Hi all, created an account to log in and add to the thread.
I'm a Mayo Pediatric Resident. I'm coincidentally applying for fellowship in Cardiology. In just the past 18 or so months of residency, I've had: a first author publication to a notable journal, an oral presentation at AAP, a poster presentation at PAS, spent one month overseas (with pay) after receiving a $2,500 Mayo International Health Program Scholarship, had two elective rotations dedicated to research, been invited to speak at a conference on Vaccine Hesitancy after giving a departmental lecture on the topic, and had amazing and varied clinical experiences in the hospital and our general pediatric clinic. This isn't to pat myself on the back by any means - I'm not special among our residents - it's a testament to how supportive our residency is regarding pursuit of career goals. For me, it was research and fellowship. For at least half our class it's community or hospital-based general pediatrics. A good friend of mine has an interest in working within child abuse, and our program made a custom elective for her. Dr Homme, our program director, has told us <paraphrase>, "We pride ourselves on being a resident-empowering program. We don't treat our residents as inexpensive physician coverage for the hospital. If you're here [in the hospital], it's because we've decided with you that it's a valuable work and learning experience for you to be here." That's certainly been true over the past year and a half. Not only that, but through balancing our inpatient and outpatient months, we work an average of 60 hours/week over residency, which is amazing, since that extra 20 hours can be spent with family, on hobbies, volunteering, or in scholarly pursuits. Our board pass rate is also very competitive. In our first year ITE I scored above the national average for PGY-2s but was just about average in my class. It's something like 96% or more over the past five years I believe.
Rochester has also been a great city to live in. My wife and I have a four-bedroom, two-bath house with an indoor, heated garage for the same price our rundown 1970s apartment cost in the major city we moved from. There's a great variety of cosmopolitan restaurants to choose from, and we've traveled to New York, Chicago, and D.C. since moving here as well, along with multiple trips to the Twin Cities (going to the Butcher and the Boar tonight in MSP, actually. An amazing restaurant). The ability to drive up to a nice restaurant downtown and park on the street is awesome! The winters here are legendary, but I was underwhelmed last year, it wasn't much worse than eastern Washington. My beautiful nerd wife actually made an excel spreadsheet for the cities of each residency I'd applied to, and entered in a point system across ~ 15 factors (ave # of sunny days, ave commute time, crime rate, employment, etc...), and even after giving Rochester -2 for weather it still won.
When, as applicants, we travel around for interviews, I'd often hear people describe the reason they chose their program was because "it just clicked." Mayo was certainly that place for me. I'd applied here almost on a whim after a friend of mine urged me too, and am extremely glad I did! I ranked it above my home program (which is notable cause it's one of the top peds programs) because of how special Mayo seemed, from the people, to the culture of the institution, and have repeatedly been proven right.
I'd strongly encourage anyone applying in Pediatrics to come visit us and see for yourself. I hope you'll come away with the same impression.
