Just curious what criteria y'all are using? I know their research is top-notch but Stanford's psych residency program is much smaller than the other 2 and it seems like their patient population is more restricted? or am I wrong? I am curious to know what have people heard from their PDs about this program?
You can't go wrong with most of the "big names" that people are throwing around on SDN. It depends on what you are looking for in a program. No, really --
it really does depend on what you are looking for. There is a fairly large econometric literature on rankings and such. Unfortunately, no matter how much the econometrically aware do their part to chip away at this rankings crap, we just can't seem to dispel the US News & World Report mystique. It's like hammering gophers with a mallet. An op-ed that Austan Goolsbee wrote in the NYT a few years ago pretty much sums it up. I posted the full text in another forum:
"How Rankings Rate", NYT 4/12/04.
As far as Stanford is concerned, I wasn't that impressed when I interviewed there. (For a different take, click
here for a post-interview day review by
nortomaso.) The hallways of the psychiatry building were adorned with full-size posters reproduced from the U.S. News and World Report rank list with Stanford's #8 ranking highlighted in bright yellow. Those were kind of annoying. But mostly it came down to a gut feeling that this wasn't the place for me.
That being said, it is true that the patient population at Stanford Hospital may have a narrower distribution compared to other programs. The strength of programs like UW and UCSF is that there is a diversity of site locations -- university hospital, county hospital, VA, and children's. From what I recall from my Stanford interview, your inpatient psychiatry experience is basically Stanford Hospital and the Palo Alto VA (which is the most beautiful VA building I have ever seen). For an outpatient community psych experience, I think you can do some stuff with the county, but on its face I would say it pales in comparison to the exposure at UW and UCSF. (Someone on this board might have a different opinion.)
However, if you have other good reasons for wanting to go to Stanford, the R3 & R4 curriculum seems to be flexible enough that there's no reason why you couldn't tailor your education to fit your interests. Certainly you could do inpatient or psych ER electives at SFGH, or you could locate a community psych supervisor in the city, etc. It seems like a supportive enough environment that, if you were not content with what was pre-arranged for you, you could certainly take steps to change it for yourself.
And lastly, FWIW: one of my attendings had a friend during residency who transferred to Stanford's psychiatry residency, and per my attending [loosely paraphrased] "
she wasn't the strongest resident in our program. She transferred to Stanford because she thought she might be happier there. When I spoke with her a few months after she transferred, she wasn't particularly much happier there -- but I do remember her saying that compared to the other residents she thought she was 'pretty strong'." I don't know if that is indicative of the strength of my attending's residency program or whether that is indicative of the deficiencies of the Stanford residents. (My attending had recently completed residency training so I think this could be taken as a current comparison.) Again, take it FWIW (N=1).
Cheers
-AT.
