Hello,
I am deciding between ranking Mt. Sinai's main campus program and the Harvard programs (longwood or cambridge) number one. We all know there is no good ranking system for psych residencies so I am asking for a bit of opinion here. I am planning to go into forensics or possibly some international mental health. I am probably NOT going to settle in the northeast so I would like to see what people think the reputation of Mt. Sinai is nationally (or internationally) as a psychiatry training program. Sorry this is slightly a cross post but I was not sure that many people were seeing my question in the other thread. Thanks and happy new year to everyone!
Regarding "international reputation" (at least regarding international public health and mental health): one of the things you will find is that branding seems to carry more weight abroad than in the U.S. Most people with even a minor tie to a branded institution will claim it. If you did your residency training at Podunk College of Medicine but did a one-year Master's degree at Harvard or Johns Hopkins, then it is "this is Dr. Smith from Harvard". For example, one of my colleagues is a public health researcher at
UnnamedAfricanUniversity but maintains an unpaid affiliation as a "Research Associate" with Johns Hopkins -- so that is how he is credentialed on papers and at conferences. When I am working in Africa, my supervisors and colleagues introduce me as "this is
atsai3, a
IvyLeagueUniversity-trained
XYZist", which is unfortunately a slight twist on the truth since I trained as a
XYZist at
non-IvyLeagueUniversity and trained at
IvyLeagueUniversity for something else. Although I continue to introduce
myself as "
atsai3, a
XYZist from
non-IvyLeagueUniversity", no matter how hard I try I can't seem to change the habits of the people who introduce me.
I don't know anything about how things would work if you were to go into the more biological end of things, e.g., doing research in neurotransmitters and fMRIs and what not. My guess is that branding would matter less (but that is just a guess).
I don't know anything about the forensics scene.
Now as to whether you should rank psychiatry programs based on your interest in forensics or international mental health, that is a tougher call and probably just a matter of personal preference. My advice would be to rank programs based on where you think you will get the most well-rounded training. In residency, you can focus on learning how to become a psychiatrist. There will be plenty of time for forensics or international mental health stuff later. This is the advice that was given to me by a fellow at UCLA who did her residency at Columbia. She had gone to Columbia intending to do work in field XYZ, which is not very prominent at Columbia but is very prominent at UCLA. I asked, well, why didn't you just do your residency training at UCLA? But she said that during residency she just wanted to focus on her clinical development. (FWIW, she thought the clinical training at Columbia was by far better than anything she saw at UCLA.)
This was also the same advice given to me by a Harvard Longwood resident. For a psychiatry resident interested in international mental health, there are pluses and minuses to either Longwood or Cambridge. Longwood is closer in geographical proximity to Brigham, and there the sun orbits around Paul Farmer and the social medicine groupies. Cambridge has Arthur Kleinman and company, and you will see more immigrants and refugees at Cambridge. In the end, she told me she picked Longwood because she thought she would get a better overall training; although she was interested in international mental health, she wasn't 100% certain and knew that she could easily change her mind once she started residency.
And that last point is pretty important -- you will probably change your mind about your intended focus during residency training. Everybody and their mother comes to psych residency wanting to do a child fellowship, and then when they find out how much of a pain in the ass it is, 80% of them switch to something else.
Cheers
-AT.
