Psych residency application explosion in California/US this year?

[pyrrion89]

Based on a few things, I wonder if there's been a huge uptick in the number of people applying into psychiatry this year---perhaps even superimposed on a general uptrend in the past few years. (1) At a recent interview, the program director revealed 20-22 medical students out of UCLA were applying into psychiatry this year. (2) A recent poll on the SDN medical school sub-reddit revealed psychiatry as the third- or fourth-most applied-to specialty overall.

I'm wondering what the implications are for people applying this cycle into psychiatry, and also what is spurring so many people (especially from UCLA or California) into psych lately. Any other thoughts from you all?

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[Psychotic]

One thought: Without knowing how many UCLA applicants have applied in years past, that number in and of itself is kind of meaningless. Even if there is an increase, some of it is probably applicants looking for a "back up" residency option to something more competitive. But I would not sweat these n=1 anecdotes; I doubt if there is that much genuine uptick across the country, although there has been some growing interest in psychiatry over the last few years as reflected in the Match statistics.

 

[clozareal]

That's what people have been saying for several years now, but I haven't looked at the evidence from Charting Outcomes in the Match in support of that. About 18 UCLA med students applied to psych last year so 22 isn't a big chance depending on what their overall class size is.

If there actually is an uptick, this could be for lots of reasons, such as improving social perspective on mental health, increased pay for psychiatrists in California, lifestyle is great, the psych rotations at UCLA are amazing, the other specialty rotations don't offer as much lifestyle benefits, and many other reasons.