Residency Program's State/Regional Preference

[chuckyrage]

I hope I am posting this in the right place... If not, please move my thread to the right place...


When applying to residency programs, are there lots of programs which have strong regional/state preference?

For those "selective" residency programs, are they mostly in a certain part of the US? or are they all over?

About how much percent of their residency interview is given to people in the same state? same region? different region?

What defines as being in the "same" region? (east coast, midwest, west coast?)

Is there a certain type of residency which programs are more "selective" than others?

Thank!

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[Winged Scapula]

In general, esidencies do not have state or regional preferences like medical schools.

All they care about is getting a good resident who wants to be there, regardless of where the person is from.

If you are inquiring about picking a medical school based on where you want to do residency, I wouldn't spend a lot of time worrying about that.

 

[asmallchild]

This is specialty dependent too. Most of my interviews did tend to be regional despite my applying across the whole country

 

[SoCuteMD]

Beyond specialty dependent, I'd call it program-dependent. Some programs I visited were clearly proud of their geographic diversity and made an effort to recruit from regions that weren't strongly represented. Another program I visited in California consisted of two types of residents - grads of California medical schools and grads of Ivy League medical schools.

 

[chuckyrage]

In general, esidencies do not have state or regional preferences like medical schools.

All they care about is getting a good resident who wants to be there, regardless of where the person is from.

If you are inquiring about picking a medical school based on where you want to do residency, I wouldn't spend a lot of time worrying about that.

I hope this is true... but I heard several rumors that some residency programs are more "selective" than others.

This is specialty dependent too. Most of my interviews did tend to be regional despite my applying across the whole country

what specialty did you choose?

Beyond specialty dependent, I'd call it program-dependent. Some programs I visited were clearly proud of their geographic diversity and made an effort to recruit from regions that weren't strongly represented. Another program I visited in California consisted of two types of residents - grads of California medical schools and grads of Ivy League medical schools.

So... about how many of those "selective" residency programs are there? Are they mostly in Cali state?

 

[asmallchild]

dermatology

It does have a reputation for being quite regional

 

[asmallchild]

California programs in general tend to be quite selective too I've found

 

[VMSmith]

Some programs do have regional preferences as stated above.

Usually though, a program just wants to know how serious you are about actually relocating if you're applying out of your home geographic area. On almost all my interviews I was asked some variant of the question, "How do you feel about living here?" and "Do you have any friends or family here?"

As you get older, you will start to find that location becomes more and more important for you. YOU will start to have regional/state biases as well.

 

[chuckyrage]

dermatology

It does have a reputation for being quite regional

Are derm programs equally distributed throughout the US? If there are more derm programs in the west coast, is it better to live in that region?

Some programs do have regional preferences as stated above.

Usually though, a program just wants to know how serious you are about actually relocating if you're applying out of your home geographic area. On almost all my interviews I was asked some variant of the question, "How do you feel about living here?" and "Do you have any friends or family here?"

As you get older, you will start to find that location becomes more and more important for you. YOU will start to have regional/state biases as well.

You said some programs do have regional preferences... How many of these selective programs are there exactly (5-10% of all programs?). Are most of these selective programs in a certain geographic area? What defines as being in the same region?

 

[dragonfly99]

Usually though, a program just wants to know how serious you are about actually relocating if you're applying out of your home geographic area. On almost all my interviews I was asked some variant of the question, "How do you feel about living here?" and "Do you have any friends or family here?"

ding ding ding!
We have a winner!
My impression during residency and fellowship interviews is they want to be very sure that you WANT to move there and will like being there. If you can convince them of that, then they won't care so much where you are from. You have to convince them that you want their program too, though...not just want to be in California, etc.

 

[chuckyrage]

ding ding ding!
We have a winner!
My impression during residency and fellowship interviews is they want to be very sure that you WANT to move there and will like being there. If you can convince them of that, then they won't care so much where you are from. You have to convince them that you want their program too, though...not just want to be in California, etc.

Is there a chart or some data table indicating which residency programs have regional preference? Or... are all these not usually published at all...?

 

[asmallchild]

Are derm programs equally distributed throughout the US? If there are more derm programs in the west coast, is it better to live in that region?

I would never suggest picking a medical school based on desired location of residency.

I would pick a medical school first and foremost on affordability. Then other items can be added:

How happy would I be there?
Where is it located?
Do they offer a department in [insert field here]? (again, not a smart idea to pick a medical school based on what your perceived field interests are. This is something that will mostly likely change during medical school. But it doesn't hurt to make sure they at least have a department in plastics, derm, ortho, pm&r if that is what you feel you have an interest in)

 

[Winged Scapula]

ding ding ding!
We have a winner!
My impression during residency and fellowship interviews is they want to be very sure that you WANT to move there and will like being there. If you can convince them of that, then they won't care so much where you are from. You have to convince them that you want their program too, though...not just want to be in California, etc.

TOTALLY agree.

There is some regionality and California is amongst the worst offenders in that category. And there may be some program and specialty preferences we well.

But for the most part, programs just want to know you want to be there and for good reasons (ie, not because you want to lie on the beach). California gets a lot of applicants from all over the place; thus they will often tend to prefer state residents because its clear that they have a good reason for wanting to be close to home.

 

[gutonc]

Is there a chart or some data table indicating which residency programs have regional preference? Or... are all these not usually published at all...?

No. This is all based on anecdotal info. Maybe lots of anecdotal info but the plural of "anecdote" is not "data."

 

[dragonfly99]

chucky,
no
there is no hard data that I know of

You should apply to wherever you are interested. It may help slightly to have gone to med school in a particular region close to the residency you want, but not a major selection factor I don't think. I think residency programs sometimes do tend to prefer applicants who have either rotated there (as a 4th year visiting student) and/or who are from med schools they are familiar with. They might tend to be more familiar with students who went to med schools in their own region (i.e. UC San Francisco might feel like they know what it means to be middle of the class at U of Washington or Stanford, and have an "honors" the the medicine sub-I there, but might not feel so confident that they know how to rank/compare a student from [just picking random examples of similar schools but in different regions] Emory or U of North Carolina).

In general, I wouldn't waste a lot of time worrying about regionalism in the residency selection process. Just make sure your application is competitive and that you apply to a variety of programs (so you don't fail to match), and not just in California or the middle of New York or Chicago, or just the so-called "top 10" hospitals. Just make sure you can explain your reasons for wanting residency there @all the places you interview.