Been doing quite a bit of reading on the subject of residencies. I’m hearing some conflicting information in regards to the competativeness of surgical residencies and was hoping to get the scoop from you med students since I’m sure you talk about this stuff all the time. I understand that last year many surgical residencies went unfilled, and schools had to recruit/accept from overseas med schools to fill the spots.
Read last paragraph on page 3…
http://www.facs.org/fellows_info/bulletin/…/zinner0302.pdf
So what’s the story? How hard is it to match into surgery?
Unfortunately it is difficult to answer the question “How hard is it to match into (fill in specialty here)?” It is similar to the question of “How hard is it to get into medical school?” It all depends on the applicant and the choice of schools/programs.
Some residency programs will always be competitive no matter how hot or cold the field is in a particular year. General surgery wasn’t hot last year. But that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a line of people trying to match to Mass General or UCLA. And just because the match didn’t fill last year doesn’t entirely mean that the field is not competitive. Certainly there were American grads that ranked General Surgery but did not match. And if you are just starting out, it may be impossible to gauge what the environment will be like in 4 or 5 years. Others here can probably offer better advice than I can.
Hi Jason,
I think there are some east coast residencies which tend to be filled with more foreign medical grads. Most often, these are people who were practicing surgeons in their own country who are seeking to become surgeons in the US, which often requires re-doing your residency here.
Some malignant university programs have not filled in the past few years as well due to word of mouth spread re: their poor treatment of residents. For instance, six people in my class went into general surgery, but none of us ranked our own university - which failed to fill that year.
The surgery program I'm graduating from is a small community based program in the midwest - not exactly a hotbed of competitiveness, I'm sure. I sit on the resident selection committe every year, and our applicants are typically in the top quartile in the nation in terms of board scores, honors, AOA, etc. We rank about 20 people each year (and choose not to interview many more than that), and we've always gotten our top three or four choices. Most of our incoming interns have board scores in the 240 range.
On the other hand, the local 'prestigious' university program down the road from us failed to fill last year. Bad reputation for abusing their folks.
So, I keep reading about how surgery is becoming less competitive, etc., but that sure hasn't been my personal experience. Maybe it's different in other parts of the country, I don't know…
Regards!
| QUOTE (JNormandin @ Sep 18 2002, 06:05 PM) |
| Been doing quite a bit of reading on the subject of residencies. I'm hearing some conflicting information in regards to the competativeness of surgical residencies and was hoping to get the scoop from you med students since I'm sure you talk about this stuff all the time. I understand that last year many surgical residencies went unfilled, and schools had to recruit/accept from overseas med schools to fill the spots. Read last paragraph on page 3... http://www.facs.org/fellows_info/bulletin/.../zinner0302.pdf So what's the story? How hard is it to match into surgery? |
Hi there,
As someone who scrambled into a very good General Surgery residency, I can tell you that categorical positions in good General Surgery residency programs are very competitive. My program does not accept FMGs as categoricals or designated prelimanary residents. While applications are down in General Surgery, matching into a categorical slot in a good program is still not a "sure thing" for an american grad. My residency director left positions unfilled rather than fill them with people that he deemed unqualified. While that meant that as an intern, I have ended up covering several services for night call, it does mean that the quality of my residency program will remain fairly high.
As the new restricted hours go into effect for next year's incoming residents, my program is looking at extending the length of the residency in order to make sure that we get enough cases under the 84-hour per week rule. Most of the residents in this program spend more than 100 hours per week in the hospital. Our chief resident on the pediatric surgery service logs the most hours at over 130 and most of us are around 120. It is going to be interesting to see how the restricted hours will affect our work. Many surgical cases just take hours to complete.
If you are an American graduate with decent board scores (above 200) and decent academics (finish in the top 1/2 of your med school class) you will be able to get into a general surgery residency somewhere. The top programs still require top performers so don't the number of unfilled positions in a program lull you into thinking that the program is easy to match into or malignant. Good luck!
Natalie