Hi - am an accepted student for Class of 2025. Please excuse if these are stupid questions.
1. I know we start prepping for UG in like 10th grade, and for med school pretty much all of UG. What should I be doing (or not) to prep to land a residency in Harvard? (I know some of you may question why Harvard, but that is for a separate thread).
2. More naive question: do we select our specialty before the residency or during? Does one need to choose medical vs. surgery before residency application? And how about specific specialty like Neuro-onc or Neuro-surg?
ok, medical school timeliine:
1) M1/M2 years are preclinical (bunch of stuff to learn "in classroom"). Good idea at this point is to make a list of specialties you want to explore and start shadowing them. The reason for that is because you need to have a vague idea about what you want to specialize in BEFORE M3 year, so that you can schedule electives accordingly. Its ok to not know though.
2) Between M2 and M3 years you take Step 1 (even though some schools push it till after M3).
3) M3 and M4 are clinical years. In M3 specifically you do a lot of rotations in a lot of different departments. It is a long LONG and intense year. By then majority of people have a vague idea what they want to consider as a specialty (at least, what population they want to work with, - kids, adults, etc, and if they want a procedural specialty, - specialty were you work with your hands a lot, - or non-procedural). Schools also have advisors that help you navigate through all this, and help you build us a resume that is competitive for the specialty you are considering. If by M3 you have no idea at all what you want, its ok. A lot of people do not. This is where all these rotations come handy - they help to get the feel for specialties and decide.
4) by the end of M3 you know what you want to do, you take step 2 after M3 year and start building up the resume. During M4 year you have more rotations, - more advanced stuff. In october of M4 year (at the same time as you are doing rotations) you submit residency application. Then interview season starts, you hopefully go to interviews. They look at you, you look at them. then, (i think in january? february?) you rank your choices, they rank you. And than the magic of match happens, when you find out where you will do residency.
some specialties require preliminary year, where you would have to spend a year in internal medicine before you start the official training for that particular specialty.
i would go to AAMC website, go to medical student tab, and look at resources there. THere are lists of programs, lists of residencies.
for example, the following are SEPARATE residencies: Internal medicine, pediatrics, pathology, psychiatry, general surgery, neuro surgery, ortho surgery, cardiothoracic (even though i think there are mixed programs and fellowship as well, not sure), plastic surgery, child neurology, urology, OB/GYN, and more. This is why it is a good idea for you to go there, find that list, and go through it, and slowly shadow whatever you are interested it.