Sports Medicine 2025-2026

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Ok. For the fellows and attendings, I have a question. How do you start putting together a rank list? I've heard that I need to 'figure out what is important to me for my career goals' and look for programs that would give me that. But that is a hard question to answer right now. In a perfect world I'd be getting paid to follow Red Bull athletes around and crushing high fives with Olympic/Paralympic athletes at the finish line. Realistically I know I'll be happy with some local D1/2/3 coverage of soccer, lacrosse, track and field, and maybe football when needed. My biggest interest lies in ultrasound I think, and I want to get RMSK certification, ideally the year I finish fellowship.

Should I be prioritizing US training and exposure over team/sideline coverage? Should I try to find a pretty good US program that has pretty good team coverage? Should I go to the place with great D1 sideline coverage and just try to pick up the rest of the US and procedure training when I can? How should I go about trying to make sense of this?

My brain is telling me to go to the place with the smaller team coverage and the best US training, but my heart keeps wanting me to go and get more sideline/team coverage with a bigger and more resource rich program. How did you make the decision?
 
Powdermonkey said:
Ok. For the fellows and attendings, I have a question. How do you start putting together a rank list? I've heard that I need to 'figure out what is important to me for my career goals' and look for programs that would give me that. But that is a hard question to answer right now. In a perfect world I'd be getting paid to follow Red Bull athletes around and crushing high fives with Olympic/Paralympic athletes at the finish line. Realistically I know I'll be happy with some local D1/2/3 coverage of soccer, lacrosse, track and field, and maybe football when needed. My biggest interest lies in ultrasound I think, and I want to get RMSK certification, ideally the year I finish fellowship.

Should I be prioritizing US training and exposure over team/sideline coverage? Should I try to find a pretty good US program that has pretty good team coverage? Should I go to the place with great D1 sideline coverage and just try to pick up the rest of the US and procedure training when I can? How should I go about trying to make sense of this?

My brain is telling me to go to the place with the smaller team coverage and the best US training, but my heart keeps wanting me to go and get more sideline/team coverage with a bigger and more resource rich program. How did you make the decision?
Click to expand...
I usually tell applicants to do as you did: make a list of what's most important to you (curriculum, prestige, location, coverage, etc) and then rank based on that. Don't rank on what other people say (they may value certain things different than you), rank based on what's important to you. It's also helpful to do this in conjunction with a mentor who knows you well.

As far as US vs coverage. Some of it depends on what's important to you. I would say pursue a heavy US program in lieu of a heavy coverage program ONLY if you don't foresee yourself doing high level sports coverage. Otherwise, I favor getting the coverage experience. These days all programs have to provide a minimum ultrasound curriculum and you will get adequate exposure at pretty much any program. Once you learn ultrasound basics (knobology, image optimization, basic tissue recognition, needle techniques, troubleshooting, etc) you can pretty much learn to do any US skill and inject anything anywhere after fellowship. On the other hand, the variety of coverage you get in fellowship cannot be replicated. Either you have a job where this type of coverage is not available or more likely...your time as an attending is very expensive and running around covering multiple sports at multiple levels is unlikely what your group/institution will pay you to do.

Overall, it's always good to train in a well balanced program. That way, whatever your eventual career goals may be, you would have had proper training in fellowship and develop mentorship relationships that will help you along the way.
 
Do you guys send thank you emails for all your interviews? feels extra but just curious. and how much pressure should I feel to try and go to a program in person for my own "second look" after a virtual interview that went well. Like to programs actually care? or does me going in person not really matter.
 
hh15 said:
Do you guys send thank you emails for all your interviews? feels extra but just curious. and how much pressure should I feel to try and go to a program in person for my own "second look" after a virtual interview that went well. Like to programs actually care? or does me going in person not really matter.
Click to expand...
I've been sending thank you emails to all of my interviewers (including the fellows), but that's what I was taught to do. In the business world its considered appropriate, I think. I have gotten some good responses, and I've been trying to send them within a week of my interview day.

If you have an invitation and are able to actually go to a place to see it after a virtual interview, why not? It may change your mind about where to rank it. You might also get a little extra face time with the staff. Unless you are a total rude ***** while there, I doubt it would hurt you. It might help? I don't know that I would go out of my way unless there was a place that I really, really was excited about. Especially with flying right now. I just flew for interviews the past two weeks and it was rough with the shutdown crap going on.
 
anyone have recent data on matching and length of our rank list? I'm debating cancelling a couple interviews.. if I did then my rank list will be 8 programs..
 
hh15 said:
anyone have recent data on matching and length of our rank list? I'm debating cancelling a couple interviews.. if I did then my rank list will be 8 programs..
Click to expand...
The last data I saw was from 2018. Im not sure how much it's changed post Covid, especially with the virtual interviews making it easier to get to more of them. If you've gotten good feedback, 8 is probably a good number, but if you can swing it, why not another 1 or two just to be sure?
 
Honestly the reason not to is just to save money and time lol. idk if it's worth it to spend the money and time just to rank them 5th at best.
 
Yeah, if youre comfortable with your interviews so far, I get it. My last two interviews were extra in my book, but they were still good programs and ended up higher on my list than expected.
 
finally down with all my interviews, certified my list and just gonna let the match gods do the work how is everyone feeling
 
sm2024 said:
finally down with all my interviews, certified my list and just gonna let the match gods do the work how is everyone feeling
Click to expand...
Optimistic and hopeful. I got some good feedback from a couple of the interviews. I would be pretty happy at any of my options, there is definitely a top choice and a pretty hopeful 2-5 rank. Fingers crossed. I have already put in and certified my list, nothing to do now but wait!
 
Powdermonkey said:
Optimistic and hopeful. I got some good feedback from a couple of the interviews. I would be pretty happy at any of my options, there is definitely a top choice and a pretty hopeful 2-5 rank. Fingers crossed. I have already put in and certified my list, nothing to do now but wait!
Click to expand...
Sweet, what makes your top choice stand above the rest?
In other news.. went to a spot last week that I loved during the virtual interview and was maybe going to rank number 1, but in person I did not love the vibes...
 
hh15 said:
Sweet, what makes your top choice stand above the rest?
In other news.. went to a spot last week that I loved during the virtual interview and was maybe going to rank number 1, but in person I did not love the vibes...
Click to expand...
Ooh, interesting. Good to know now I suppose.

My top spot had good vibes. I seemed to mesh with the faculty there. I really liked the way the program was set up. They have a few RMSK faculty which is important to me, they have some pretty solid team oppotunities/D1 coverage, plus there were a few mass event coverage opportunities that I was looking for.

What about you?
 
Powdermonkey said:
Ooh, interesting. Good to know now I suppose.

My top spot had good vibes. I seemed to mesh with the faculty there. I really liked the way the program was set up. They have a few RMSK faculty which is important to me, they have some pretty solid team oppotunities/D1 coverage, plus there were a few mass event coverage opportunities that I was looking for.

What about you?
Click to expand...
Im a big coverage heavy guy and the program that I personally love have a ton of variety. HS, D1(respectable but not the BIG BIG football schools, but respected in other sports), 1-2 pro teams that the fellows can tag a long but not as important. That variety to me is whats most important because thats what I want to do in the future. Yes I know US is important but I think once I get the basics down and just grind at it at home or on the side itll catch up. Plus the faculty seems crazy supportive so I love that. (my random two cents that i interjected into lol my b)
 
sm2024 said:
Im a big coverage heavy guy and the program that I personally love have a ton of variety. HS, D1(respectable but not the BIG BIG football schools, but respected in other sports), 1-2 pro teams that the fellows can tag a long but not as important. That variety to me is whats most important because thats what I want to do in the future. Yes I know US is important but I think once I get the basics down and just grind at it at home or on the side itll catch up. Plus the faculty seems crazy supportive so I love that. (my random two cents that i interjected into lol my b)
Click to expand...
I feel like my top few programs have a similar feel to this as well. If I end up at a place without an US to use at home I think I'm going to get one so that I can practice at home, too.
 
For fellowship match, do they send out a "Congratulations, you've matched!" email a week prior to match day, similar to residency match? Or do you simply find out the day of?
 
so i saw a few people put their rank list already on the reddit sheet. Honestly most prob gonna do it to see where everyone may head into next year not really trying to look like a gunner or anything lol
 
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