Official 2015-2016 Rank List Thread

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Radiologyreviews2015 said:
Just apply and rank it based on how you perceived it. Rank lists are personal for all of SDN's obsession of asking strangers how to rank program XYZ.
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Just curious though since UCSF doesn't seem to be so popular on this thread.
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Step 1: 240s
Step 2: Not submitted initially but did slightly better than my Step 1. Passed CS first attempt.
AOA: no
Top 40 school with top NIH money: No
Research experiences: 5??
# of Publications, abstracts, presentations: 12 (with 6 major pubs, mostly 1st author--two from med school research)
Other fact: PhD (obtained from top school)

I had several personal factors that eventually altered my rank list. From looking at the track record of some successful academics, I feel I can pursue a productive academic research career from any of these places so wasn't so caught up with prestige and placed more value on location. Looking to work at the NIH or major academic medical center after training. Let's see where I end up in a few weeks.

Rank order

Penn
NYU
Emory
Montefiore/Einstein
Icahn (Mt Sinai)
UPMC
UCSF
UTSW
Maryland
Stanford
Rush
BIDMC
Penn State
 
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Radiologyreviews2015 said:
But why didn't any of you rank them highly?
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I can only speak for 2 of us who didn't really like SF and the obscene cost of housing. We felt SF was grossly overrated. The commute between sites was a negative factor. There are 2 residents from our school at UCSF, and they both thought it was an excellent program and encouraged us to rank it highly. Factors outside of UCSF itself altered out decisions though. I had it at #3 initially but it later slipped down to 6 or 7.
 
All of this depends on what you value and what your priorities are. If you want to go to a top top tier program, live in a cool but expensive city, have coresidents that are normal people that hang out, have a friendly relationship with your attendings, have a variety in your clinical exposure, have independent call, then UCSF is a great option.
 
UCSF will still be plenty popular. This is a very small sample size even with 5 pages worth of posts.
 
Radiologyreviews2015 said:
I didn't apply to Cornell and UCLA and I regret it. No love from BWH
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During my radiology rotation, a resident highly recommended Stanford, BWH, UCLA, and Cornell for how chill they were, their perks, and their locations. 4 years is a long time and I want to be treated well. I was fortunate enough to interview at all of these places and ranked them at the top. Good luck everyone! We'll find out soon.
 
Radiologyreviews2015 said:
Just curious though since UCSF doesn't seem to be so popular on this thread.
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In talking with the residents at UCSF, one common critique is that being spread across different hospitals diminishes the camaraderie in the class. People teleconference into lectures and sometimes go weeks without seeing each other.

Other negatives I have heard, either directly or by word of mouth, include cost of living, pressure to do research, and time wasted commuting between sites.

No place is perfect and if none of these things are a dealbreaker for you, I would seriously consider UCSF.
 
What are the tangible things that make UCSF so good? Excluding the name prestige. Those above things seem awful.
 
Current or former residents could probably give the best info, but they have the reputation of having the best combo of research opportunities and clinical training. Some places have similar research and others have excellent clinical training, but few programs do both at such an elite level.

They have tremendous resources and the faculty are exceptional. The cliche phrase you hear tossed around is that many of their faculty "wrote the book" on this or that topic in radiology.

Again, this is all secondhand, but these are some of the reasons people have given for why UCSF is so great.
 
As a DO who doesn't have access to such places to train, I was just curious why these people are going to be considered better trained and what I could do at my own program to try to bridge the gap. I have no interest in research/academics so I was hoping to find tangible things that places like UCSF does so much better than say Indiana, CCF, UPMC, or any program with high volume/pathology. Does "writing the book" on something make you better radiologist? I know that in my time in other fields such as chemistry, people who "write books" are deemed more academic and can't really "do the job" so to speak. My program has great lectures (I think) but is that the difference? I've just always been curious if its all just "the name" and I can just work really hard and be as good/better than someone from UCSF/MGH/etc. I'd like to get a good PP job and be able to handle a list well/rack up the RVUs.
 
Cubsfan10 said:
As a DO who doesn't have access to such places to train, I was just curious why these people are going to be considered better trained and what I could do at my own program to try to bridge the gap. I have no interest in research/academics so I was hoping to find tangible things that places like UCSF does so much better than say Indiana, CCF, UPMC, or any program with high volume/pathology. Does "writing the book" on something make you better radiologist? I know that in my time in other fields such as chemistry, people who "write books" are deemed more academic and can't really "do the job" so to speak. My program has great lectures (I think) but is that the difference? I've just always been curious if its all just "the name" and I can just work really hard and be as good/better than someone from UCSF/MGH/etc. I'd like to get a good PP job and be able to handle a list well/rack up the RVUs.
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Here are my 4th year med stud thoughts that are worth about 0.75 cents:

1) Yes you can train at Indiana/CCF/UPMC/University of Heartland, etc. and become a "better" radiologist than someone who trained at UCSF/Hopkins/The House of God.

2) "Better" depends on who you are talking to. A private practice group will like a radiologist who can "rack up the RVUs", while not getting sued like some breast guy who missed a tiny ambiguous tumor 10 years ago that is now a stage 4 cancer and is getting sued for millions of dollars. An academic institution will like a radiologist who can publish important papers, "write the book" and have a reputation of being a good teacher, nationally and institutionally.

3) If by "better" you mean saving more lives, I don't know who is measuring that, or how. Or if you mean being that radiologist that clinicians say they trust, I think that's more a result of personal effort in finding out what clinicians care about, rather than the prestige of the training program.

4) I am more academically oriented so I get excited by things like opportunities to get viewbox teaching by radiologists of national prominence (those who are invited to write expert reviews for leading journals and speak in national meetings) and to make strong academic connections with those prominent people so they can open doors for my future career (in my experience as a med stud, nothing excites an academic more than a story that begins with "when I was training at XYZ with the famous Dr. so and so, he once told me...", and recommendations from those people go very very far) and doing research at a place that actually has people who are enthusiastic about expanding our knowledge and improving the practice of radiology.

5) I do believe that academic radiologists of national prominence have deeper knowledge on given topic of expertise. I mean, how can they not, when they focus on a narrow area and are writing papers and speaking to national audience routinely? This has to translate to a more enriching educational experience, at the academic level, of course. Would you rather have learned chemistry in high school from a teacher who has a PhD in chemistry or a BS in chemistry?

6) If you are 100% sure about community practice, 90% of the necessary training will be achieved with enough volume/variety of cases and some personal dedication to rigorous learning. The extra 10% of radiology training that can ONLY be found at UCSF/Hopkins/MGH (I don't even know what these would be. Cutting-edge new technology?) will probably be irrelevant in private practice and can probably be overcome after a few years of practice.

7) When markets are tight, prestige/location of program will give you an enormous edge for getting a job, regardless of the practice setting.
 
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Cubsfan10 said:
As a DO who doesn't have access to such places to train, I was just curious why these people are going to be considered better trained and what I could do at my own program to try to bridge the gap. I have no interest in research/academics so I was hoping to find tangible things that places like UCSF does so much better than say Indiana, CCF, UPMC, or any program with high volume/pathology. Does "writing the book" on something make you better radiologist? I know that in my time in other fields such as chemistry, people who "write books" are deemed more academic and can't really "do the job" so to speak. My program has great lectures (I think) but is that the difference? I've just always been curious if its all just "the name" and I can just work really hard and be as good/better than someone from UCSF/MGH/etc. I'd like to get a good PP job and be able to handle a list well/rack up the RVUs.
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The scope of your training is different based on what type of program you train at. Academic vs. PP aims and functions are different. There's no "better radiologist", but you will find people who like to think in black and white depending on what their individual concepts of a great radiologist are.

Concerning your question of whether "writing the book" makes you a better radiologist or not, think about this: "writing the book" CREATES the field. Simply put, no research & no innovation = no field = no jobs. What a radiologist does today may very well be what a PA does tomorrow, so we need to keep the field fresh. Academic radiology is NECESSARY and IMPORTANT. There's no getting around it. I mean, you read academic journals with others' work throughout your life to stay up to date and with current practice, no? So is there some respect due for the culture of research and innovation of these places and the individuals these places help develop? You betcha. The reality is that these places have established legacies created by some very special and prolific radiologists. The reality also is some rather average people are carried by their institutions' names. The reality is also that individual endeavor trumps brand names and that being in certain institutions facilitates productivity by virtue of those institutions having more resources - you will not have an easy time finding the same research/teaching/innovation resources at UTMB as you would at Stanford, for example.

Does that make a "UCSF/MGH/etc" radiologist a better radiologist than you? It depends. In academic circles, perhaps... assuming that person has superior research/teaching abilities. In private practice, perhaps... assuming you're able to "rack up RVUs" more so than that UCSF-trained radiologist. Some programs focus on both and produce great radiologists that are able to do both.
 
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It also gives you great bragging rights on auntminnie and SDN :p
 
Thanks for the replies. I guess I was just hoping that I could make up for being a DO and achieve highly during residency but it sounds like that being locked out of these top places really hurts/sucks.
 
futureradres12345 said:
In talking with the residents at UCSF, one common critique is that being spread across different hospitals diminishes the camaraderie in the class. People teleconference into lectures and sometimes go weeks without seeing each other.

Other negatives I have heard, either directly or by word of mouth, include cost of living, pressure to do research, and time wasted commuting between sites.

No place is perfect and if none of these things are a dealbreaker for you, I would seriously consider UCSF.
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These negatives are not unique to this program since so many places I went to have multiple sites. And with their online resources the commute is only "wasted" if you don't use it as time to study. Even if your program has one hospital, everyone spends some time commuting in a city. Also there is an argument that multiple sites gives you exposure to different practice settings which has some value. Cost of living is an issue in any big city and there are ways of mitigating this in SF based on where you live and the arrangement. "Pressure to do research" is not like a research requirement and no one is forcing anyone to do it.

Camaraderie is more based on the group of people who match together randomly each year than whether you have to commute... People who want to hang out, will.

I just didn't see any of these things as so big a drawback... And really the pluses others have mentioned were enough for me to rank them first (location, the people, cases/teaching quality). The absolute only but important reason I considered "prestige" was that I would like to be in Cali after residency, but am from the east and wanted to keep that option open as well. Really it all just depends what your priorities are.
 
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LePeintre said:
The reality is also that individual endeavor trumps brand names and that being in certain institutions facilitates productivity by virtue of those institutions having more resources - you will not have an easy time finding the same research/teaching/innovation resources at UTMB as you would at Stanford, for example.
.
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I have noticed this too--individual excellence trumps brand names even in basic science fields. And sometimes, faculty like these end up moving to programs with more resources or they forge nice collaborations with people elsewhere.

The key in academia is to become an expert at 1 or 2 things, or create one important advance. That way people know you as the person who came up with this technique or procedure, or made this discovery, etc.
 
Cubsfan10 said:
Thanks for the replies. I guess I was just hoping that I could make up for being a DO and achieve highly during residency but it sounds like that being locked out of these top places really hurts/sucks.
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Not going to a top place will not keep you advancing the field. All the important advances do not come from only the top schools. Now if your goal is private practice, I do not see the necessity of going to a top place.
 
Step 1: 240s
Step 2: 250s
AOA: no
Top 40 school with top NIH money: No
Research experiences: 4
# of Publications, abstracts, presentations: 7 I think

fwiw, I'm not interested in doing academics but would like to keep doors open.

Baylor-Dallas
UAB
UTSW
UVA
Michigan
MUSC
Northwestern
OHSU
 
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