-

[My_life_is_a_joke]

-

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[SquidLab]

If you really want to do residency in the South, go to a school in the South. If you end up going to UW, there are things you can do in med school to give you a greater chance of matching in the South.

 

[Oso]

If you get admitted to and can get in state tuition to UW, then definitely go there.

If you do well in school you can go anywhere. Plus who knows what specialty you will actually end up applying to or where you will actually want to end up for residency.

My $0.02

 

[operaman]

UW is a great school and should keep all doors open for you. That said, if your entire life has been in WA, you would have a bit of an uphill battle convincing southeastern programs that you truly want to go there for residency. Those kind of students are typically the kind that get eliminated from the short list when you pare it down from the top 80-100 to those you will actually interview.

There are plenty of ways to do this though - you can do away rotations in your region of choice to demonstrate your commitment to the area. You can have connected faculty make calls on your behalf - I did this to get some interviews at a couple west coast programs coming from an east coast school. But you will likely have to do something to signal your interest specifically to those programs or else they will think you’re just applying broadly but planning to stay where you are.

Once you have been accepted to multiple schools, you can better compare your choices and costs. I suspect UW will be a strong contender though and would keep all your doors open.

 

[SooConfused]

UW is a great school and should keep all doors open for you. That said, if your entire life has been in WA, you would have a bit of an uphill battle convincing southeastern programs that you truly want to go there for residency. Those kind of students are typically the kind that get eliminated from the short list when you pare it down from the top 80-100 to those you will actually interview.

There are plenty of ways to do this though - you can do away rotations in your region of choice to demonstrate your commitment to the area. You can have connected faculty make calls on your behalf - I did this to get some interviews at a couple west coast programs coming from an east coast school. But you will likely have to do something to signal your interest specifically to those programs or else they will think you’re just applying broadly but planning to stay where you are.

Once you have been accepted to multiple schools, you can better compare your choices and costs. I suspect UW will be a strong contender though and would keep all your doors open.

This^^^. If you spend your entire life until the Match in WA, the question for the PDs will come down to what is drawing you to the South, and are you serious abut wanting to relocate with no connection to the area?

If you have a great story to tell and do well in school, attending UW by itself shouldn't hold you back. But, your best shot will always be at your home programs, and attending school in the geographic area you want to settle in will make everything easier (away rotations, connections, obvious tie to the area, etc.).

If you have no interest in spending the rest of your life in WA, why would you even want to go to school there, just because you just learned the school is very prestigious? Lots of schools are, and most people do not need to attend a very prestigious school to wind up wherever it is they are going!!

Why not wait to see what your options are before stressing about this? This is a huge waste of energy for the vast majority of applicants, for whom the decision is pretty obvious once they know what their options are in the spring. 60%+ have no decision because they have no acceptances, and half of the remaining ~36% only have one choice. Most of the remaining ~20% also don't have a lot to stress about, because money, location, prestige, whatever, make one school a clear winner.

And, worrying about matching into a competitive specialty in a specific area of the country prior to being accepted to a single medical school anywhere is just pointless, since you have no idea where you will be accepted, nor whether you will be viable in 4 years for a competitive specialty anywhere.

 

[operaman]

This^^^. If you spend your entire life until the Match in WA, the question for the PDs will come down to what is drawing you to the South, and are you serious abut wanting to relocate with no connection to the area?

If you have a great story to tell and do well in school, attending UW by itself shouldn't hold you back. But, your best shot will always be at your home programs, and attending school in the geographic area you want to settle in will make everything easier (away rotations, connections, obvious tie to the area, etc.).

If you have no interest in spending the rest of your life in WA, why would you even want to go to school there, just because you just learned the school is very prestigious? Lots of schools are, and most people do not need to attend a very prestigious school to wind up wherever it is they are going!!

Why not wait to see what your options are before stressing about this? This is a huge waste of energy for the vast majority of applicants, for whom the decision is pretty obvious once they know what their options are in the spring. 60%+ have no decision because they have no acceptances, and half of the remaining ~36% only have one choice. Most of the remaining ~20% also don't have a lot to stress about, because money, location, prestige, whatever, make one school a clear winner.

And, worrying about matching into a competitive specialty in a specific area of the country prior to being accepted to a single medical school anywhere is just pointless, since you have no idea where you will be accepted, nor whether you will be viable in 4 years for a competitive specialty anywhere.

Yeah my school decision was made supremely easy by the fact only one school accepted me!

OP just needs to apply intelligently and see what cards are dealt. And they should be thankful that their state school is such a strong program. Mine was definitely not - pretty middle tier - but our ent dept was stellar and highly ranked with big names so I was able to get interviews to all the top programs.

Even so, geography was an issue though I wasn’t super keen on the west coast anyhow. I applied to 50 programs and got 40 interviews; most of the 10 that rejected me were on the west coast. And that was probably wise of them because I would have ranked them lower because of their location.

Seeing it from the other side, it sucks to invite awesome applicants from across the country only to have them rank you well below everything close to their home. Then you fall way down your rank list and realize you maybe missed meeting some other strong applicants who would be likely to match. We definitely had a bias against applicants with strong regional ties elsewhere; they had to either be true superstars or have somehow indicated that they were seriously considering us, often by having a mentor make contact personally.

A strong performance at UW would make OP competitive just about anywhere. Put a toe he way- their school won’t be the thing holding them back.