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Hi all,

I’m a 4th year student applying for internships. Im interested in surgery, neurology, and comp med/lab animal.

I keep being drawn to surgery as a specialty as it would offer the most opportunity (and I enjoy surgery) - I would be able to do neurologic surgeries in addition to other body systems.

My question is how truly competitive are the surgery residencies? It seems as though many people do multiple internships (rotating, then specialty). I am happy to do 2 internships, but I’d rather not spend 4+ years as an intern before residency. I am finishing in the top 15% of my class. I am on one publication as an auxiliary author, though from my understanding a first authorship would be more ideal.

If i completed a rotating internship then surgical internship, would it hamper my application for another specialty if surgery doesn’t work out? There are surgical aspects to other specialties like neuro, but it is an internal med specialty at heart. Lab animal may have surgery involved if you're at the right location/company, but from my understanding these can be few and far between/you act as consult or training for researchers performing their own. If anyone has lab animal experience with a decent amount of surgery involved I'd love to hear more.

thank you!

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Hi all,

I’m a 4th year student applying for internships. Im interested in surgery, neurology, and comp med/lab animal.

I keep being drawn to surgery as a specialty as it would offer the most opportunity (and I enjoy surgery) - I would be able to do neurologic surgeries in addition to other body systems.

My question is how truly competitive are the surgery residencies? It seems as though many people do multiple internships (rotating, then specialty). I am happy to do 2 internships, but I’d rather not spend 3-4 years as an intern before residency. I am finishing 22nd in my class, in the top 15%. I am on one publication as third author, though from my understanding a first authorship would be more ideal.

If i completed a rotating internship then surgical internship, would it hamper my application for another specialty if surgery doesn’t work out? There are surgical aspects to other specialties like neuro, but it is an internal med specialty at heart. Lab animal may have surgery involved if you're at the right location/company, but from my understanding these can be few and far between/you act as consult or training for researchers performing their own. If anyone has lab animal experience with a decent amount of surgery involved I'd love to hear more.

thank you!
Lab animal can be hit or miss as far as how much surgery you'll get to perform and a lot of it just depends on the culture of where you end up. I've been at places where the lab animal vets essentially did no surgery. Some places only the vets will do surgery (especially for USDA covered species). There are positions where they are specifically looking for surgeons in the lab animal world to do model development or implant placement etc. They exist, but I don't know that someone with only rotating internships under their belt would be very competitive for those positions. Lab animal residency programs also may (not necessarily frown) but look sideways at someone with multiple internships in another field under their belt unless they have a good story/reason for why they are pursuing the route they are. Honestly we can chat more about it in PM if you're interested, I know a few lab animal vets who basically spend 100% of their working time doing/planning/managing surgery.
 
Lab animal can be hit or miss as far as how much surgery you'll get to perform and a lot of it just depends on the culture of where you end up. I've been at places where the lab animal vets essentially did no surgery. Some places only the vets will do surgery (especially for USDA covered species). There are positions where they are specifically looking for surgeons in the lab animal world to do model development or implant placement etc. They exist, but I don't know that someone with only rotating internships under their belt would be very competitive for those positions. Lab animal residency programs also may (not necessarily frown) but look sideways at someone with multiple internships in another field under their belt unless they have a good story/reason for why they are pursuing the route they are. Honestly we can chat more about it in PM if you're interested, I know a few lab animal vets who basically spend 100% of their working time doing/planning/managing surgery.


Hi, thanks for the insight! I will PM you for more info for sure :)
 
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Thanks for tagging @JaynaAli!

Surgery residencies (especially in academia) are very competitive, and even more competitive now than they were when I applied in 2016. Having said that, it is still possible to match to a residency straight out of a rotating internship. Myself and my same-year residentmate both only completed rotating internships before matching. I would go into the match with the expectation to do at least 1 surgery internship, and then you can be pleasantly surprised if you do not need to do one. I do know several people who have completed a rotating and 2-4 surgery internships before matching to a residency. You have a good class rank and it's great that you have research/publication experience already, both of those will only benefit you when it comes to evaluating candidates. It is possible to match to another specialty even after completing surgery internships, but it will be more difficult to convince residency committees that you are passionate/committed about that other field. Feel free to PM me if you have more questions about surgery.
 
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My question is how truly competitive are the surgery residencies?

Pretty damn competitive. How's that for a precise answer? :)

While there are a lot of approved ACVS residencies, there are also a lot of folks that want to be surgeons. It's a matter of numbers. It looks like your academics are competitive so I would focus on doing a great job on your internship. Performance during an internship(s) is a big factor in getting a residency.

There are surgical aspects to other specialties like neuro, but it is an internal med specialty at heart.

Yeah ... no. And I say that as a neurologist who has trained 10+ neurology residents. But I do agree with your main point. If you don't have a burning desire to be a neurologist, a neurology residency is probably not for you.

Finally, I would say see how things go with your internship. I would say up to 50% of interns switch their focus of interest at some point in their internship.
 
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Hi all,

I’m a 4th year student applying for internships. Im interested in surgery, neurology, and comp med/lab animal.

I keep being drawn to surgery as a specialty as it would offer the most opportunity (and I enjoy surgery) - I would be able to do neurologic surgeries in addition to other body systems.

My question is how truly competitive are the surgery residencies? It seems as though many people do multiple internships (rotating, then specialty). I am happy to do 2 internships, but I’d rather not spend 4+ years as an intern before residency. I am finishing in the top 15% of my class. I am on one publication as an auxiliary author, though from my understanding a first authorship would be more ideal.

If i completed a rotating internship then surgical internship, would it hamper my application for another specialty if surgery doesn’t work out? There are surgical aspects to other specialties like neuro, but it is an internal med specialty at heart. Lab animal may have surgery involved if you're at the right location/company, but from my understanding these can be few and far between/you act as consult or training for researchers performing their own. If anyone has lab animal experience with a decent amount of surgery involved I'd love to hear more.

thank you!
I agree with others that you should see how the rotating internship goes if you are not yet certain which of those paths you want to pursue. Try and be involved in the scheduling of your rotations, as they may be able to place your surgery and neurology rotations earlier in your internship so you can experience them before the next VIRMP application cycle.

To answer the second part of your question, I do not think it will hamper your application for another specialty IF you can explain honestly why you've taken this trajectory. In fact, if you are in your rotating internship and are not sure what residency to pursue, applying only to specialty internships in surgery (for example) is a very good way to get more surgical experience and find out whether that truly is what you want to do, before you commit to a residency. There's no shame in saying "I felt I could benefit from more experience before deciding which path I wanted to take".

The specialties you've listed have some things in common but are fundamentally different, so if you do not have a straightforward path, people will probably ask about it - because they are curious and because they want to make sure you truly want to pursue that specialty before they admit you into a residency program. Just discuss the commonalities between the specialties that drew you towards them both and ultimately why you decided that one was the right fit for you. If you can give a good explanation, it probably won't hurt you (and could actually make you stand out to have a bit of diverse experience).
 
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