For your ability to be a good radiologist, it doesn't make a lot of a difference. Maybe learning something about surgical patient care during a TY would be helpful, but otherwise it doesn't matter all that much (if you are at all interested in IR, I would actually suggest a decent surgical prelim).
Just one aspect often overlooked:
TY
- your rads residency if funded at the full level throughout.
prelim medicine:
- your rads program looses approx 20k of your funding during residency PGY-4 and PGY-5
You can find the details on this somewhat bizarre funding issue here:
Yeah, I was surprised to find out that matching into a pre-lim med year stiffs the program out of funding since it acts as if you matched into a categorical program. I wish they'd give radiology more funding, since I matched into one 🙁. Wonder how pissed off my PD is going to be.
It was my #3 choice after 2 insanely competitive TYs. I could have ranked several more TYs ahead of it, but it beat them out on procedures, resident happiness, cushness, and location. I didn't realize how bad I'd feel about it, though 🙁