I'm a rising MS3 thinking about taking a year off to do research and pump out some papers. In people's experiences, how competitive are the established, 1 year fellowships like NYUs: http://orthosurgery.med.nyu.edu/educati ... w-division

Do they mainly look at board scores and previous research?

Also, how feasible/difficult would it be to get a funded 1 year position at a big name place like HSS without an established program?