Question about good residency programs - chances

get to know your department well and make sure you have a mentor in your program that will go to bat for you after interview season and the rank lists all get sorted out. your app looks great. pick a few places that you want to live and works for your life. find out where people have matched previously from your program as that tends to correlate where people are going both from a geographical but a relationship bw programs sense. Browse the post match list stuff on orthogate to see what people say about the programs, taking it all with a grain of salt. I had similar #s, etc and I felt these were all great programs and I would have been happy to be at any of them. First hand, I can say that these programs presented themselves well on interview day and have excellent reputations. That said there are probably about 3x as many programs that could easily be substituted.


Harvard
Yale
Columbia
Mayo Clinic
Hopkins
WashU
Stanford
Hospital for Special Surgery
Utah
UCLA
UPenn
Vanderbilt
UCSF

Thanks so much WestCoastOrtho, much appreciated!! I will definitely take your advice!

Hey thanks for the good advice. I'm new to the forums, but in a similar boat -- similar numbers, 3rd med student, hoping to match ortho. 1 question I had was when you say "get to know your program well", what exactly is a good way of doing that? Is working with the residents and faculty during your ortho sub-i the only way? any other recommendations?

sorry if this question is a little elementary -- i'm just starting my journey through the forum.

thanks!

just be a face residents and attendings recognize as much as anything. go to journal club and try to absorb what theyre saying..look up new terms on wheeles...on an easy rotation, go to morning conference or at least grand rounds...this isn't because u need to "kill it" or do anything special at all - actually, saying nothing is typically better - it's hopefully bc u enjoy being around ortho and learning some of it (you dont get much in med school at all) and you like the type of people in the field...If you hate both of those, then either maybe you have a program that's just a bad fit or the field isn't right...Get involved in projects, make friends with them...dont try too hard...just see if you can make some allies in the program..if not, it won't kill your application, just helps when they throw the photo up and people say - "hey, i know that guy, hes always been around and interested, etc"