Med students can borrow extra via Grad Plus loans during their 4th year to pay for interview travel. Some schools offer special “residency interview loans” to their students. There are no grants to pay for interview travel, though some residency programs do pay for meals and hotels during interviews.
And however bad the current system sounds, it’s so much better than the old free-for-all it used to be where who you knew was more important than what you’d achieved (the old boy network) and students had to apply to each residency program separately.
There are all sorts of extra, hidden costs in med school. Registering for a USMLE exam is $1000. (Allopathic med student take 3 of them. Osteopathic med students may take 6 of them-- 3 USMLEs and 3 COMLEX.) Step 2CS exams are only held in 5 cities (Atlanta, Philadelphia, Houston, Chicago, and Los Angeles)–so taking it requires traveling and a hotel. Many clinical rotations are not done at the med school’s hospital so require transportation to and from the clinical sites. Some clinical sites are so distant from the med school they require a temporary relocation to another area for 4-8 weeks.
Wow–sounds like a very complicated and expensive process to navigate @WayOutWestMom! Thanks for the description. Our relative was lucky D bought a pull out sofa and left her spend a month I. His living room when she was doing a rotation in DC. She did swap her SF rental with other students doing rotations as well, but it sounded quite complicated.
This is so interesting! I remember a college friend asking me if her husband could crash on my couch years ago when he was applying to residencies and now I know why!
I also have been in a local hospital a bit with an aging parent and have noticed med students during rounds from several different med schools in the region - I always wonder how they end up in a suburban hospital when they are going to school in the city. It must be an all encompassing 4 years for these future doctors.
The NRMP produces a report every year called Charting the Outcomes in the Match. This document will show statistically how many programs a successful applicant in each specialty ranks. It will also show other characteristics of successful and unsuccessful applicants–like average step score, number of work and volunteer experiences in the specialty, number of publications, Alpha Omega Alpha membership status, graduate degrees, etc.
There’s also a graph for each specialty showing the probability of matching vs the number of programs ranked.
In internal medicine, for typical/average applicants with no major red flags— ranking 11 programs means there’s a 99.9% chance of matching. Ranking 5 puts your chances at ~90%
In general surgery, ranking 11 programs means a 90% chance of matching and ranking 20 or more put you at 99.9%.
Of course the data is an aggregate of all applicants. High stats applicants may need to apply to and rank fewer programs to achieve a match and lower stats applicants (and those with academic blemishes) will need to apply to and rank more programs.
This thread is interesting since this mother will be where you all are next year.
I think the typical budget for travel for residency interviews is $7,000. I think the average is 12 interviews. And yes, the Step tests cost a lot. Step 2 (which D will take in a couple of weeks) cost approx. $2,000. That does not include the flight to the city where she will take the practical portion.
Question: What are good websites for looking up residency programs? And not just rank, but which are ‘malignant’, which are good places to work, etc.?
It’s actually not all that predictable – my FDIL did not get nearly as many interviews as she had anticipated, but was invited early on to interview at some of the most competitive programs (such as Johns Hopkins) – and completely passed over at others – but the big surprise was that she got so few calls to interview at the programs she would have considered her “safeties”. So maybe it’s just that the process can be random, or maybe there is something of a “Tufts syndrome” going on with the programs, we don’t know.
@doschicos – the answer to your question is more loans. I read somewhere that medical schools will authorize $20K in additional loans just to cover the 4th year residency interview & relocation costs.
That’s because during SOAP an unmatched student can apply to any open spot that they think they are qualified for, no restrictions. And that would apply this year as well as any years past – almost by definition, the SOAP round student has to apply to a program where s/he didn’t previously interview, assuming they ranked every place they interviewed. That’s because in order to be unmatched, it means that every program they ranked was filled by students the programs ranked higher. So a SOAP student is going to have to apply for spot where they haven’t previously interviewed.
I’m not sure how you would know in this or any other cycle whether SOAP students had applied to specific residency programs previously or not … I don’t think that’s reported anywhere Since it is a uniform application process (the equivalent of the common app) I assume the programs can easily pull the application files of students who apply to them for the first time during that phase.
From Googling, I found some one line forums where medical students and residents post their impressions and reviews. I just found that recently, I think by Googling the name of FDIL’s program and the word “review” – since she did not get into her home city top choice, I wanted to learn about the program where she did match. Obviously that is like any other review forum – read the reviews but take them with a grain of salt — but I found that provided very specific information that would not be found elsewhere. From what I can gather, the prestige of the program is not as important in the long run as the work environment and culture. Residents in some places find they are required to do a lot of what they call “scut work” – see http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2013/12/scut-work-changed-todays-generation-doctors.html for a definition – obviously the residents prefer those programs where they have more responsibility and more doctor-work, less scut work.
I don’t think there really are any websites that talk about whether or not a program is malignant.
This is done mostly back-channel and word-of-mouth–for lots for reasons. (Publicly bad mouthing peers, PDs and programs is considered unprofessional behavior and can come back a bite a resident or med student on the butt.)
Your D needs to be talking to attendings in her specialty since they are usually plugged into what program are problematic and which ones aren’t. She should also talk to current residents at her school in her future specialty about their impression of various programs they may have interviewed with or visited. She should also talk to students doing aways at her school about what their home programs are like.
She could consider attending a national conference for her specialty. Some specialties have residency fairs (which are kinda like college fairs) that offer potential residents a chance to meet & talk with current residents and attendings.
IOW, she needs to network, network, network…
Lastly, when she does have interviews, it’s critical to attend the pre-interview dinner–which are usually just current residents and interviewees. This is her chance to gauge the kind of people she’ll be working with because she’ll spend far more time with her co-residents than the attendings. And because no attendings are present at these dinners, it’s a chance to get honest answers to her questions about the program.
Your D can check FRIEDA for details about specific programs–work hours, schedules, benefits, vacation and sick day policies, maternity leave, number and location of clinical sites, etc. (Requires creating an account to access the database.)
There’s Doximity–but I’m not sure how useful it would be for what you’re talking about since it’s mostly reputational rankings.
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student MUST FIRST have been invited to interview at a residency before a student can rank it.
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Not true. There’s nothing in the rules that says student can’t rank a program where they haven’t interviewed. (And there have been some known to do so–mostly IMGs who are desperate.) The odds of a student actually matching at a program they have not interviewed approaches zero, if it is not actually zero.
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Lol… I guess so, but as noted, it would be a essentially a total waste. I don’t know how it works at programs that didn’t fill all their spots, but a random student ranked it w/o an interview.
I guess it’s more accurate to say that a student can’t expect a program to include their name in their ranking if they never interviewed him/her.
So basically, no match will occur except to places where the applicant has interviewed.
I suppose in theory there could be extraordinary, extenuating circumstances that would lead an program to rank applicants it had not interviewed – such as some sort of natural disaster impacting the interview schedule – but in the ordinary course of events, no interview = no match.
In order to match, the applicant has to be listed on the program’s ROL list. They can be very last spot on that list if the program has not been filled… but they have to be listed. And the programs ordinarily interview many more applicants than they have spots for, as they know from experience how large a ROL they will need to fill their program. So they are going to schedule all the interviews that are needed.
@doschicos, I know in my D’s instance, the school did authorize additional funds for application expenses. I am about as low income as you can get, but my D made it through med school with a combination of grants (not usual at most schools) and a lot of loans. It is doable, even for low income kids.
Don’t know why part of my sentence above was cut off…
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I suppose in theory there could be extraordinary, extenuating circumstances that would lead an program to rank applicants it had not interviewed – such as some sort of natural disaster impacting the interview schedule – but in the ordinary course of events, no interview = no match.
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That would make some sense, but at least the student rec’d an invitation to interview. It would be crazy for some student who hadn’t applied/hadn’t rec’d an invite to interview to rank a program and expect a match. That would be almost like a high school senior not applying to Berkeley but sending FAFSA info and expecting to be accepted.
I could imagine that if Katrina had happened during interview season that some applicants might have ranked programs where there had applied and had rec’t invites, but couldn’t interview and vice versa. There might have even been some informal communication between student and program.
My son almost missed his Mayo interview due to “not enough planes” (??..lol). His flight was canceled, his rebooked flight was over-booked, his next rebooking got him in so late that he didn’t make it to Rochester until just minutes before his interview. American Airlines made so many mistakes with his rebookings that they issued him two free round trip vouchers.
Ah! The travails of interview season. D1 interviewed in upstate NY (Rochester) during the great 2014 blizzard that dumped 7 feet of snow on Buffalo. She was supposed to fly into Buffalo from Houston (where she had just finished another interview) , but because the Buffalo airport was closed, the airline stranded her in… Camden, NJ. (How’s that for random?) Plus the airline lost her luggage.
One way of trying to reduce airfare costs for our young people who need to get around the country for interviews, etc. is trying to get points as bonuses for signing up for credit cards. The UR points Chase awards can be used with any airline. Our kids have booked a lot of trips using those points and generally not had to pay a premium for last minute bookings. H and I have used some points as well to book flights.
Another question. Do you have to go all in within a single specialty? Can you rank some derm and some internal medicine programs? Or do the research projects the students have done lead to a single specialty?
I don’t think there’s any limit to the specialties that can be applied for, but realistically it would be difficult to meet requirements for more than one of the more competitive specialties. But I’d imagine that some applicants use general medical residencies (like family medicine or internal medicine) as backups for the more competitive specialties they are applying for. There are also some combination program that allow completion of two specialties in an extended residency. My FDIL will be doing a program like that – so that gives her a 5 year residency but at the end she will be board certified in two different specialties.
I think a number of students do go for 2 specialties…perhaps one competitive and one lesser. There was a student at son’s match day that wanted Emergency Med (very competitive) but got IM. Son said something about that there is some work-around that the person can still end up doing Emergency Med, but I don’t remember how that all would work.
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way of trying to reduce airfare costs for our young people who need to get around the country for interviews, etc. is trying to get points as bonuses for signing up for credit cards
My S gets tons of trips using points from CC sign up and minimum spend requirements. As long as you understand the terms and are OK with them, there is not much of a downside. S even buys D some trips and they really are helpful for last minute bookings without charging a huge premium.
D2 got a new CC just so she could collect point to use for residency travel next year. (She also gets access to first class lounges at airports–a nice perk!)
The work-around for EM is this: there is a one year fellowship in EM for grads of FM, IM and Peds programs, provided they do at least 1 rotation per year in both EM and critical care during each year of their residency.
The one year fellowship does NOT qualify them to become board certified/board eligible in EM, but may allow them to be hired as staff ER physicians at smaller, community or rural emergency departments. This is a hold-over from the grandfathering of primary care physicians into EM before EM became a recognized specialty. SAEM, ACEP and AAEM are all working very hard to get this pathway closed down.
Most EM jobs now require BE or BC as a condition to be hired.
When S was flying over 100,000 miles/year, he became quite the expert on airport lounges and knew the locations and best things about each in the cities he traveled thru. He had access to many of them.
I think it’s also common to apply for combined programs and the individual specialties. Someone who wants to be a pediatric anesthesiologist, for example, might apply to the combined programs for this and to programs in pediatrics and/or anesthesiology.