PGY-1 Prelim Intern Year for FMG

Started by bonoz
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bonoz

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Hi guys,

I am an ophthalmology applicant and I am done with my interviews.

I have actually received far fewer interviews for intern year than I did for ophth. I want to get a few more interviews and I wanted to ask if I should apply to more programs? call them? are there IMG-friendly programs that I should look into?

Lastly, ideally, how many internship interviews should I go to to get a match?

Thank you
 
This actually happens not infrequently because for advanced positions that accept either medicine or surgery prelim years, most people prefer medicine prelims because they are, in general, less demanding than surgical prelims. The best you can do is look at this document, see which medicine prelim programs did not fill last year through the NRMP, and try contacting them. Honestly it's a little late in the game and many programs won't be accepting applications anymore.
http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Main-Match-Program-Results-2011-2015.pdf
Otherwise your best chance will be SOAPing into a medicine prelim spot, and if not that then a surgical prelim spot. There are lots of surgical prelims available every year, so chances are if you are a competitive ophtho applicant you will find a prelim somewhere if you don't match into one.
 
This actually happens not infrequently because for advanced positions that accept either medicine or surgery prelim years, most people prefer medicine prelims because they are, in general, less demanding than surgical prelims. The best you can do is look at this document, see which medicine prelim programs did not fill last year through the NRMP, and try contacting them. Honestly it's a little late in the game and many programs won't be accepting applications anymore.
http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Main-Match-Program-Results-2011-2015.pdf
Otherwise your best chance will be SOAPing into a medicine prelim spot, and if not that then a surgical prelim spot. There are lots of surgical prelims available every year, so chances are if you are a competitive ophtho applicant you will find a prelim somewhere if you don't match into one.

Thanks for your response. So I have created a list of 40 prelim medicine programs which were unfilled in the past year. Should I go ahead and apply to ALL of them?

Should I look into prelim peds at all? or surgery?

Thank you
 
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It's too late to apply to any other programs. You just have to wait and see what happens and be prepared to take a Surg Prelim spot in SOAP if necessary.

What if I call programs and see if they are still offering interviews?

Thanks
 
Do whatever you want. I'm sure programs are still interviewing. But most of them cut off reviewing apps a month or 2 ago. You don't have anything to lose other than time and ego though, so if you've got plenty of that, then go nuts.

lol @ ego. Lost my ego a long time ago.

I think I'll do that. The absolute worst case scenario is a surgical intern year via soap I suppose?
 
It's definitely too late to apply now. Should've thought about applying to more at the end of October. Best bet is to SOAP into a surg prelim, if there are any left in the match. Unlikely to have any prelims in the SOAP, all are very competitive.
So where did you match for optho?
 
It's definitely too late to apply now. Should've thought about applying to more at the end of October. Best bet is to SOAP into a surg prelim, if there are any left in the match. Unlikely to have any prelims in the SOAP, all are very competitive.
So where did you match for optho?
Not quite sure where you're getting your info. Last year in the SOAP there were 118 IM-prelim, 446 surgical prelims, and 46 transitional year spots. There's always lots of prelim spots available in the SOAP.