Originally posted by xaelia
I don't believe that is true. Certainly a California medical school graduate has some measure of advantage getting a California residency position based on simple familiarity, but it's not prohibitive for folks from out-of-state to obtain a residency in California.
Any school that you go to will give it's students a huge home court advantage. 35% of USC students went to USC, with another 88% ending up in california or in a top field (Ortho, ophtho, ENT, Derm, Urology) out of state. That's a HUGE advantage. (23 out of 160 ended up going out of state in any specialty)
But using the numbers that I know of for cali residencies (44 for ortho, 24 for derm, 19 for Urology), this past year USC filled the California spots for : 4/24 derm residencies (17%), 5/44 Ortho's (11%), and 6/19 Urologies (~31%).
Reference Assuming Stanford, UCLA, UCSF, and UCSD did as good or better than us, there are not many spots left for out of staters. And you are competing against a HUGE number of people from california who left and is trying to get back.
Last year, 822 california residents went to in state schools. 1,112 students went to school out of state.
Reference If there are a 1000 residency positions available in california (Couldn't find data for that), and 80% of californian's stay in california, then there are 340 spots left for the 1,112 californian's plus all the other students not from california that want to end up here (with the great weather and the 250K cap on pain and suffering makes it one of the best places for physicians) (and remember, a lot of those 1,112 end up coming from Ivy leagues)
So coparing the two different schools, it would be a lot harder to get a california residency from Ohio State than from USC. There are specialties like Family medicine, Pathology, and Peds where the competition isn't that bad, and USC wouldn't give you any advantage over Ohio state.
