Tier difficulty

[Greenberg702]

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He's an attending gastrointestinal surgical oncologist at a very prestigious academic program. Not sure where the "Derm" comes from.

Lol good one. What field is law2doc in?

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

Lol I never knew. What field is law2doc in?

Probably a US Senator.

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

Huh, perhaps a bit too much detail there. I think I know who he is.

I was joking.

 

[mcloaf]

Huh, perhaps a bit too much detail there. I think I know who he is.

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

Because there's a guy that fits that profile, and you've possibly alluded to him in previous posts. But w/e. It would have been better if you had just not bothered answering my original question, since your "joke" wasn't clear and I wasn't looking for one.

Sorry.

 

[KanyeWes]

There are no tiers, per se, in med schools. That's a College thing. However "prestige" is thought to closely track research dollars, so those schools higher up on the US News research ranking are thought of by premeds as more prestigious. As a Med student, it may mean better resources, particularly if you hope to do some research. It may mean your school attracts the faculty whose name is on the text book. I'd say networking aspects are actually a wash because the big name guys are often too busy to pick up the phone and try to help med students the way smaller school faculty might. So resources is the biggie, and mostly only if you plan to do high end research.

But no, these schools won't be "more difficult" or present "more challenging curriculum". It's going to be very similar everywhere. Your level of competition might be a bit harder at a top ranked place than a Mid ranked place but barely -- is there really that big a difference competing with tge guy that got a 3.8 in college compared to a 3.6?

Will it help you match well? SDN pre-allo sure likes to think so, but PDs get surveyed regularly and never put this toward the top of things they consider. I know from my own experience on such committees this wasn't really ever a driving factor compared to other things, but again that's an n=1 argument.

is the difference in opinion between you and dermvisor, mostly dependent on different specialties (I am assuming @Law2Doc is a dermatologist.

 

[aegistitan]

Why does the academic prestige of the programs matched matter all that much? And what about schools that simply don't have a lot of students applying to prestigious residencies to begin with because they just happen to not float their boat?

I just feel like match lists are such an arbitrary thing to go by. The sort of people who go to Harvard are already the type that are likely prestige-oriented, thus they apply to residencies they perceive to be prestigious. Later on in their career they work for these prestigious residencies and bring on students from institutions they perceive to be prestigious due to their preexisting obsession with prestige. It's just a big, meaningless circlejerk imo.

I'm just a premed, so please excuse my ignorance. But I would think that the academic prestige of an IM program would matter because those residents would then need to compete with one another again to pursue cardiology, GI, etc. To my understanding, academic prestige also matters if you want to go into an academic career. If this is the case, does that mean that for those who just want to pursue a ROAD specialty, where subspecialization is not necessarily required, wouldn't those medical students not necessarily care where they match as long as they match into an accredited program?

 

[SouthernSurgeon]

I'm just a premed, so please excuse my ignorance. But I would think that the academic prestige of an IM program would matter because those residents would then need to compete with one another again to pursue cardiology, GI, etc. To my understanding, academic prestige also matters if you want to go into an academic career. If this is the case, does that mean that for those who just want to pursue a ROAD specialty, where subspecialization is not necessarily required, wouldn't those medical students not necessarily care where they match as long as they match into an accredited program?

I mean to some degree peoples' desires do vary from field to field. I feel like my anesthesia friends who are residents at the same hospital are much more of the mindset that they just want to get a job and get to work. They are also more likely to have come from schools in the same region. Whereas my surgery program is very academic, so we are all in the mindset of pursuing prestigious fellowships and academic jobs, and our residents come from all over the country.

But overall, I think the desire for academic prestige is just the dog chasing its tail. We're told it's important to go to the best med school possible. Then our med school tells us how lucky and special we are to be training there and being the future leaders of healthcare blah blah blah. Then we go to apply for residency and the only real metric we are given for the quality of a program is its academic/research prestige. It's all just an endless chase, but because students have a very sheltered view they don't know how else to look at it.

 

[Law2Doc]

I'm just a premed, so please excuse my ignorance. But I would think that the academic prestige of an IM program would matter because those residents would then need to compete with one another again to pursue cardiology, GI, etc. To my understanding, academic prestige also matters if you want to go into an academic career. If this is the case, does that mean that for those who just want to pursue a ROAD specialty, where subspecialization is not necessarily required, wouldn't those medical students not necessarily care where they match as long as they match into an accredited program?

Well, many specialties besides IM have fellowships, and many paths in non-IM careers (academic or not) leverage your residency experience and connections pretty significantly. So you will never meet anyone with the view that having some choice of residencies wouldn't matter. It does for everyone. for your post residency jobs more than earlier, your attendings willingness to pick up the phone on your behalf may matter a great deal. I think for a lot of people on the nonacademic path at the residency level it's more about whether their residency is well regarded in the region they want to practice than "prestige". You want to be at the place with the reputation for good training and technical skills, here you see and do a lot, and get exposure to clinician, etc.

But I think regardless of which side you come down on in the above discussion of prestige at the med school level, the prestige discussion for the residency level is really apples and oranges. And certainly not something that should be of great focus for anyone yet to have taken Step 1. And even then you won't find. Useful ranking of residencies in each specialty -- you have to sit down with a Mentor who is plugged into that field and get the word of mouth. These are all relatively small communities in which all the players know each other and go to the sane meetings; everyone knows which programs are up and comers, which have lost their luster, which are in tranition/turmoil, which are known to be malignant, and which are highly regarded. Nobody is going to try to parse this out in a match list and honestly the only people who spend much time with such lists are premeds.

 

[ChocolateShogun]

I'm guessing it may be more networking opportunities. Like the saying goes "It's not what you know, but who you know."

As a 4th year medical student, gearing up for the match, at a top 20 institution I can more or less assure you guys that networking is much less important than our comrades in business or law. As some other people have said on here going to a top institution can give you access to bigger names that can write you better LORs but knowing a few extra people at other institutions is a drop in the bucket when you're applying to 40+ for residency.

I would definitely say that the name of your school carries a ton of weight. If you look at the residency classes at top institutions (for me, going into orthopaedics), they're predominantly from top medical schools with a few randoms interspersed. There are always exceptions. I also agree that there is a bias at play that top students go to top medical schools go to top residencies. If you are a good test taker and score well on the MCAT you will probably score well on Step 1, etc.

Resources also matter a ton. If you go to a community institution you'd have to claw your way through charts to find any meaningful data to write a paper, for example. In contrast, at top schools you can find yourself paired with MDs who devote a significant chunk of their time to research and pump out papers like a machine. I was able to ride this kind of wave to two first author publications in good journals. I couldn't have done that at a smaller, less well known school.

Anyway, enough of my soapbox.

 

[mednerd1234]

As a 4th year medical student, gearing up for the match, at a top 20 institution I can more or less assure you guys that networking is much less important than our comrades in business or law. As some other people have said on here going to a top institution can give you access to bigger names that can write you better LORs but knowing a few extra people at other institutions is a drop in the bucket when you're applying to 40+ for residency.

I would definitely say that the name of your school carries a ton of weight. If you look at the residency classes at top institutions (for me, going into orthopaedics), they're predominantly from top medical schools with a few randoms interspersed. There are always exceptions. I also agree that there is a bias at play that top students go to top medical schools go to top residencies. If you are a good test taker and score well on the MCAT you will probably score well on Step 1, etc.

Resources also matter a ton. If you go to a community institution you'd have to claw your way through charts to find any meaningful data to write a paper, for example. In contrast, at top schools you can find yourself paired with MDs who devote a significant chunk of their time to research and pump out papers like a machine. I was able to ride this kind of wave to two first author publications in good journals. I couldn't have done that at a smaller, less well known school.

Anyway, enough of my soapbox.

Sounds like great advice, thanks!

 

[Mad Jack]

Because there's a guy that fits that profile, and you've possibly alluded to him in previous posts. But w/e. It would have been better if you had just not bothered answering my original question, since your "joke" wasn't clear and I wasn't looking for one.

I don't think you understand how the Internet works. It's like an evil genie that twists your requests unto whatever the hell it wants, regardless of your feelings on the matter, for its own amusement.

 

[SouthernSurgeon]

As a 4th year medical student, gearing up for the match, at a top 20 institution I can more or less assure you guys that networking is much less important than our comrades in business or law. As some other people have said on here going to a top institution can give you access to bigger names that can write you better LORs but knowing a few extra people at other institutions is a drop in the bucket when you're applying to 40+ for residency.

I don't know that that is entirely true.

The networking often happens behind the scenes, especially in small fields like ortho or other surgical specialties.

I know from experience that the PD at my med school was contacted by several programs post-interview to get his impression of me.

Or for example at the annual general surgery meeting - there is a reception for medical students to meet PDs. It's like a feeding tank with overeager IMGs running around with copies of their CVs trying to get a PDs attention.

In contrast, our students were personally introduced to the relevant PDs in private settings. And several of them were taken to the Hopkins and MGH receptions with our faculty who are alums of those programs to meet more people.

How much does that help? I don't know. But I'm just throwing out there that this stuff happens.