Hey, so I'm starting the process of applying for away rotations for orthopedics and am really having trouble finding any good information about the competitiveness of different programs. Specifically it would be nice to see ave. step 1 of matched applicants by program for an objective measure, whether they favor rotators, rotator to position ratio, etc. All I'm coming up with is subjective info given mostly by residents, which tend to all love their program lol. Right now I'm trying to decide between Akron general and Summa for an away. Other than just calling the places, anyone have any good websites?
Residency program competitiveness
- Thread starter VG Beat
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I would shop your question on the ortho subforum or some other ortho site as you will probably find more answers there.
That said, as someone who just finished applying in another competitive surgical subspecialty, I would be wary of using metric like avg step 1 to gauge programs' competitiveness. The scores are so high across the board and there are relatively few residents per program that it will make the metric fairly meaningless. Step 1 ends up being sort of a cutoff screening point and past a certain level other things take over. Letters end up being one of the most important and yet least quantifiable for applicants. You'll see two candidates with similar apps in every way, but one gets 6 interview invites and one gets 40. It could be a really cool backstory or some other EC, but I would put my money on letters. I know this is not telling you anything you don't already know, but just trying to illustrate how difficult it can be to assess competitiveness that way.
The Doximity ranking is a nice starting point, but do realize that those are going to change a LOT in the next few years. This first set of rankings wasn't well publicized during the data collection phase, so expect to see some movement in future iterations. I personally like NIH funding as a nice objective metric, though clearly a very limited one. I also googled all the current residents and did a pubmed search to see what they had done prior to residency. You can also check AOA's website and see if they are a member and when they were elected.
Well that's all of my ideas on that front. Beyond that, general advice is that every program favors GOOD rotators and every programs DNRs the BAD rotators (even if some give them a courtesy interview). It's kinda like your home program in that way -- they know where you're going to rank long before you interview. What I would look for is simply a program with a really good experience for rotators. That's the question I would start asking people. Assume your performance will be no more than average and you'll neither guarantee or lose yourself a position; pick a place based on the quality of experience you'll get. That will mean different things to different people.
Good luck!
That said, as someone who just finished applying in another competitive surgical subspecialty, I would be wary of using metric like avg step 1 to gauge programs' competitiveness. The scores are so high across the board and there are relatively few residents per program that it will make the metric fairly meaningless. Step 1 ends up being sort of a cutoff screening point and past a certain level other things take over. Letters end up being one of the most important and yet least quantifiable for applicants. You'll see two candidates with similar apps in every way, but one gets 6 interview invites and one gets 40. It could be a really cool backstory or some other EC, but I would put my money on letters. I know this is not telling you anything you don't already know, but just trying to illustrate how difficult it can be to assess competitiveness that way.
The Doximity ranking is a nice starting point, but do realize that those are going to change a LOT in the next few years. This first set of rankings wasn't well publicized during the data collection phase, so expect to see some movement in future iterations. I personally like NIH funding as a nice objective metric, though clearly a very limited one. I also googled all the current residents and did a pubmed search to see what they had done prior to residency. You can also check AOA's website and see if they are a member and when they were elected.
Well that's all of my ideas on that front. Beyond that, general advice is that every program favors GOOD rotators and every programs DNRs the BAD rotators (even if some give them a courtesy interview). It's kinda like your home program in that way -- they know where you're going to rank long before you interview. What I would look for is simply a program with a really good experience for rotators. That's the question I would start asking people. Assume your performance will be no more than average and you'll neither guarantee or lose yourself a position; pick a place based on the quality of experience you'll get. That will mean different things to different people.
Good luck!
