Q on Residency & Undergrad term & other stuff

[Aero047]

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I'm just a bit confused on how residencies actually work. If you are accepted to a graduate school, does the graduate school decide where to put you to complete your residency or do you apply for a residency on your own and go from there? I've heard that these things are unpredictable and that you may be transferred from one hospital to the other.

Another thing: A friend of mine is planning on finishing undergrad one year early (she's a freshman like me but with her AP credits, she's labelled as a sophomore.) She's pretty much squishing a lot of courses together but still plans to take the MCAT when I take it (August of Junior year- isn't that the best time to take it?) There are some personal reasons why I'm considering graduating a year early, but I'm not as smart as she is so it's a long shot. Do you find that students who graduate a year early are not nearly as experienced or mature in medical school than those who have gone for the full 4 years?

As for the different specialties in medicine, I was looking towards becoming just a primary care physician - someone who treats the whole family from kids to adults. Are those kinds of physicians ones who specialize in Internal Medicine or am I totally getting the wrong idea?

I hope I didn't come off to ignorant here. Thanks for reading 🙂

 

[cardsurgguy]

1.There is a residency matching program done at the end of medical school. You pick your 1, 2, and 3rd choice and the powers that be try to match you up best they can.

2.Honestly, I don't really think it's to any benefit to graduate early. You may be risking getting worse grades in your courses if you overload and take many science courses at once. At least that's me, I'm not in any rush and frankly can't understand why anybody else is. Also, if you take the MCAT junior year in April which will be your last semester, which you'll probably be overloading since you're graduating early. However, not too good of an idea. Studying for the MCAT is almost a class in itself. Sometimes literally if you take a Kaplan or Princeton Review course, which would be really really hard with you overloading.

But that depends on you and your motives for graduating early. Just out of curiousity, why do you want to graduate early?

3.You can get into primary care in multiple ways. You can definitely do internal medicine (3 years). But you'll probably be treating mostly adults since if you wanted to treat kids you may go into pediatrics, also 3 years. However, if you do a family practice residency (2 years) you can work as a general practioner and treat everybody in a more general sense.

 

[Aero047]

1) Ah. So if I go to RWJMS, it's not 100% certain that I will spend my residency there?

2) If I were to go the normal route (4 years) and take the MCAT in August of my junior year, would that be ok?

Why was I considering graduating early? If you really want to know, I'll PM you.

3) So the main difference between Internal Medicine and Family Practice Residency is that in IM you mostly treat adults and FPR you treat everyone but in a general sense. Are the doctors involved in FPR usually in a private practice? Are there any other major differences between IM and FPR? Anything not on the books that are involved in the areas-the inside scoop?

I apologize if I'm being a pain in the ass.

 

[cardsurgguy]

From what I know, it's not certain you will spend your residency where you go to med school.

That's ok, you don't have to tell me why you want to graduate early. It's really none of my business. When I said I don't know why people would want to graduate early, I was talking about for a reason such as just to get out earlier. I wasn't talking about if someone has some personal or family reason or someting. That may be perfectly understandable.

If you want to go to medical school right after college, you need to take the MCAT at the latest August after your junior year, but it's generally regarded to take it in April, since you could get your application in earlier. However, another option is to take it August after sophomore year, but you would be missing the courses you would be taking junior year.

Taking it April of junior year can be tough. So many people prefer to take it in August since you can study the entire summer for it. So another option is to take it August after Junior year (which you could still apply to go right after college, but you'd be late in the cycle), but you could also take it then, and take a year off after college, and apply spring of senior year, so you'd be early in the cycle.

There's a lot you could do with a year off. For example, you could work and raise money up to help finance med school.

I would say IM is a more in depth residency than family practice. Family practice as the name says, is meant for people to be working in primary care offices. However, despite the fact you can work as a primary care doc, IM is meant more for in patient work, or a mix of the 2. Also, IM is the stepping stone people use to go into the various medicine subspecialties such as cardiology, nephrology, neurology, etc. As one would expect seeing as how it's 3 vs 2 years, you get more knowledge in an internal medicine residency than family practice. This is not bad at all since in family practice, you don't deal with the stuff you deal with in in-patient care.

 

[UseUrHeadFred]

Don't get ahead of yourself. Relax, concentrate on getting good grades, and get some meaningful clinical experience. Have a life outside of school. I mean it!

It's best to take the MCAT the April near the end of your Junior year. If you want to take it earlier, say the August at the beginning of your Junior year, that's fine, so long as you have your prerequisites done.

The August MCAT at the beginning of your Senior year is your last chance, and even then it delays your application a little bit. Some people are already accepted by the time August MCAT folks get their scores.

Residency application is a lot like medical school application. You can rank as many programs as you want. The residency programs do the same to the applicants. Your board scores, grades, interview, etc. are factors in their rankings. Everyone (with a few exceptions, but don't worry about those now) finds out where they matched for residency on the same day - Match Day. If you didn't match, you have to scramble. That means you have to pick from leftovers.

Just like medical schools, some residency programs are more prestigious than others, and thus are harder to get into. Also, different specialties are flat out harder to get into than others. Dermatology is damn near impossible to match into. Family Practice is easy.

Don't worry about selecting a specialty right now. Just make damn sure you know you want to have a career in medicine. Try out as many different settings as you can. Work in a Family Practice office, an ER, maybe try to get some experience with other things... You just want to make sure that medicine is really the correct career for you. Those experiences will not only show you whether or not you're on the right path, but may give you truly life-altering experiences that truly inspire you with feelings most people only dream about feeling for their job.

And above all - DON'T GET IN A HURRY. This process takes FOREVER. Trying to hurry things up for something that takes at least 11 years is foolish. The time at hand is arguably the most important. It is much easier to discover yourself during your undergraduate years than during medical school, and CERTAINLY easier than during residency - which is considered the hardest part of the whole deal. Study abroad, see the world, learn about things you don't know about... have fun!

 

[SOUNDMAN]

Also most FP residencies are 3 years, atleast around here they are. You get a nice overall mix in Family Practice, and the reality is that as a FP doc you can do a lot. Some get jobs in ER's, some decide that they like hospital work and base their practice more on inpatient stuff. Some just like to do office work and go home. The thing about FP is you can tailor your practice to what you want to do. You want to do more internal medicine, diabetes, hypertension, etc go ahead. You want to do more OB stuff, you can do that as well. It's fairly versatile.

 

[gujuDoc]

Well I would like to say don't rush to graduate unless you really really really have a good reason to try to finish a year early. Why do I say that? Because once your undergrad years are over, you will regret it if you didn't do something you wanted the chance to do and if you didn't live and let live your life out to the fullest.

Med school will be more time consuming and tougher so you will need a way to relax.


As per residency questions. Don't get ahead of yourself. Start thinking about that stuff when you get to med school.

In the meanwhile go find a doctor to shadow.

 

[beanbean]

Check out some residency forums here at SDN to get more info about specialties you may be interested in. Most people who start med school are either undecided about what field to specialize in or change their minds when they start rotations. Of course, some people know from the beginning and never waiver, but don't worry about what field of medicine right now.

Don't worry about graduating early; do whatever works best for your situation. Just be careful about trying to cram to many courses into one semester and having your gpa suffer.

And congratulations! having found SDN early in your premed career will be of enormous help to you in the future.