Drax4, congratulations on landing such a SOLID list 🙂.
JHH resident here so will try to give you my two cents. I interviewed at BWH, UCSF, Columbia, Duke, (the usual suspects above) as did almost everyone else in my program. I would say that especially if you are leaning towards cards, then either Osler or Brigham are great places for you. I will only speak on behalf of my program though, and you should speak to as many people as possible from other programs in order to make your most informed decision.
Our program here is very cards heavy, both in inpatient experience and in resident fellowship selection. Last year I think between 40-50% of the resident class went into cards but this obviously changes every year. As any program, there are pros and cons to training here. Pros are it is probably one of the best-suited programs in the country to land you a cards fellowship. Juniors typically go on a few interviews, (I haven't heard of anyone going on more than 6 last year, but don't quote me on that number) and everyone matches at their number one or two choice. If you are applying to less competitive fields like pulm/cc or heme-onc, then people interview at even less places (maybe around 3-4 for heme-onc). Everyone here applying to cards automatically has a fellowship interview at JHH, and typically half of the fellowship program comes from in-house. Almost everyone works with Dr Schulman (the fellowship director) in the CCU. He is world renowned, super fun, and will go to bat for you making phone calls to wherever you want to go. Others you will almost certainly work with include Dr Wittstein (guy who coined "Broken Heart Syndrome") among many others. So every year probably half of Osler residents stay for cards fellowship, a couple go to cleveland, and the rest go to Boston, SF, NYC, or Durham. No one in the program feels they necessarily need to do research or publish for the sake of "resume-boosting." In fact, almost no one at the Osler program does research in their first year anyways since it is a very clinically heavy intern year as is the Brigham if I recall. Most people start a project junior year prior to interviewing and that clearly seems to be good enough.
Downsides to this system exist as well. For one, I personally think research is good in order to continue developing your investigative and quantitative skills early on. I think having some early research time also allows you to further develop a niche or interest prior to interviewing (cardiomyopathy, interventional, EP, etc) as opposed to depending on your program's strong clinical reputation during application season. You will realize more and more how important this becomes when setting yourself up for academia down the line. Also, I think for people who are unsure about cardiology, there is little time in the Osler program to do electives in other fields and "rule them out" before you are ready to apply so that is another downside.
All in all, though, I would say that if you think you want to do cards, pulm/cc, GI, or heme-onc; then Hopkins is probably one of the best suited programs in terms of setting you up for fellowship. As with any program though, there are downsides and considerations as I mentioned above that do not make it the best for everyone. Im sure youre all noticing on your interview trails by now that no "one-size-fits-all" with residency.
Please let me know if you or anyone else has more questions about the program, and feel free to PM me. I might be late replying cuz they occasionally make us work up here in Baltimore. Good luck to you all and Happy New Year!!! 👍
Mentalgymnast
Seriously?
