Can anyone comment on Pittsburgh's program in terms of reputation and level of training? As per US news, it's a highly rated program, but that ranking is arbitrary. I'm deciding on whether to go to my interview or not.
Thanks,
Thanks,
Pittsburgh
- Thread starter nymed32
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i interviewed at pitt a couple of weeks ago. i would say that if you already have a safety program and you don't live close to pitt, then don't bother going. the best part of the interview was the dinner they took you out to the night before. the program gets pushed around by surgery, they are moving their micu and several of their medicine teams just to accomodate one new transplant surgeon that they are hiring. one of the residents told me that they frequently have to take care of surgical patients as well. their program director seems creepy and unapproachable, and pittsburgh is an awful city in terms of traffic (every street is one lane wide for some stupid reason). The main hospital is split into two buildings, and the ER is currently in a different building then their medicine floors. their hospitals/facilities seem alright, and the residents seem to place in decent fellowships, but I just would rather not spend 3 years there. I previously thought that I would rank them pretty low, but now I'm thinking about not ranking them at all.
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I personally did not apply to Pitt, but there is one point in the process where I thought I should have, based on their med school/hospital rankings - makes it sound like it's a pretty prestigeous place. The reason I held my hand is the thought that there is no way in hell I can live in Pitt for 3 years. But that's more of a lifestyle issue.
However, just out of personal curiosity, from a purely academic perspective, do their program live up to those lofty rankings? (ie. can one consider them on the same breath as programs at other top 25 med school/hospitals)? If one were to completely disregard the lifestyle issue and focus on the academic aspect, how would you rank their program with the "big boys"?
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I applaud your sincerity ckent. It's nice to hear a candid opinion. Shall we start a thread regarding interview impressions???
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In my opinion, Pittsburgh's strong reputation is derived largely from it's transplant and surgical program. Supposedly, it's one of the strongest in the country. I've never heard anybody praise Pittsburgh's medicine department, while I have heard them praise their transplant service. Supposedly, their GI fellowship program is fairly strong there as well because they do so many liver transplants. One of the complains of the residents that I met there was actually their required GI rotation during their internship year though, apparently, it's annoying because the fellow and attendings round late and tell you to do things late in the day, and the specialty team is somewhat disorganized in terms of you having to do scut work for several specialty attendings. Overall though, if you are interested in GI, I think that you might want consider Pittsburgh because as I was saying before, they appear to place fairly well in terms of fellowships. They had an average residency class, they certainly don't draw from the same pool of applicants as say Harvard or Hopkins, and I think that one of the reasons that they aren't as popular is because they are in Pittsburgh and nobody wants to live in Pittsburgh.
Wow, I'm surprised to hear that the program and city are getting stomped on pretty heavily here. As a past IM residency graduate (1996-1999-- when residents were residents and we took q2 call in the CCU) I can't give a first hand assessment on where the program is now but I work in Pittsburgh and am loosely affiliated with the program and can give some general comments on it and the city.
I have to say that the city is largely misunderstood by people who haven't been here. It's not the smoke-filled, soot-choked steel mill that it was in the past (and hasn't been for 40 years). It's quite clean and the cost of living is pretty cheap, especially compared to the 'major' cities and areas-- NY, So. Cal/Bay area, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, etc. Try to find a 1 bedroom apt for $650 in any of those cities that won't take you more than 10 minutes to get to work. I know it's all based on personal preferences, but there was no way I could live in Philadelphia after I interviewed at a couple of programs there. Compared to Philly, I found Pittsburgh to be much cleaner, cheaper, had less crime, and having a car isn't an inconvenience here; you won't have to park it a mile away from where you live. But you won't realize these things unless you see the place. Another thing that I felt was a big plus is that the hospital and med school are on the same campus as the main campus of the University. In all, it reminded me of Michigan except the residents were happier and there's more to do here than in Ann Arbor.
The program itself: ckent's observations are correct (well, except for that 'getting pushed around by surgery' one. As you know, the nature of internal medicine is actually taking care of the whole patient as opposed to the surgical specialties who like to get out once their organ's problem has resolved. This happens everywhere, even at the Harvards [you have read "The House of God" by now, right?]. That's what you'll be doing if you go into general medicine so I don't see that as a fault of the program). How you interpret them is another thing. True, the ER is located in another building separate from the general medicine floors so you won't be going to the ER to admit unless you're doing a CCU or cardiac pavillion month (the CCU and cardiology floors are in the same bulding as the ER). I thought that was weird at first but after a couple of weeks I didn't even think of that as an issue. The MICU move has been bandied about for the last 6 years and hasn't happened. It still isn't definite yet. What part of the city did you see, ckent? I don't find traffic to be bad at all. Of course rush hour is going to be bad, but since you'll be going in and leaving outside of the usual 8AM and 5PM traffic rushes I never found it to be an issue during residency and weekend traffic is fine as far as I'm concerned. I've been through NYC and Boston traffic and Pittsburgh is nowhere near as bad. At worst it's still better than NYC on a good day. There is a new Science tower being constructed on campus which has closed off a lane of traffic on 5th avenue for a couple of blocks but that still leaves 3 lanes open and most people live in Shadyside or Squirrel Hill and don't go in that direction. I assure you, there is more than one lane of traffic on busy streets.
I can say one unusual thing that happened with last year's intern class-- only 2 Pitt med school grads stayed for IM (not including transitionals or preliminaries). Historically there were usually 7-10. I'm not sure what the reason was. Last year a nearby hospital closed and the orphaned residents were absorbed by the Pitt program which IMHO diluted the program. They're gone now (the resident class wasn't expanded to accommodate them beyond last year) but I think that just served to make the program appear more chaotic than it really was to the Pitt 4th years who were around to hear about it. I'm curious to see what happens in March.
Does Pitt have the name recognition of a Mass General or Hopkins? No, of course not, but who else does? Program strength wise I'd say it was a solid, second tier program (from my 1996 perspective) and I don't think it's deviated much from that. Unless you plan to be a department head and need to slurp your way to the top, I don't think the place that you did your residency will be the limiting factor in what you do (the limiting factor is the applicant 99% of the time). People have gone from here to fellowships at the Brigham, Beth Israel, UChicago, etc so it's not like you're closing doors by going to Pitt. There are some world class name people here that you can connect with and who can give your CV some shine IF you get to know them, do some research with them, etc. The medicine chair is a Brigham guy and a lot of faculty were recruited from Harvard so if you simply must go to Boston for fellowship you can get letters from them.
The best advice that I got way back then was to pick a city that you like and if you plan on fellowship afterward (or are not sure if you want to do one to keep the door open) go to an academic program. Make sure you get a good variety of pathology (I avoided SF and NYC because I wanted to do more than HIV all the time. Things are different now but I think you get the idea), get experience at a VA hospital, make sure their IM boards pass rate isn't less than 90%, and see if the residents are happy. If a program has all that, you really can't go wrong.
I have to say that the city is largely misunderstood by people who haven't been here. It's not the smoke-filled, soot-choked steel mill that it was in the past (and hasn't been for 40 years). It's quite clean and the cost of living is pretty cheap, especially compared to the 'major' cities and areas-- NY, So. Cal/Bay area, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, etc. Try to find a 1 bedroom apt for $650 in any of those cities that won't take you more than 10 minutes to get to work. I know it's all based on personal preferences, but there was no way I could live in Philadelphia after I interviewed at a couple of programs there. Compared to Philly, I found Pittsburgh to be much cleaner, cheaper, had less crime, and having a car isn't an inconvenience here; you won't have to park it a mile away from where you live. But you won't realize these things unless you see the place. Another thing that I felt was a big plus is that the hospital and med school are on the same campus as the main campus of the University. In all, it reminded me of Michigan except the residents were happier and there's more to do here than in Ann Arbor.
The program itself: ckent's observations are correct (well, except for that 'getting pushed around by surgery' one. As you know, the nature of internal medicine is actually taking care of the whole patient as opposed to the surgical specialties who like to get out once their organ's problem has resolved. This happens everywhere, even at the Harvards [you have read "The House of God" by now, right?]. That's what you'll be doing if you go into general medicine so I don't see that as a fault of the program). How you interpret them is another thing. True, the ER is located in another building separate from the general medicine floors so you won't be going to the ER to admit unless you're doing a CCU or cardiac pavillion month (the CCU and cardiology floors are in the same bulding as the ER). I thought that was weird at first but after a couple of weeks I didn't even think of that as an issue. The MICU move has been bandied about for the last 6 years and hasn't happened. It still isn't definite yet. What part of the city did you see, ckent? I don't find traffic to be bad at all. Of course rush hour is going to be bad, but since you'll be going in and leaving outside of the usual 8AM and 5PM traffic rushes I never found it to be an issue during residency and weekend traffic is fine as far as I'm concerned. I've been through NYC and Boston traffic and Pittsburgh is nowhere near as bad. At worst it's still better than NYC on a good day. There is a new Science tower being constructed on campus which has closed off a lane of traffic on 5th avenue for a couple of blocks but that still leaves 3 lanes open and most people live in Shadyside or Squirrel Hill and don't go in that direction. I assure you, there is more than one lane of traffic on busy streets.
I can say one unusual thing that happened with last year's intern class-- only 2 Pitt med school grads stayed for IM (not including transitionals or preliminaries). Historically there were usually 7-10. I'm not sure what the reason was. Last year a nearby hospital closed and the orphaned residents were absorbed by the Pitt program which IMHO diluted the program. They're gone now (the resident class wasn't expanded to accommodate them beyond last year) but I think that just served to make the program appear more chaotic than it really was to the Pitt 4th years who were around to hear about it. I'm curious to see what happens in March.
Does Pitt have the name recognition of a Mass General or Hopkins? No, of course not, but who else does? Program strength wise I'd say it was a solid, second tier program (from my 1996 perspective) and I don't think it's deviated much from that. Unless you plan to be a department head and need to slurp your way to the top, I don't think the place that you did your residency will be the limiting factor in what you do (the limiting factor is the applicant 99% of the time). People have gone from here to fellowships at the Brigham, Beth Israel, UChicago, etc so it's not like you're closing doors by going to Pitt. There are some world class name people here that you can connect with and who can give your CV some shine IF you get to know them, do some research with them, etc. The medicine chair is a Brigham guy and a lot of faculty were recruited from Harvard so if you simply must go to Boston for fellowship you can get letters from them.
The best advice that I got way back then was to pick a city that you like and if you plan on fellowship afterward (or are not sure if you want to do one to keep the door open) go to an academic program. Make sure you get a good variety of pathology (I avoided SF and NYC because I wanted to do more than HIV all the time. Things are different now but I think you get the idea), get experience at a VA hospital, make sure their IM boards pass rate isn't less than 90%, and see if the residents are happy. If a program has all that, you really can't go wrong.
