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this might be a dumb question but what's considered a good fellowship match for residencies? ratio of cards/gi matches? caliber of fellowship programs that residents get into?
I agree with poopybutt that your future program should match people into the specialty you want. However, there is a detriment to having A LOT of people match into the specialty you want. If there are tons of people from your program matching into a single specialty that you want, you are going to also be competing with these people for interviews at the same programs. My former residency traditionally sends 15-20 people into cards each year. I didn't get interviews at a few programs because all of those people applied to the same programs. Programs don't want to just fill their program with guys from one residency.
Holy cow - how big was your program???
I think we had about 36 my year. It has gone up since the program hour changes to ~40.
And you send half to cards? That's wild.
A good fellowship match is a program that has a track record to get you where you want to be. This is super subjective and depends on so much like interest in an academic med career, location, prestige, interest in private practice or track record for placing people into certain fields. Some match lists as stated above, were very misleading. I'd notice on my interview day the program would have a few solid matches but on second look those residents were either MD/PhDs, chiefs or came from that institution for medical/undergraduate. If your considering a very competitive fellowship (GI cards) or moderately competitive fellowship (allergy, heme/onc or pulm/crit care), I would specifically ask during your interview where people placed and how many didn't match that year. If you meet senior residents who are not going into fellowship right after residency but plan to try to determine why. Finally, if you are dead set on a certain field try to attend a program that takes a ton of their own into fellowship. Matching at your home institution is always your best chance at matching. Best of luck.
Just a point... Simply because people take a year off between fellowship and residency does not mean there's something wrong with the program or their fellowship match. We had a number of folks do that this past year. The reasons were varied - we had a busy residency and they wanted a year to recuperate, they need to save up money, they want to keep in sync with a spouse in another residency, they want to see if they like hospitalist medicine prior to doing fellowship, etc. All of the people who did that the year prior matched their top 1-3 fellowship in multiple competitive fields.
This is becoming more prevalent and I think more accepted. So this alone should NOT be a detractor.