What does it take to be psych resident?

[Benzo4every1]

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I have a friend whos interested in doing psychiatry. Her step 1 was upper 180s. She wants to know how competitive psychiatry is and what she should do to increase her chance of matching into a psychiatry residency?
She is in an allopathic medical school and is a current third year medical student. Please help
Thanks.
Benzo 😀

 

[Hurricane]

Heh, your avatar is cool. I get mesmerized watching it dance...

Anyway, pysch is one of the less competitive specialties. There are more detailed answers to your questions in the Psychiatry FAQ topic.

 

[Benzo4every1]

Heh, your avatar is cool. I get mesmerized watching it dance...

Anyway, pysch is one of the less competitive specialties. There are more detailed answers to your questions in the Psychiatry FAQ topic.

LOL You just want a benzo 😉 She is a registered user too here, but wanted me to ask the question for her. Go figure. I told her repeatedly that psychiatry is amongst the not so competitive residency along with medicine and peds but shes worried about not matching. I told her to just do well on step 2... I did read partially the faq, but it was geared toward more premed...

 

[pschmom1]

Heh, your avatar is cool. I get mesmerized watching it dance...

Anyway, pysch is one of the less competitive specialties. There are more detailed answers to your questions in the Psychiatry FAQ topic.

Hurricane, I like your avitar, but your cat looks pissed!

 

[Hurricane]

Hurricane, I like your avitar, but your cat looks pissed!

He is perpetually pissed

 

[Triathlon]

I know, lets rename this thread "avatars, how cool is yours?"



I must say I like the pill!

 

[Quijotemd]

I agree, we should get everyone to jump on and compare avatars. The animated one above is excellent; I feel like I am about to be hypnotized every time I look at it!

 

[OldPsychDoc]

I agree, we should get everyone to jump on and compare avatars. The animated one above is excellent; I feel like I am about to be hypnotized every time I look at it!

We've already got "dueling baby pictures" in another thread.

 

[Benzo4every1]

yall be threadjacking.

 

[Anasazi23]

I have a friend whos interested in doing psychiatry. Her step 1 was upper 180s. She wants to know how competitive psychiatry is and what she should do to increase her chance of matching into a psychiatry residency?
She is in an allopathic medical school and is a current third year medical student. Please help
Thanks.
Benzo 😀

1. Honor your psych rotations
2. Do a psych sub-I. Try to honor it
3. Get decent USMLE scores
4. Get very good letters
5. Try to publish something or do psych related research
6. Write a good PS
7. Don't screw up the interview. It's important in psychiatry

Even though psych applications have been increasing, it's still a relatively good buyer's market.

 

[Benzo4every1]

1. Honor your psych rotations
2. Do a psych sub-I. Try to honor it
3. Get decent USMLE scores
4. Get very good letters
5. Try to publish something or do psych related research
6. Write a good PS
7. Don't screw up the interview. It's important in psychiatry

Even though psych applications have been increasing, it's still a relatively good buyer's market.

What if she failed the shelf? 🙁 Does the psych sub-I really hold true as far as helping her further her application? I mean, I did my AI in internal medicine, but Im going into internal medicine, so it's reasonable. Can't she do her sub-I in something else instead? All reasonable. Will email these recommendations to her. Thanks ana.

 

[Anasazi23]

What if she failed the shelf? 🙁 Does the psych sub-I really hold true as far as helping her further her application? I mean, I did my AI in internal medicine, but Im going into internal medicine, so it's reasonable. Can't she do her sub-I in something else instead? All reasonable. Will email these recommendations to her. Thanks ana.

Of course, you CAN do your sub-I in whatever you want. It's just that the sub-I allows attendings in your chosen field to see how you operate as close to a medical intern as possible - the logical hope is that a glowing letter recounting your noble deeds and great knowledge base is obtained at the end.

Failed the psych shelf when she wants to do psychiatry? 😕 Not a great sign.
She isn't the first, and certainly won't be the last. The psych shelf is a lot harder than people think. It sneaks up and smacks people that think they know all of medicine...not unlike Step III. People might blow it off thinking they know it all already. In the case of psychiatry, there's a lot of pharmacology and medical interaction stuff, and peds stuff that many med students didn't get exposure to in their rotation - so they fail it.

 

[Roz]

were psych applications up or down this year?

 

[Hurricane]

What if she failed the shelf? 🙁 Does the psych sub-I really hold true as far as helping her further her application? I mean, I did my AI in internal medicine, but Im going into internal medicine, so it's reasonable. Can't she do her sub-I in something else instead? All reasonable. Will email these recommendations to her. Thanks ana.

I guess it depends on your school exactly how you do it. But you need to do at least 1-2 psych rotations early in your 4th year that will result in letters of recommendation. Most programs will want 1-2 psych letters and a non-psych letter. At our school, we are required to do 2 AIs (aka sub-Is) in IM, so I did one early enough to get a letter from one of the IM faculty. (Although in the end I felt squicky about that attending and ended up using a letter from my 3rd year IM attending. No shame in that.) Beyond that some specialties have their own AIs that you can do on top of that. Psych doesn't have formal AI/sub-Is here, so I did an elective in inpatient child psych early in my 4th year which kinda served as an AI. I also did a month with one of the clinical research groups in the psych dept. Those rotations were the source of my 2 psych letters of recommendation.

If your friend didn't honor in her 3rd year psych clerkship, it's not the end of the world, but she should be prepared for interviewers to bring it up.

were psych applications up or down this year?

I think they were slightly up.

 

[Doc Samson]

What if she failed the shelf? 🙁 Does the psych sub-I really hold true as far as helping her further her application? I mean, I did my AI in internal medicine, but Im going into internal medicine, so it's reasonable. Can't she do her sub-I in something else instead? All reasonable. Will email these recommendations to her. Thanks ana.

Honestly, it might depend on your medical school, and the types of residency programs she's interested in. If she's coming from a "lower tier" medical school (and I honestly believe that there's no such thing), the failing the shelf may be enough to exclude her on the first pass that very selective (northeast and west coast) residencies make through the applicants before deciding who to offer an interview to. Possibly worse than that is is you're at an "upper tier" (again, no such thing) medical school where everyone and their dog honors every rotation (Harvard, NYU, UNC all big offenders here). In that case she might make it to the interview, but when we see someone from a "cush" program not doing well on their core rotation and shelf, it always raises a lot of questions.

 

[psych2b]

Possibly worse than that is is you're at an "upper tier" (again, no such thing) medical school where everyone and their dog honors every rotation (Harvard, NYU, UNC all big offenders here).

uh, i guess i'm less than a "dog" - since I'm at UNC and only honored one rotation (internal medicine) - even an 89 on the psych shelf with pretty good evals didn't net me an "honors" in psych b/c many classmates managed 95 and above... um, i'd say "woof" but i'm obviously less than that. 😉

FYI, i'm not sure if other schools are like this, but we have pretty strict cut-offs for only the top 25-30% (depending on the rotation) receiving "honors" for any rotation. but maybe that's cushy compared to other schools. 🙂

 

[psych2b]

.If your friend didn't honor in her 3rd year psych clerkship, it's not the end of the world, but she should be prepared for interviewers to bring it up.

um, honestly, no one asked me about not honoring psych (ok i did fine on the shelf)

 

[Doc Samson]

.
FYI, i'm not sure if other schools are like this, but we have pretty strict cut-offs for only the top 25-30% (depending on the rotation) receiving "honors" for any rotation. but maybe that's cushy compared to other schools. 🙂

When you're being compared to schools that limit honors to the top 10-15% (the majority of places out there), it does look "cush" when a third of a class can honor a rotation. Ultimately, I'm not sure it's worth all that much, but admission committees (well, ours at least) do talk about "easy honors."