Question about residency search

Started by Gospe1
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Gospe1

Gospe1

Full Member
15+ Year Member
Hi,
I'm a premed student who applied and has been accepted to east coast med schools. I am wondering if it's easy to match to residencies in California in 4 years. Is it much more difficult to match there than say, the midwest? Is there anything special that I should do during my 4 years in medical school? Are California residencies as exclusive to OOS applicants as California med schools are?
 
I guess this is also my chance to ask stupid questions. I've been reading some allo posts and there seems to be some characterization of particular specialties. For example,

Emergency Medicine: no calls, 12 hr shifts, moving from patient to patient, really busy

Radiology: good "lifestyle", minor patient contact, blah blah blah

Can anyone give me some broad characterizations of the most popular specialties?
 
well as far as general characterizations

ROAD is used as an acronym for the lifestyle friendly specialties
it stands for Radiology, Opthalmology, Anesthesiology, and of course Dermatology
 
Gospe1 said:
Hi,
I'm a premed student who applied and has been accepted to east coast med schools. I am wondering if it's easy to match to residencies in California in 4 years. Is it much more difficult to match there than say, the midwest? Is there anything special that I should do during my 4 years in medical school? Are California residencies as exclusive to OOS applicants as California med schools are?
Click to expand...

Many interns/residents will tell you that there seems to be a "coast bias" in the process. For example, I came from out West, and was offered many more interviews at West Coast programs than East Coast programs, even when the East Programs were obviously inferior to ones on the West Coast that offered to interview me.
 
It's hard to get when you mean the most "popular"

Popular as people going into them? Over 2700 people matched into Internal Medicine last year.

Popular as hard to get? That's probably Derm and Plastics Surgery?

Popular as better lifestyle? You should probably go ROAD but that's kinda not so true for some anymore.
 
There's also a section for residencies on SDN. If you click on one you're interested in, they usually have a sticky, which has lots of great information about length of residency, lifestyle, and where to get more information. You'll probably get a lot more good intel there than you will on a thread like this.

Best of luck to you. It's an exciting time...
 
Please do a search for these frequently-discussed topics. You'll find a wealth of information in the General Residency and Allopathic forums, especially their respective FAQs.

Additionally, as a college pre-med, it's MUCH too early to be worrying about which state you'll be applying to for residency positions. It's likely too early to even know which field you're going to enter.
 
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