Neurosurgery

[jessicajonesharvard]

---

Members don't see this ad.

How hard is it to match neurosurgery from top 20 MD school?
Is neurosurgery the most competitive specialty (vs derm, ortho, etc)? Or, is it easier to match because fewer people are willing to go through the lifestyle as compared to say, derm? (I always see 5~6 derm compared to only 1~2 neurosurgery match on schools' annual match list).
Are there "less" competitive neurosurgery programs that are possible for a mediocre (or slightly below mediocre) student from T20?

Thank you.

 

[longhaul3]

-Not that hard if you have an appropriately strong academic record at your T20 school

-It's among them, but the pool is self-selecting for lifestyle and academic reasons (lots of med students hate the nervous system). Under 1% of MDs are neurosurgeons, despite the high profile of the specialty in the public eye. Google "NRMP charting outcomes" for lots of info about different specialties and how competitive they are

-There are programs that often don't get top students from top med schools, but NRMP data include ALL students who apply and match (and who don't match), so the competition is stiff no matter what. Mediocre students from top schools are not likely to be competitive in neurosurgery without extensive research, connections, etc. because there is relative parity between the student bodies of most med schools in terms of academic ability and, most importantly, Step 1 scores of top students. You need a strong Step 1 score, good grades, and most importantly, someone in your home department who can advise you, the earlier on in your career the better.

Edit: The most important thing you can do if you think you're interested is to determine whether you are actually interested by shadowing and reading up on what the specialty is about. If your understanding of it comes from the lay media or fictional portrayals, you may be surprised.

 

[jessicajonesharvard]

-Not that hard if you have an appropriately strong academic record at your T20 school

-It's among them, but the pool is self-selecting for lifestyle and academic reasons (lots of med students hate the nervous system). Under 1% of MDs are neurosurgeons, despite the high profile of the specialty in the public eye. Google "NRMP charting outcomes" for lots of info about different specialties and how competitive they are

-There are programs that often don't get top students from top med schools, but NRMP data include ALL students who apply and match (and who don't match), so the competition is stiff no matter what. Mediocre students from top schools are not likely to be competitive in neurosurgery without extensive research, connections, etc. because there is relative parity between the student bodies of most med schools in terms of academic ability and, most importantly, Step 1 scores of top students. You need a strong Step 1 score, good grades, and most importantly, someone in your home department who can advise you, the earlier on in your career the better.

Edit: The most important thing you can do if you think you're interested is to determine whether you are actually interested by shadowing and reading up on what the specialty is about. If your understanding of it comes from the lay media or fictional portrayals, you may be surprised.

Thank you for your advice!

 

[longhaul3]

Thank you for your advice!

You're welcome. If you are seriously interested in neurosurgery or the other competitive fields, it will absolutely be to your benefit to attend a top school. However, you still have to perform when you get there.

 

[libertyyne]

It is a very self selective group of people. with a large portion of them knowing that it what they wanted to do early in medical school. The median step score was ~245. 265 allo seniors applied with 213 matching.

 

[chord]

There is a lot of self selection, but it is still competitive. This year (2019 match), approximately 260 USMD seniors applied, and about 210 of them matched. There were multiple applicants from top 20 medical schools that did not match neurosurgery this year. However, looking at Charting Outcomes 2018, the match rate for students coming from "Top 40 NIH schools" was significantly higher than the match rate of students from other schools (only 3 did not match from this group). That being said, there are plenty of applicants with lower step scores (<240) who match every year, even to very strong programs. A lot more goes into the neurosurgery application than just grades and scores - letters are extremely important, so coming from a strong, well-known home program with recognized leaders can be highly advantageous.

 

[mrbreakfast]

As everyone says, it's very competitive in terms of scores/research, but the lifestyle and culture (very academic) weeds a lot of people out who would otherwise be interested. It takes a certain kind of person to seriously want to do NS.