hola fellow chicago citizen,
I applied and interviewed at a couple of places in the NE. I interveiwed at the Beth Isreal-Deaconess program as well as the Mass General/Brigham & Women's program (as well as Columbia, but you didn't mention NYC, so I won't).
Re:
BIDMC: one of the best programs to become a future academic neurologist. Esp the way that the PGY-4 year is structered, you and your clasmates split the year being the "teaching resident"/acting chief resident. I think is an excellent way to breed the future generation of academic neurologists, and of course being at the BI and one of the top research institutions in the country you can't go wrong. Plus the other Harvard resources are at your doorstep (at the Harvard Campus, the med school, and all the affiliated Harvard Medical institutions). You have every opportunity open to you after fellowship. But you should be committed to academic neurology if you want to be at the BIDMC, they have a very specific aim and say that they will pick residents based upon this. A medium sized residency program w/ a small to medium sized faculty.
MGH/BWH (where I will be starting in exactly 6 months, but who's counting...?): one word: awesome. the volume per intern will prolly be more than at the BI, but worth it. You have every opportunity available to you, and one of the largest Neurology faculties in the country (think of any subspecialty of neurology, and you'll prolly have at least two neurologists there working in the field). The largest neurology residency program w/ the largest faculty. Definitely an academic neurologist program as well. Can you tell that I'm excited to start?
I would also highly recommend checking out Columbia, which has an amazing program and residents and faculty to match. Plus it's a short drive or flight from the rest of New England.
Of course my advice is pretty useless if you're set upon becoming a private practice neurologist. All of the programs above are pretty set upon selecting the future academic leaders in the field (from my investigations, Columbia has about 2-3 res per graduating year over the past few going into primarily a private practice setting).
But please, check out as many programs that you can and go to a large number of interviews. In residency ranking, the more chocies you have when putting together your match list the better.
pm me if you have more specific queries.
cheers,
-p
