Med School name is crap

[cbc]

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I have read several posts here about getting into internal medicine residency, and I refuse to believe it when so many people are emphasizing that med school name plays a major role in the selection factor. Ckent has mentioned directors like to brag about how their residents are from harvard. Here's how I am looking at it:

As much as usnews likes to throw schools around, I doubt most doctors think ucsd is a top 15 institution. I doubt most common patients are aware usnews rank ucsd in the league of cornell and over georgetown and brown, and probably think the latter three are way better programs. I know for a fact that most doctors/patients dont see/know any difference between ucdavis, usc, uci, and ucsd, despite what usnews says. I am also aware that other than socal/norcal location factor, UCD and UCSD matchlist are extremely similar. Common patients probably think lowly of UWash, UCSF, UTSW, baylor, pittsburg, etc, since they are not big name undergrads. How much bragging rights would directors have on their patients or even other doctors when they accept these students from presumbly "prestigious institutions." My parents dont care and often get UCSF confused with USF, which doesnt even have a med school and the undergrad rep is not that great. I saw the stanford housestaff list, and I only saw 1 harvard intern. The others were from all over the place, ucdavis, ucsf, nyu, mount sinai, brown. I dont even think I saw a hopkins on there. I'd like to wait until everyone gets matched, and then come back and tell me differently. Interviews are not the entire story. I hope I get some responses about this later on (or now), because none of this makes any real sense.

 

[cbc]

I forgot to also mention mayo, which according to most common patients and west coast doctors, may not be viewed as a "top prestigious institution," strengthening my point.

 

[scrub monkey]

what the medical community and what patients think are often completely different. residency directors are concerned mostly of what the medical community thinks.

i do think the reputation of your med school plays a huge role in determining interviews. look at stanford's match list! it's awesome. they have 11 more folks going for derm this year too. it's all about med school reputation. stanford has no grades at all. everyone's dean's letter is sparkling. thus, everyone at stanford seems to get into a powerhouse residency. you could be bottom of your class and have a 200 on your boards, as long as you go to a hot shot school like stanford, you're money. if you come from some other med school, you better gear up with honors, AOA, and board scores>250 if you want a shot at specialties like derm.

i think residency program directors definitely want their residents to be from top notch med schools, regardless of med school performance. residencies always give out lists of their residents with med schools. a list full of harvard, stanford, and johns hopkins will always look better than a bunch of new york med, uc irvine, and george washington's. sorry to say it, because i don't go to a powerhouse med school either, but med school reputation is huge in obtaining residency spots.

 

[Da Vinci2]

It might be hard to accept but med school rep does play a big part in the residency match. I flipped through UTSW and Hopkins resident list and a great majority are either from their home institution or other institutions where there are comparable rep. Only few from outside of top 25 make into those programs. PDs can care less about what the general public think. If you want to be a GP anywhere, any residency will do. But for others who are heading into Academics or competitive fellowship, name matters.

 

[cbc]

Good arguments. But I am speaking about internal medicine. I saw stanford's matchlist, and it is quite impressive, compared to for example ucsd. But I also saw stanford's internal med housestaff list. I was surprised to see it wasnt filled with big name med schools like you mentioned. If med community is what residency directors care about, why not hand out their resident's AOA status and boards scores and pubs? We ALL know there is so much randomness in med school admissions such that med school attended doesnt tell anything. And just look at the premed forum, people are all dying to go to a uc and so students from ucirvine and other uc's gave up big name schools to attend a uc. How would it not "look better" to have these and other competent students as their residents?

Originally posted by scrub monkey
what the medical community and what patients think are often completely different. residency directors are concerned mostly of what the medical community thinks.

i do think the reputation of your med school plays a huge role in determining interviews. look at stanford's match list! it's awesome. they have 11 more folks going for derm this year too. it's all about med school reputation. stanford has no grades at all. everyone's dean's letter is sparkling. thus, everyone at stanford seems to get into a powerhouse residency. you could be bottom of your class and have a 200 on your boards, as long as you go to a hot shot school like stanford, you're money. if you come from some other med school, you better gear up with honors, AOA, and board scores>250 if you want a shot at specialties like derm.

i think residency program directors definitely want their residents to be from top notch med schools, regardless of med school performance. residencies always give out lists of their residents with med schools. a list full of harvard, stanford, and johns hopkins will always look better than a bunch of new york med, uc irvine, and george washington's. sorry to say it, because i don't go to a powerhouse med school either, but med school reputation is huge in obtaining residency spots.

 

[Bobblehead]

Name plays a role of getting you in the door. If you go to a school that is not well regarded you may not even be offered an interview by that very fact alone. With so many well qualified applicants in the pool most directors will choose the qualified applicants from "better" schools over the ones at "lesser" schools.

A glowing letter from a major med school carries more weight by the sheer fact that the name carries with it the reputation of the school. Going to a "lesser" school the applicant will have to work harder to distinguish himself/herself from the pool to the point where their individual merits overcome the fact that their school's name isn't carrying a lot forward for them.

That being said, after you have gotten in the door (i.e. actually had people carefully review your personal record) the school name may mean less unless you are competing against someone who is identically qualified (highly unlikely).

School gets you in the door. Your own merits get you the slot.

 

[cbc]

Are you implying that, when an interview is offered, the playing field is more even according to individual merit? See, I was always apparently "lied to" about the fact that PDs see step1 as the cutoff, not the school name. Why the heck is everyone, including the premed forum, emphasizing that like undergrad it's better to go state school than to waste money on big name private school? How is it a waste of money if it helps you get your residency of choice?

Originally posted by Bobblehead
Name plays a role of getting you in the door. If you go to a school that is not well regarded you may not even be offered an interview by that very fact alone. With so many well qualified applicants in the pool most directors will choose the qualified applicants from "better" schools over the ones at "lesser" schools.

A glowing letter from a major med school carries more weight by the sheer fact that the name carries with it the reputation of the school. Going to a "lesser" school the applicant will have to work harder to distinguish himself/herself from the pool to the point where their individual merits overcome the fact that their school's name isn't carrying a lot forward for them.

That being said, after you have gotten in the door (i.e. actually had people carefully review your personal record) the school name may mean less unless you are competing against someone who is identically qualified (highly unlikely).

School gets you in the door. Your own merits get you the slot.

 

[ckent]

cbc,
you have to realize that different programs use different criteria for screening and selecting applicants. Most programs do have some sort of screening process, and some do use an applicant's school name and reputation as part of the screening process, almost all use it as part of the ranking process. When it comes time to rank applicants, my impression is that a lot of it is just based on gut feelings on whether or not an applicant will "sync" with a program, and even though they may not make a final decision until after they meet with the applicant, when they do make their decision, they are going to be thinking about everything from which school the person comes from to what color tie the person was wearing. Different things are going to have different weight with different people/faculty members/PD's, as everyone has their own criteria with what is" good". Ultimately, it is a human decision. If your interviewer or a faculty member does not like you at all, most programs have a "black ball" mechanism that can knock you off their rank list for consideration. I've never heard of a program that used a strict mathematical formula for ranking applicants, it's always just been about gut feelings. For some faculty and PD's out there, having a bunch of residents from top ranked med schools is *very* important to how they and other people perceive their prestigiousness. For others, it doesn't matter at all. Stanford med actually has a reputation of liking irregular applicants, their med school admissions process is notorious for looking for "second treads" (a term that their dean of admissions uses for people who have had other careers), and I wouldn't be surprised if their medicine department has some other criteria that it considers more important then med school reputation. You should also realize that as applicants, it is extremely difficult to quantify how much where you go to med shcool influences where you end up getting into for residency, because even while examining match lists from Harvard or Hopkins and seeing a lot of top schools represented, you also have to take into acount the selection bias of those students from top schools having higher USMLE scores and better letters of rec because test taking skills and interpersonal skills are the very skills that got them into their high ranking med school. I will say that I'm almost 100% certain that where you went to med school definintely has some influence on where you will be able to get interviews at.

 

[Bobblehead]

Originally posted by cbc
Are you implying that, when an interview is offered, the playing field is more even according to individual merit? See, I was always apparently "lied to" about the fact that PDs see step1 as the cutoff, not the school name. Why the heck is everyone, including the premed forum, emphasizing that like undergrad it's better to go state school than to waste money on big name private school? How is it a waste of money if it helps you get your residency of choice?

cbc, from the tone of your postings you are clearly angry about something. Here is my perspective of the interview process. The program director at my institution in internal medicine is very experienced and has stated to us numerous times that part of the interview day is matching up the numbers and letters of recommendation to a REAL person. The person is then judged on whether he appears to be a likable human being with adequate social skills and the ability to not piss off someone in the 48 hours that they'll be available to the program for review. It is to screen for "sociopathy" in his words.

The interview day will not overcome gross deficiencies in your numerical stats but may provide an edge over a similarly qualified individual. The same goes for your school name. It may provide an edge but will not overcome gross deficiencies in your application. The interview day CAN hurt your application. If you're an ass, etc. you can very well be dropped to the bottom of the list if not even off the list. In general this means only your interviewer or people you're meeting in an official capacity. But in some instances being an arrogant jerk at the dinner the night before may find its way back to the program. Generally the dinners are not part of the process at all and all questions are welcome but if you truly rub someone the wrong way they may point this out to the program.

In the end as long as you're happy at your school, perform well, and get "good scores" you'll be fine. The school name will open doors however at some programs who may not give a well qualified applicant from a "lesser" school a shot.

 

[cbc]

ckent, what you said makes sense.
bobblehead, i am angry by the fact that i was previously told that choosing state school is the smartest thing to do, and that school name doesn't really matter. now, i find out, it "matters." my personal merit is going to be in the same range no matter where i go, so if i chose a big name school instead, i wouldve gotten an edge. i just wished people didnt lie about that in my past. as a matter of fact, i was told by a resident to bypass a bigger name school in the opposite coast to go to my state school, since it will increase my chances in getting selected by ALL the hospitals in my own state for residency. since i wanted to do residency in my own state, i followed that advice. maybe i shouldve went over to the opposite coast.
it also sucks to know how much randomness comes into med school admissions, and the lesser competent people in those big name places will have an edge over the more competent at the state schools. you've all heard of the 3.5 28 mcat who got into ucsf or harvard because he/she happened to have clicked well with his/her interviewer, or they happened to have liked one community service that he/she did. it's like a feeling of big injustice, discrimination, i dont even know what to call it.

 

[jalabert]

This thread is an interesting contrast to the recent thread where it was discussed how some Michigan students feel they are penalized for going to this top tier school.

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=95190&highlight=university+of+michigan

 

[P Diddy]

Originally posted by cbc

I saw the stanford housestaff list, and I only saw 1 harvard intern. The others were from all over the place, ucdavis, ucsf, nyu, mount sinai, brown. I dont even think I saw a hopkins on there. I'd like to wait until everyone gets matched, and then come back and tell me differently. Interviews are not the entire story. I hope I get some responses about this later on (or now), because none of this makes any real sense.

What are you so angry about? If you have a specific gripe, you should make it explicit.

Also, I'm a Stanford resident and think you saw a list of interviewees rather than the housestaff list. For some reason, the residency program went for 'name' schools last year and in the current class of interns there are five from Hopkins and four from Harvard.

This does not mean that the strength of a residency program is based upon the caliber of medical school its residents come from. It does mean that residency directors care about name.

 

[cbc]

P diddy, what I am angry about I made explicit on this thread. Also, I didnt see this year's housestaff list, but last year's. I didnt remember myself saying, "man, it's filled with ivy leagues and top 10 or even 20 of usnews."

Jalabert's link is what I am speaking about. Now, I'm all confused. I read these threads and ask residents so I can get the inside story, and I just get more confused everyday.

 

[jashanley]

Originally posted by cbc
P diddy, what I am angry about I made explicit on this thread. Also, I didnt see this year's housestaff list, but last year's. I didnt remember myself saying, "man, it's filled with ivy leagues and top 10 or even 20 of usnews."

US News honestly means **** when it comes to residency training. All it is judging is research dollars, not education or clinical training. residency is a name game and personal education. No matter where you go you will see interesting patients and learn what you need to know about how to care for patients. People worry too much about residency programs. The differences are very subtle. Go where you feel most comfortable otherwise you be at the best program in the world and be absolutely miserable. 3 yrs is a long time to be miserable and a name won't make you feel better in the end.

 

[cbc]

It does get you your choice of fellowship though.
And it just sucks for people whose family resides in Washington state or California bay area. It's ever so tough to get any university placement in those regions just so you can be with your own family members.

Originally posted by jashanley
US News honestly means **** when it comes to residency training. All it is judging is research dollars, not education or clinical training. residency is a name game and personal education. No matter where you go you will see interesting patients and learn what you need to know about how to care for patients. People worry too much about residency programs. The differences are very subtle. Go where you feel most comfortable otherwise you be at the best program in the world and be absolutely miserable. 3 yrs is a long time to be miserable and a name won't make you feel better in the end.

 

[Hop Toad]

I find this thread very interesting since I am at a state med school. It will be interesting to see how the match plays out for all of us. I was a moderately strong candidate for medical school, but did not get accepted at any top 10 schools. The top 20 schools I could have gone to did not really offer much over my cheaper state school, so I took the low debt route. I did feel at the time that my state school undergrad status was one of the reasons that I did not even get interviews at some of the top programs. 36 MCAT and 3.9 GPA should have warrented an interview at least.

My stats, LORs, etc. are as strong as anyone from an IVY school for residency placement. I did get all my interviews this time around, but we'll see how the PD's feel about having my state school listed on their match list.

I can't wait for this all to be over with!

 

[ParisHilton]

Originally posted by cbc
i am angry by the fact that i was previously told that choosing state school is the smartest thing to do, and that school name doesn't really matter. now, i find out, it "matters." my personal merit is going to be in the same range no matter where i go, so if i chose a big name school instead, i wouldve gotten an edge. i just wished people didnt lie about that in my past.

For most people I think this advice is worth taking. Virtually every state school places people in every specialty. If you were good enough to get into one of those big name private schools, surely you should excel at your state school, right? After all, only a few in your state school would've been able to get into the big names that you got into. You're a big fish in a small pond.

Conversely, if you went to a big name, you may have very well ended up near the bottom of the class. Then what? Would you post on SDN wondering why you didn't just save all your money and be at the top of the class back home, instead of just scraping by? You would've been "lied to" by all those who told you to go to a big name. Usually, programs limit the number of interviews they give out to kids from each school, so you might have missed the cutoff if you went to a big name. Let's use derm, for example. If each derm program interviewed all the applicants from top 10 schools, they could probably fill up all of their interview slots with just those 50 or whatever. If you look at the match lists, however, not all derm residents are from top 10 schools. Of course, if you were one of the top at a big name, basically you're one of the top in the nation so you would deserve to write your own ticket.

Therein lies the dilemma - should you risk taking out all those extra loans gambling that you're amongst the best of the best, or stay home in state and kick butt (even though there's no guarantee of that either) and hopefully end up being one of the few that pulls off a great spot. Bottom line - it's too late to do anything now so just do what you have to do. Ain't buyer's remorse a bitch? Good luck!

 

[cbc]

What you said makes sense ParisHilton. Just the fact that everyone on diff threads are saying school name probably more important than anything else was scaring me.
Got another point to bring up. Browsing the other forums, it seems awkward that ob/gyn and EM seem EASIER? EM doesnt even care about step1 and ob/gyn step1 cutoffs are generally lower than IM. I thought EM is more procedural with less patient contact and is "harder" than IM? Why is the boards score cutoff for IM higher than ob/gyn and more emphasized than EM? Shouldnt IM candidates be selected based on dealing with patients, LORs, and clinical years, rather than boards score and school name if EM and ob/gyn resident selectivity is ran in a manner like that?

 

[ParisHilton]

I don't think you can make blanket statements that EM and ob/gyn are easier than IM. It all depends where you apply. The top programs for virtually every specialty are competitive. I think for an AMG it would be very easy to match into an FMG internal med sweatshop in Brooklyn or Queens, but it would still be tough to get something in Manhattan, for example. I have 2 close friends that went to Caribbean schools and most of their students matched in IM or FP at FMG sweatshops. However, there were a few that pulled off some very highly sought after positions in competitive residencies. Good for them!

I understand your frustration in that there is no scientific formula to help guide us. As far as Step 1, LORs etc is concerned, just try to maximize each aspect of your application and hope for the best. It's like dating - what's the most important thing? Looks? Personality? Job? Religion? I guess everything matters in the end. Some people just put a different emphasis on different things. It's all just a game in the end. There are no guarantees. There are big surprises come Match Day at every school in every year. If it makes you feel any better, other fields outside of medicine are way more political when it comes to hiring. Never underestimate the power of connections. Even the BCS rankings has its problems!

 

[cbc]

Good response hilton. From your experience in terms of connections, if one is interested in a program, what's the best way to network a strong connection? Does it require doing research and externship for the program director? Who else are good targets?