If any) of people matching into California residencies. I'm interested in going to school on the East Coast but I would like to eventually do my residency in the city of San Fran. Even Western COMP doesn't have alot of matches into residencies in SF (they have most of their matches in southern california which is where the school is located), so my question is if graduates can or have a much easier time matching into programs that are geographically closer to their school? Thanks in advance.

 

[AdemTD]

Hello everyone, so I've looked at several match lists from various schools and I've noticed that alot of the East Coast schools don't have a lot (If any) of people matching into California residencies. I'm interested in going to school on the East Coast but I would like to eventually do my residency in the city of San Fran. Even Western COMP doesn't have alot of matches into residencies in SF (they have most of their matches in southern california which is where the school is located), so my question is if graduates can or have a much easier time matching into programs that are geographically closer to their school? Thanks in advance.

I think this is probably due to preference of each student and not necessarily because it's harder for a DO to match into a San Francisco residency. I would imagine as long as you're competitive in terms of board scores, you should have a realistic shot at matching where you would like.

 

[Rollo]

Depends on if the school has any connections or lets you do rotations in SF. Lot of residency programs want you to rotate with them at least once so they know your "face" and are more inclined to invite you for an interview.

You should ask this question in DO students forum or the clinical rotations forum. You'll get better and well-informed answers there rather than random guesses (which is what I just did though I think my guess is pretty good).

 

[TexasPhysician]

A couple of things go into this.

First, most people that choose med school in the east prefer to stay in the east.
Second, LOR's from residency are most effective when other residency directors KNOW the letter writer. This is less likely if you apply across the nation, putting you at a slight disadvantage. Not impossible to recover from this though.
Third, California residency positions are probably the most difficult to land because TONS of people want to go back to CA. There are numerous people in my class applying only CA.

 

[TeamZissou]

I had this same question a couple months ago and talked to quite a few of the soon to be newly minted interns who matched away from their school and their advice echoed what TexasPhysician said. The only thing to add to this is they all said while your LOR writers may not be as known at the program, if you do an away rotation there this counts far more towards your chances (for better or worse) than who your letter writers are or where you went to school.

So basically ya it location of your school matters somewhat but doing an away rotation at the programs you want to go to matters far more.

 

[XRanger]

I heard that it also helps that if you have a connection in CA, like family members, SO, etc... Most people that go to east coast schools are from east coast so they tend to stay there. Because PDs might get suspicious if you don't have any connection in CA and suddenly apply there for residencies.

 

[Instatewaiter]

I heard that it also helps that if you have a connection in CA, like family members, SO, etc... Most people that go to east coast schools are from east coast so they tend to stay there. Because PDs might get suspicious if you don't have any connection in CA and suddenly apply there for residencies.

Huh?

California is very hard to match into because of its location. So part of the reason is because most on the E coast are from around the east coast. The other part is that it is quite competitve in pretty much any residency program in Ca.