I am a female ortho resident and I would have found this helpful when I was applying, so I will answer some of these questions.
School: East coast school with a strong ortho program
Step I score: 254
Step II score: 253 (the programs did not get the score before the match)
Grades during 3rd year: 3 A's, 3 A-'s
Research Experience: 3 publications, one presentation at a national meeting - it was all basic science reasearch - not ortho, yes I did get asked about it in interviews
Programs that you rotated away at and what you thought about them, including whether being a female worked against you, for you, or didn't even matter while you were there:
I rotated at a West coast program, I do not think that being female mattered.
Programs you've applied to: 35
Programs you've been offered interviews at: 22
Programs you've been accepted to (if you're already a resident or beyond). If a resident, do you have any children? Did you have them before, during or after residency?
I matched at one of my top choices and one of the most female-friendly programs I encountered. I do not have children but several residents (both male and female) do have children in my program. I have never felt that gender has mattered during my residency.
Any programs you suggest that are female friendly or have great female role models? Or just which programs you liked best and why for any reason.
The programs I found to be most female friendly (in alphabetical order):
Columbia, George Washington, UCSF, University of Minnesota, and University of Pennsylvania
Just extra notes on women you've met doing ortho, how it's affected their family life - applicants, residents, fellows, women working in the field.
Most women I have met in ortho have happy and successful personal lives. I think that going into a surgical field will affect choices about family because of the long hours and hard work, but ortho is probably not much different from the other surgical subspecialities.
Has being a female worked against you/for you/doesn't matter during interview season?
I think that female applicants have to get their foot in the door with good grades, board scores, research, and performance on rotations. Once you get an interview, being female probably works both ways, depending on the program.
I basically thought that most programs fell into one of 4 categories:
1) Programs that had women faculty/residents and were interested in continuing to match females into the program
2) Programs that that had women faculty/residents and did not seem to care about gender
3) Programs that did not have many female faculty/residents and were interested in getting more female residents
4) Programs that did not have or want female faculty/residents
I ranked programs in categories 1&2 over those in 3&4 because I did not want gender to be an issue during residency.
I hope this helps. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.
