US IMG for ortho

You nailed it. Find good aways who'll be comfortable with your Caribbean-ness, and make sure they're scheduled early. Also, you didn't mention anything about research, and many folks use that to spice up their applications. Otherwise, you got it. Best of luck.

I hope the OP did well on the match

any idea if any NON-US IMGs matched Ortho this year? I'm a Canadian looking into the Carib.. I know very improbable odds.

I am pretty sure he is attempting to match next year, since his post was a week after this years match.

Ill be matching in 2 years 2012. Just got my board scores back so was eager to get some feedback and direction from people on the board. I have been hearing that LOR's are important, however, if PD's dont know the writer they dont carry as much weight. So would it be recomended to go out of my way and try to get a letter (have a personal friend who trained under a very prominent surgeon) from a big name for my application

There is a big difference between knowing who the writer is because they are prominent and the PD knowing them personally.

In my experience, a good LOR from a well known surgeon means far less than a unbelievably outstanding LOR from an academic surgeon involved in residency education that knows you personally and supports your application.

Find a mentor that you mesh with, they may not be who you suspect, and don't be afraid to keep looking if the first few don't seem to work out.

As always, I agree with CnH to most extents...

As an applicant, it's tempting to go with big names, however as we residents were reviewing applications this year, I found that some uppers found it was very obvious that some "big named textbook author" letters were useless carbon-copies and were, are such, disregarded. Double-minus points if the author referred to the applicant in the wrong gender...

Yet, I'm sure that many of my letters from last year (by more-modest unknown folks) were also generally disregarded.

There's probably some balance here, and that having a sponsor known to the folks to whom you're applying is very useful. For the random program, maybe having a variety of letters all highly supportive may also be useful. One of my letters was from a GP, another was from a general surgeon, and both were parts of applications which ended up getting interviews.

In the end, 3 COMPLETE STRONG letters may be better than 2-good and 1-disregarded letter... though this may not be as good as 1 well-known-to-the-program-and-may-call-to-say-so letter (although you have to be honest that this doesn't happen as often as you'd think... most folks simply aren't worth the effort or aren't that special).

The moral is: get the best letters you can from every surgeon you respect (many let you read and/or write their letters no matter what the waiver says) and APPLY BROADLY. Let me repeat again: APPLY BROADLY.

Ouch! Well, at least in ortho if you just use "he" all the time you'll be right most of the time. But still, ouch!

Nice

Tip: to those of you with gender-neutral names (Pat, I'm thinking of you): make sure you have face-time with your attendings!

Thanks for the Info so for it has been very helpful. another question i have as im thinking of places for aways and where to apply for to residency. Should i even consider aways or applying to big name academic places (Columbia, HSS, Pitt etc.) or even the mid tier academic places like Emory, UAB. Im searching through websites seeing their policy on even letting international students rotate, have a USIMG in their program. I have received advice saying i need to apply to like 80+ programs but seriously applying to places like Stanford, HSS, Harvard etc are simply going to be a waste of money certainly 99.9999% of the time for someone like me. I guess you can say im pretty confused as what direction to take. My initial plan is to try to do 3 Ortho rotations all in different regions of the country since i have heard this is important. Although being a carrib student i can do all my rotations in different areas of the country.

Applying to big name programs will probably be a waste of time and money. I know of imgs matching every so often to these types of programs but usually after years of research at that institution. I think you were right on by doing 3 aways in different areas of the country. Talk to more people about names of places you would have a good chance at. additionally i would prepare, like you mentioned, to applying everywhere (almost). feel free to pm.