I know this question has been asked a hundred times, but I wanted to get an attendings take on it. How important is med school name when applying to the more well-known (ie..Columbia/HSS) programs in the nation? I go to an unranked medical school in the south, but I have busted my butt off for three years(>250 step 1 score, and most likely AOA) and I want to go to the NE for residency. Im planning on doing atleast 1 away in New York, but I dont want to waste my time if the name of my med school has already doomed me. I've heard some pretty discouraging things so far.
What happens is that with limited interview slots, programs are forced to make decisions that are very difficult. For example, if there is 1 slot available and there is an applicant from the northeast who has demonstrated an interest in training in New York (plenty of students have no desire whatsoever to live in NYC for 5 years!) and another outstanding applicant from the South who grew up in the South, went to school in the South and has never demonstrated any "interest" in coming to the Northeast then you may go in the "obvious" direction.
However, if that same student from the South has rotated somewhere in the northeast then the decision-making may be completely different. We see this all the time at Columbia where our students are not granted interviews in another region if they didn't spend a month in that area.
So sub-internships become strategic - our students who have desires to go to California, for example, will absolutely spend 1 of their months (or more) to demonstrate willingness and eagerness to train in California.
What happens is that with limited interview slots, programs are forced to make decisions that are very difficult. For example, if there is 1 slot available and there is an applicant from the northeast who has demonstrated an interest in training in New York (plenty of students have no desire whatsoever to live in NYC for 5 years!) and another outstanding applicant from the South who grew up in the South, went to school in the South and has never demonstrated any "interest" in coming to the Northeast then you may go in the "obvious" direction.
However, if that same student from the South has rotated somewhere in the northeast then the decision-making may be completely different. We see this all the time at Columbia where our students are not granted interviews in another region if they didn't spend a month in that area.
So sub-internships become strategic - our students who have desires to go to California, for example, will absolutely spend 1 of their months (or more) to demonstrate willingness and eagerness to train in California.
I hope this is helpful to you - good luck
wnl
Dr. Levine,
This has always been an interesting topic, but I'm curious... do you know where students rotated before you send out interviews? I was under the impression in all of my interviews that they had no idea where I rotated when I arrived for my interview. Myself and many on the trail had this conversation and were a bit confused. It actually appeared that you could rank students based on whether they had rotated in a region, but without having a letter from a place you rotated (or mentioning it in your personal statement), directors would have no idea until the interview as to where the applicant rotated and therefore couldn't alter the interview list to take that into account.
If what I am thinking is correct, I would find it useful to add a spot for external rotations on the ERAS to further assist the PD's in making tough decisions about interview spots. Thanks in advance for any clarification.
Since most programs wait for the Dean's Letter to arrive before offering interviews, the program director can identify which programs you rotated at based on the grades on the Dean's Letter.
So, we don't definitely know every program to which a student has rotated (e.g. did a rotation after Dean's Letter, no letter of rec yet from that group, etc.) but usually have a good idea of where they've been geographically.
