Northern California Residencies?

[hopein3]

I'm a 3rd year seriously considering OB and possibly Gyn-Onc down the road, but I have some challenges that I'd like some input about.

First, I was at a site outside of my home institution's hospital for my 3rd year rotation and basically had it announced to me within the first few days that the faculty responsible for evaluating me was not giving anything above a B to anyone. So despite working really hard and coming in early, staying late, reading a ton, etc. etc., I not surprisingly got a B on the rotation. In general, I'm an average student - slightly above average pre-clinical grades, average step 1 score, average 3rd year grades - and my significant other lives in Northern California, where I would really like to be for residency but have no real connection to beyond our relationship.

With this set of circumstances do I have any shot at getting into a residency program in Northern California? Also what are good programs in the area? I'm trying to dig through FREIDA, but I feel like its hard to have any idea what programs are good and also what programs I'd be competitive at.

Any insight that anyone could offer would be really appreciated...

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[atsai3]

I'm a 3rd year seriously considering OB and possibly Gyn-Onc down the road, but I have some challenges that I'd like some input about.

First, I was at a site outside of my home institution's hospital for my 3rd year rotation and basically had it announced to me within the first few days that the faculty responsible for evaluating me was not giving anything above a B to anyone. So despite working really hard and coming in early, staying late, reading a ton, etc. etc., I not surprisingly got a B on the rotation. In general, I'm an average student - slightly above average pre-clinical grades, average step 1 score, average 3rd year grades - and my significant other lives in Northern California, where I would really like to be for residency but have no real connection to beyond our relationship.

With this set of circumstances do I have any shot at getting into a residency program in Northern California? Also what are good programs in the area? I'm trying to dig through FREIDA, but I feel like its hard to have any idea what programs are good and also what programs I'd be competitive at.

Any insight that anyone could offer would be really appreciated...

There isn't much. Basically UCSF and Kaiser-SF if you want to do fellowship/academics. Pretty much all of the UCSF med students going into ob/gyn are trying to get spots at those two places. A few years ago, Kaiser-SF didn't take a single UCSF student, and that kind of caused a ruckus because it meant there were a lot of unhappy UCSF med students getting shipped to the east coast. And even though Kaiser-SF is probably one of the most academic of the Kaiser ob/gyn residencies it is still pretty far on down the list of places where you want to be applying for gyn/onc from... because it is still a Kaiser program.

To round out NorCal, there is also Kaiser-Oakland and Kaiser-Santa Clara, but if you want to match into gyn/onc you probably shouldn't go there.

-AT.

 

[zzzebra]

UCSF, UC Davis, and Stanford are the academic programs in Northern CA. All of them have Gyn Onc fellowships and as a result would be good places to train since you are considering that training. The community programs in Northern CA include Kaiser SF, Kaiser Oakland, Kaiser Santa Clara, and Santa Clara Valley. The advise I was given by a gynONC faculty at my school was that ideally you should try to train at an academic program that has a gyn onc fellowhip because it gives you more exposure to the faculty, better research opportunities and probably better mentoring. However, it is also possible to make it into a fellowship out of a community program, but that requires you to be more pro-active and seek out people who are knowledgeable about the field and that are also doing research. I was also told that if I were to consider a community program I should really look into their gyn onc faculty and how well they are established in the field (i.e. one of the gyn onc attendings at Kaiser SF recently came there from UCSF and as a result is well known in the field and also has connections with the university).

In regards to you getting one of the spots at these places when you are an average applicant, I believe an away rotation would be very helpful and could serve multiple purposes.

I did rotations at both Davis and Kaiser SF and loved both of those programs.