NS-LIJ vs UMDNJ-RWJ

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
ds776

ds776

Full Member
10+ Year Member
5+ Year Member
15+ Year Member
Joined
Aug 29, 2006
Messages
31
Reaction score
0
North Shore LIJ vs UMDNJ-RWJ. Any thoughts? I think these are my top two but I am torn. Just interested if anyone has an opinion on either program.

Thanks!
Members don't see this ad.
 
These are high on my list as well. Here's how I look at it (merged with friends and attending opinions):

NS-LIJ: as of right now, it's a strong and large university-affiliated hospital. Obviously that's changing with the opening of the new medical school, which should bring some more prestige to the program. They seemed to have made a lot of changes for the better (e.g. merging NS and LIJ into one program, no 24-hour call for anyone, 4+1 system, etc.) and will be making more to come. Great faculty are here because it's a nicer area and a good hospital. Research is much stronger than other hospitals of it's caliber. The whole system is growing and it will be interesting what it will bring to the future. If you want to be in New York for your career, this may be a good launching pad to start. However, it seems to be a large program (146 residents in all...I wish I knew the breakdown).

UMDNJ-RWJ: Really great program. Already established with a medical school which produces students who go to a lot of different places and some stay to be in the program. Research is strongly emphasized and it seems there are many resources to go around (e.g. proximity to pharmaceutical companies, etc.). At the same time, education is heavily emphasized through didactics, continuity with attendings on floors, and a board review that makes you think about those tertiary and maybe even quaternary questions you may not have thought of before.

I may be off-base with this, but I think many on this board will say RWJ>NS-LIJ due to academic prestige.
 
RWJ>NS-LIJ, both are respectable places, the education at RWJ is far better than NS-LIJ. Location is a toss up, New Brunswick vs Great Neck.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
How does RWJ compare to other New Jersey or New York City programs? I know its probably the best in NJ but how about compared to the big name manhattan programs?
 
I think medicine4me was dead on with his analysis. As another individual who has NSLIJ and RWJ in his top two/three I see a couple of differences between the program that may make one person prefer one over the other. Location, central Jersey vs western long island. Second the size of the programs. NSLIJ has close to 150 residents if you include prelims. RWJ is somewhere around 80 total residents which includes only three prelims. Overall its a tough call and i dont see how i could say one program is better than the other.
 
I think NSLIJ is much better. Besides the location which personally for me favors Long Island over Jersey, I think the new schedule and new medical school gives NSLIJ some advantage. Yes, RWJ is good, established etc. but the innovation at the residency and at Hofstra just strikes me as something to consider strongly.
 
happyresidnet said:
I think NSLIJ is much better. Besides the location which personally for me favors Long Island over Jersey, I think the new schedule and new medical school gives NSLIJ some advantage. Yes, RWJ is good, established etc. but the innovation at the residency and at Hofstra just strikes me as something to consider strongly.
Click to expand...

Going to revive this thread. Same dilemma, but RWJ is going to be taken over by Rutgers.

IMO Rutger > Hofstra.
 
For what it's worth the jets used to practice at Hofstra and I think tony Soprano went to rutgers
 
Considering they seem exactly the same, I'd like to offer a different perspective:

NS-LIJ PGY-1 salary: $62,500

RWJ PGY-1 salaray: $50,808

Got loans? NS-LIJ >>> RWJ :cool:

(Source: FREIDA)
 
Salaryayne more but living on long island is much much more expensive then central jersey
 
Members don't see this ad :)
LovelyBRass said:
Considering they seem exactly the same, I'd like to offer a different perspective:

NS-LIJ PGY-1 salary: $62,500

RWJ PGY-1 salaray: $50,808

Got loans? NS-LIJ >>> RWJ :cool:

(Source: FREIDA)
Click to expand...

I'd also like to point out that as a midwesterner who interviewed at LIJ (I hate NJ, no offense to Jersey-ites, so I didn't apply there), who was worried about cost of living, the on campus housing is VERY reasonably priced. I won't name exact numbers, but it's not much worse than in the midwest (much better than Chicago, probably in line with other major midwest cities), while the salary is much higher, so the money actually can go pretty far at NS-LIJ. Not that it's a reason to choose a program (I was impressed with the program as well), but it certainly doesn't hurt.

Also, the starting salary is $64k for incoming interns next year.
 
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxcccxcccccccccccccccccccccccccccccxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxcxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxxxx
 
Last edited:
snubba said:
Graduated from NS-LIJ. Yes, it is a good place for research and if you are a decent resident, you have a good chance of getting the fellowship of your choice, the salary comes to about $38,000 after taxes, so if you can't get in campus housing, living will be very expensive. Also, our pass rate for boards was well below the national average. The only reason the pass rate picked up this year was because they realized they could not teach us to pass the boards, and hired Habeeb Rahman from Awesome board review to teach his review class at our program. Program director most do not like, she will never sympathize with you on anything, is rather heartless, and only cares about herself and her own career advancement. Kind of an inside scoop on NS-LIJ.
Click to expand...

I have definitely said I felt it's a "fellowship mill," which may or may not be positive, but you said the two things I left the interview day thinking. I felt like 1) they weren't "academic enough" and 2) the PD was cold. It's nice to know my impression on interview day was somewhat reality!
 
snubba said:
Graduated from NS-LIJ. Yes, it is a good place for research and if you are a decent resident, you have a good chance of getting the fellowship of your choice, the salary comes to about $38,000 after taxes, so if you can't get in campus housing, living will be very expensive. Also, our pass rate for boards was well below the national average. The only reason the pass rate picked up this year was because they realized they could not teach us to pass the boards, and hired Habeeb Rahman from Awesome board review to teach his review class at our program. Program director most do not like, she will never sympathize with you on anything, is rather heartless, and only cares about herself and her own career advancement. Kind of an inside scoop on NS-LIJ.
Click to expand...

Everyone seemed so content and happy with the program though! And I'm not only speaking of interview days, I'm also saying that based on feedback from people who attended my med school who are residents there now. Kinda disappointed to hear about this..
 
any one know a better approximation of what step 1/2 scores you need to get into rwj? the website says that they accept applications which are over 200 usmle and over 500 comlex but thats still pretty vague. also how important is doing an audition rotation for IM, i ve heard auditions are mainly for surgical specialties but wanted to know if it was different for these programs. thanks
 
hopeinternist said:
any one know a better approximation of what step 1/2 scores you need to get into rwj? the website says that they accept applications which are over 200 usmle and over 500 comlex but thats still pretty vague. also how important is doing an audition rotation for IM, i ve heard auditions are mainly for surgical specialties but wanted to know if it was different for these programs. thanks
Click to expand...

It's not really that vague. Get over a 200 or a 500 and you stand a chance of getting an invitation. Get an invitation and you stand a chance of getting ranked highly. Get ranked highly and you stand a chance of matching there. That's about as certain as this process gets. Accept that and move on.

Audition rotations are a joke for allo IM programs. If you're a DO, a lot of AOA programs have a major stiffy for students that rotate with them. The same is not generally true of allo programs. You are correct that many surgical specialties virtually require audition rotations. That's not the case in IM.
 
hopeinternist said:
any one know a better approximation of what step 1/2 scores you need to get into rwj? the website says that they accept applications which are over 200 usmle and over 500 comlex but thats still pretty vague. also how important is doing an audition rotation for IM, i ve heard auditions are mainly for surgical specialties but wanted to know if it was different for these programs. thanks
Click to expand...

it's not a super competitive program. take the numbers as they same em
 
California2000 said:
Thanks for the advice!
FYI I am a D.O. student planning to apply to Allo IM programs in the NYC area.
Click to expand...

Woah, hold your horses. I may have responded too quickly. MD applying to MD programs, yes it's a waste of time. For DO-->allopathic residency I'm actually not sure. Not all programs take DO's so you'll have to do your homework. And do ask around...:confused:
 
i have the same concern, im a DO student and while the website for rwj does mention that it has residents from UMDNJ-SOM and NYCOM, it would be nice to hear from any D.O. residents who are in the program and could give their thoughts/advice for DO med students applying to that program and to IM programs in general in the Northeast.
 
LovelyBRass said:
I have definitely said I felt it's a "fellowship mill," which may or may not be positive, but you said the two things I left the interview day thinking. I felt like 1) they weren't "academic enough" and 2) the PD was cold. It's nice to know my impression on interview day was somewhat reality!
Click to expand...

I'm going to chime in here and say that the PD is actually not "cold". I remember thinking something very similar to you on interview day too and heard a few other interviewees say something similar after their 1 on 1 session and I remember being concerned enough that I actually asked one of the interns there about it (who insisted that the PD was actually supportive and caring). And now that I'm in the program I will say that the PD really is supportive. She'll tell things to you like it is (like, no sugar coating it if you're not doing well, etc.), but she's actually quite supportive and helpful in figuring out what you need to do.

As far as the "fellowship mill" thing, well I'm not sure what to make of that. I mean we have a pretty strong match list and if you look at it a lot of people like to stick around, so if you want to be in the area after residency you could do worse. Yes, the vast majority of people in our program will pursue specialty training, so if you mean that we don't produce a lot of primary care practitioners then that's certainly true, I think last year only one person went into primary care.

And as far as the board pass rate stuff goes, I'll just say that it's been much better post merging since it used to be two programs. Initially after the merger a lot of residents were still mostly trained at one site or the other, having only their final year of residency to do a few rotations at the other hospital so things were pretty different between the two sites and board pass rates varied greatly depending on which program you had come from (I'm not going to say more than that). This current graduating class will be the first class that's graduating from the fully merged experience. I also think that we've been more selective about patient loads being given to house staff, and on top of that there's going to be a smaller number of categorical spots from now on.

It is true that we now have a board review course for 3rd years but I've only heard positive things about it...the program is basically paying for a $1000 board review course for everyone and it's not clear to me why this should be interpreted negatively. They're willing to put a significant amount of money into the program to make it better. The high salaries are here to attract better talent (and yes, it's going to $64K for PGY-1's if you're interviewing now, and yes, our housing is very significantly subsidized-the cost varies depending on where you get housing but I pay the same rent I did living in a much lower income city), they've made a lot of changes to improve academics (and we have a new chairman [the former IM chief from Mount Sinai] who's kinda obsessed with it), and the merger helped addressed the board pass rate even without the new review course.

It's not all sunshine and unicorns or anything, I'm not going to claim that we're the greatest academic program or anything like that, but they're seriously stepping their game up for the new med school and there's already been a significant amount of added rigor, the salary/housing and area are big plusses in my book, we have a great match list, and our board pass rate is truly excellent now (unfortunately I can't find the 2012 #'s online and the ABIM only shows the combined 2009-2011 data but if you look on the awesome board review site most programs that went with them ended up with pretty much 100% pass rates) and nobody is bribing me to post this :laugh:

I haven't posted in a long time on SDN but I honestly had to post because it was driving me crazy that a lot of relatively positive things were being spun as negatives. When it's all said and done we're going to be a truly excellent academic program with our own medical school, that has a lot of it's own fellowship spots, with what will likely be a nearly perfect board pass rate and the highest salary probably in the entire world for a medical resident. And I've seen a *lot* of changes already with our program for the better, to the extent that I'm honestly jealous of the new interns. They're going to have it a lot better than the residents from the last couple of years, and going to have a lot more teaching/academics, and more time to do it because of things they've done to streamline stuff (i.e. the new signout system is no longer that horrible separate signout software that wasted 30 minutes of your life waiting for it to load[I'm sure snubba knows what I'm talking about] that's long been addressed, there's new progress notes that'll be able to pull in the labs for you, your pagers are covered by your resident during intern report, etc.) Things are very dynamic and I can honestly say that we're constantly working on trying to make things better-this isn't a program where things are set in stone.

And as far as stats go, you should ask the categoricals what kind of stats they have. I think you'd be surprised how high a lot of our STEP 1 scores are. Yes, the prelim spots tend to go to crazy beast smart med students but us categoricals are actually getting pretty beast too. I had a pretty high step 1 (you can look through my old posts if you don't believe me, I promise I didn't plant a fake score years ago to make this post) and I know someone with a 253 who's a categorical here. I'm not saying that you have to have some insane STEP 1 score to match here, but that a lot of very smart people who did well in med school end up choosing our program. And frankly I love it because it's way easier to work with coworkers who are brilliant and hard working.
 
Last edited:
hopeinternist said:
i have the same concern, im a DO student and while the website for rwj does mention that it has residents from UMDNJ-SOM and NYCOM, it would be nice to hear from any D.O. residents who are in the program and could give their thoughts/advice for DO med students applying to that program and to IM programs in general in the Northeast.
Click to expand...

I'm not a DO resident but virtually all our DO residents are from NYCOM since their students rotate with us, and I guess I'll just say that you should strive to impress during your rotation even if your classmates don't always since the people who tend to end up matching from NYCOM are the med students who were impressive during rotations-the ones who held their own vs the allopathic kids rotating from Downstate, etc. But if you come for an interview you can ask, there's a fair # of DO's around. I would also say that you probably shouldn't be the one med student who told me verbatim that his clinical rotation didn't even matter to him since it was "all about the shelf" because I can pretty much guarantee that he will not be matching at our program if any of the physicians who worked with him are around when he interviews (he's just damned lucky that he got a relatively nice attending who still passed him...I personally would have flunked this guy to kingdom come and I'm a softie who gives every med student crazy nice comments and high marks)
 
snubba said:
Graduated from NS-LIJ. Yes, it is a good place for research and if you are a decent resident, you have a good chance of getting the fellowship of your choice, the salary comes to about $38,000 after taxes, so if you can't get in campus housing, living will be very expensive. Also, our pass rate for boards was well below the national average. The only reason the pass rate picked up this year was because they realized they could not teach us to pass the boards, and hired Habeeb Rahman from Awesome board review to teach his review class at our program. Program director most do not like, she will never sympathize with you on anything, is rather heartless, and only cares about herself and her own career advancement. Kind of an inside scoop on NS-LIJ.
Click to expand...

Hi All- Someone currently in the program showed me this post and I felt the need to reply as I am a a graduate of the program and disagree with some of the above comments.

I havn't posted on here in >5 years, so please welcome me back!

NS and LIJ recently merged, and the programs now are more "beast" than either individually was previously. NS has a predominately privately insured patient population who are well taken care of in the outpatient setting, while LIJ has your usual inner city, underinsured, sick patient population. Rotating at both hospitals has made me experience both sides of patient care, and is a really great thing. I matched into the NS program, but wound up loving LIJ so I'm happy that I was exposed to it. This makes the merged program much different from the older, individual programs. When the programs were combined, the PD from North Shore took over. This is possibly why it was written "most do not like the PD," as the LIJ third year class felt like their PD got the shaft. Either way, that was 2 years ago-

I actually love the PD. She loves her job and really advocates for the residents. She is easy to approach and is always looking to take resident feedback into changes with the program. I actually saw her make a neurosurgical resident apologize to one of her residents for being rude over the phone- and he did! The whole 4+1 schedule came about because of resident feedback. I would ask current residents on interview day about this.

As far as salary, I made 65K this year and had no problem living in the area (I lived OFF campus and got a $150.00/month stipend in addition to salary) on my salary. You won't find a residency where you make more money in the NY area- but don't choose a residency based on salary. Whether or not it works out to 38K/year after taxes depends on your amount of dependants, etc- but this is hardly the forum to complain about taxes.

I matched into my top choice fellowship (I'll leave it off the board to keep some anonymity) and was able to do so because of the research I did during residency. More people go into fellowship there than primary care, I think the program attracts these types of people because there are so many fellowships within the health system. If you want to do a fellowship go to an IM program that has what you're interested in. If you want to do primary care, go to a rural program where there are no other residencies (so that you can learn OB/GYN, Surg, Peds, etc.)

Awesome review was a great course- I can't imagine this being perceived as a negative thing; most people sitting for the ABIM exam would have taken this course anyway. Most of the residents took the course on their own independantly the previous year- they had to take it in a hotel in New Jersey ($1000 for the course, $1200 for the hotel!). When the PD found that out, she got NSLIJ to pay for and host the program at our hospital- and the chiefs arranged coverage for us, so it was "protected time."

Knocks on the program- Families at NS can be difficult ("Do you know who I am?") and I've seen a consultant call a consult on a patient at NS. Overall, these are little things. It's in a suburban area so you really have to have a car for your own quality of life. Public transport to/from the hospital is by bus.

Conferences and academics are stellar. Noon lectures are given by subspecialists and the chiefs run morning/intern reports. They have some afternoon didactic sessions in a small group format.

Overally, I am glad I went to NSLIJ for residency, and would do it over again in a heartbeat. PM me with any questions.

I'll see ya in another 5 years!
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
gutonc said:
Audition rotations are a joke for allo IM programs. If you're a DO, a lot of AOA programs have a major stiffy for students that rotate with them. The same is not generally true of allo programs. You are correct that many surgical specialties virtually require audition rotations. That's not the case in IM.
Click to expand...

Dear gutonc,
I was wondering if you can elaborate what you mean by audition rotations being a "joke." Does this mean if you do an away rotation at a program it will not help your chances ? What if you are applying for a program that is a "reach?"
Thanks
 
drLexus said:
Dear gutonc,
I was wondering if you can elaborate what you mean by audition rotations being a "joke." Does this mean if you do an away rotation at a program it will not help your chances ? What if you are applying for a program that is a "reach?"
Thanks
Click to expand...

I just mean they're a waste of time. IM programs are huge. The likelihood of you having any significant facetime with the PD (or an asst PD) at most programs is miniscule. You might luck out and be on their team but that's unlikely. Also, many programs don't allow rotation students to do cores/SubIs, only electives (often subspecialty consults) which makes it even less likely that you'll get any useful interaction with the IM program specifically. It might get you a letter though and there's something to be said for that.

Will it get you an interview at a "reach" program? Usually, but not always (UCSF for one is famous for not interviewing rotating students).

Will it get you higher on the ultimate rank list than you otherwise would have? Maybe a spot or two, but not a full "tier" or anything. Most programs split their lists into something like "would love to have them," "they'd be alright" and "well, I guess it's better than having to SOAP a spot." Your audition rotation is unlikely to move you between those tiers (except to move you down).

If you want to do one, go nuts. But don't expect it to have some magical effect on your ability to match.
 
Last edited:
gutonc said:
It might get you a letter though and there's something to be said for that.
Click to expand...

Would this be a recommendation that i send in to ERAS? or a letter that would only be seen by the specific program i got it from?

Also what would be the latest date to get such a letter? i've heard that mid-october is the latest u can submit a letter to ERAS.
thanks again
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Next unread thread

Similar threads

M
Umdnj RWJ vs. Umdnj NJMS
Replies
5
Views
11K
jerseytrash
J
E
Thoughts on UMDNJ - Robert Wood Johnson RWJ
Replies
1
Views
3K
hopeinternist
H
A
  • Locked
Posterior NSTEMI versus Posterior STEMI
Replies
3
Views
2K
gyngyn
gyngyn
0
Robert Wood Johnson UMDNJ Interview Day Schedule
Replies
2
Views
1K
Blackcomb
B
T
Temple vs. UMDNJ-RWJ
Replies
7
Views
4K
tarlovcyst
T
Top