Wife is a year below me - should I apply to residency in large cities?

[tdod]

She's a year below me and we want to make sure she can come to the same city as me. She will do either pathology or internal medicine. I'm applying EM. I'm wondering what the best strategy is.


On one hand, large cities gives us more programs for her to apply to. On the other hand, I wonder if places like New York are highly competitive? Part of me thinks that if I match into an uncompetitive location (i.e. Birmingham) then she could do a away rotations there and have an extremely high chance of matching wherever she does an away.

Thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

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[GoSpursGo]

Naturally, it totally depends on what specialty you're hoping for and the prospects in those cities. In general, yes, a big city would have plenty of IM options.

Would taking a research year and couples matching make any sense for you two?

 

[tdod]

Naturally, it totally depends on what specialty you're hoping for and the prospects in those cities. In general, yes, a big city would have plenty of IM options.

Would taking a research year and couples matching make any sense for you two?

Burning a year is not an option for me, so we have to make the current situation work. She's IM or Path and I'm EM.

 

[GoSpursGo]

Burning a year is not an option for me, so we have to make the current situation work. She's IM or Path and I'm EM.

Then yeah, aiming for a big city with multiple program options for her is you’re best bet

 

[Raryn]

Have you tried asking your wife where she would prefer to live?

(But yes - cities with more programs are obviously better, but if your spouse says she'd never want to live in NYC, I probably wouldn't prioritize it...)