Pre-professional thinking about Cardiology

[Veni vidi vicii]

Hi -

I am really interested in Cardiology I just had a few questions. How competitive is it to get into a cardiology program? Are jobs saturated in urban areas? If you can go back in time would you still choose this specialty? Is the demand going down or up?

I'm just very skeptical in general so any help would be appreciated. It's a long road ahead and I want to know as much as I can before I pursue this.

Thanks

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[IMreshopeful]

Hi -

I am really interested in Cardiology I just had a few questions. How competitive is it to get into a cardiology program? Are jobs saturated in urban areas? If you can go back in time would you still choose this specialty? Is the demand going down or up?

I'm just very skeptical in general so any help would be appreciated. It's a long road ahead and I want to know as much as I can before I pursue this.

Thanks

1. Cardiology is a fellowship of internal medicine. It is very competitive, either about as competitive or a little less competitive compared to GI. You generally need a combo of good board scores, research, decent residency pedigree, good letters of rec, in order to match.
2. Depends on what you mean. Jobs for EP and interventional are somewhat saturated in urban areas, but usually still can be found not too far outside of or within urban metro areas. There’s plenty of urban metro general cards jobs. The pay is not as great in large cities, the northeast, etc.
3. Yes, I would choose this specialty. I like what I’m doing and prefer it immensely to general IM. I can’t really think of a non IM specialty that appeals to me.
4. The demand is steady. Certain parts of it are somewhat saturated (EP, structural) but this isn’t pathology where many people can’t find jobs at all.

On a separate note, if you are pre-professional, you should probably work on getting into medical school first before worrying about this stuff.