I'm a third-year medical student with the aspiration of becoming a surgical oncologist. Would you happen to know any general surgery programs that consistently put their residents into surgical oncology? I'm an osteopathic student with strong board scores, honors in general surgery, at least one strong letter of recommendation and will hopefully be participating in a two month research fellowship at the beginning of my fourth-year. I am hoping to get into a strong academic program, but would opt for a program that has an emphasis on surg onc or an reputation for sending graduates to SSO fellowships.
Most any average program, even community ones, have sent people to Surg Onc training. I doubt you will find one that "consistently" puts residents into Surg Onc because there are so many different types of fellowships and Surg Onc isn't necessarily one of the "favs". Also its hard to know how to read the data...would you rank a program that had never sent someone to a Surg Onc fellowship if you knew that no one there had ever been interested or applied? As a medical student, I wouldn't worry about it...look for a program which will give you research time and will otherwise make you happy. Fellowship applications are 4+ years away (at least) for you; a lot of water to run under the bridge between now and then.
Also, if a program is not recognized by the SSO does this weaken the trainees training and/or marketability?
I think its not as desirable. Currently there isn't a board in Surg Onc and when I applied for hospital credentials and to get on insurance plans, no one really cared about my SSO certificates, they just wanted to see the one from my program. However, there may be a board in the future; it remains to be seen who will be grandfathered in and if that will include people who did not do an SSO approved fellowship. Going to an SSO approved fellowship does have some benefits in that you are more "in the loop"; you get info about conferences, etc. that are sent to all "official" fellows, tend to meet the others more readily than those who are not...at least in my experience.
Programs that are approved or official SSO fellowships have not all necessarily been accredited by the SSO; the process is currently on-going to do site visits for all that are on the list. Accreditation by the SSO is fine but its really more about whether the program can check off a number of items on the SSO requirements. The foundation is there but the quality of training is independent of SSO approval.
As for marketability, I haven't seen any jobs which specify "SSO fellowship grad" but rather simply "completion of Surgical Oncology fellowship", so I don't think it matters. OTOH, as I alluded to above, doing an SSO fellowship probably opens more doors simply because of connections, meeting people, etc.
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