Yale vs Utah vs Case for #1

A bit late for your rank list...but I agree with a lot of what has been said already.

Case - everything here was great, great group of residents, attendings like to teach and let the residents be hands on. TONS of operative experience. The residents were by far the best at operating that I saw. Cleveland isn't bad either, up and coming with some cool parts of downtown. Housing is dirt cheap. One downside would be the Allan fellowship being chosen unless people volunteer, which isn't great if you don't want to do that much research.

Yale - very strong academic program, good operative experience. Definite issues with the mid-levels. Recently brought in some big names to kind of overhaul the research and clinical experiences which seem like great changes. Great didactics, attendings were very invested in teaching, bring in big names for grand rounds regularly as well. Good group of residents as well, but didn't get that sense of camaraderie. They all get along fine but wasn't what I was looking for. Also New Haven kind of sucks.

Utah - have heard that a lot of people loved the program but are turned off by the city unless you are in to Skiing and hiking.

Thanks so much! I really appreciate the input and this is something I've heard from more than one person (regarding your views on case, yale, and utah) so I really appreciate it. I hope other people continue to contribute information about programs like this so it's helpful to everyone!

Looks like we interviewed at a lot of the same programs. For me there’s a big difference between Case and Yale or Utah.

Case: Awesome facilities, great research, lots of operative experience, the best for fellowship match of the three, and for me the trauma experience is one of the biggest selling points. I’m interested in sports but I’ve found that the best orthos come from residencies with great trauma. And for specifically sports they have Dr. Voos who’s Head Physician for the Browns. Also, it has highest reputation rank on doximity of the three and is the only one to also have a top 50 ortho hospital rank on US News (everyone says rankings are stupid but they at least give additional data points).

Yale: Big name, although not necessarily for ortho, low cost of living, and great trauma. My biggest problem with Yale is location, resident lifestyle, and lack of sports (not sure how this will impact chances at top sports fellowships). Yale has a very diverse group of residents which is a big plus for me but for some reason it lacks the resident camaraderie of other programs. A lot of residents are married or have kids, which is a big plus for some but not necessarily for me during residency.

Utah: I really liked this program, location is good for me since I have a family in Scottsdale, and between Dr. Aoki, Dr. Burks, and Dr. Maak who is head physician for the Jazz they are strong in sports and have a lot of fellowship connections. My biggest question about Utah is the operative experience. On interview I didn’t feel as though this was a big problem here and everyone I spoke with seemed to be pretty happy with this but the last review on Orthogate about Utah is still in my head. It was written 4 years ago so if there is anyone reading this that has recently rotated at Utah, what did you think? How is the operative experience early on? I've probably recertified my rank list to change where Utah is placed at least 3 times in the past week so if anyone has any additional insight into this program it would really mean a lot.

Anyway, as of now Case is in my top 5 and the other two are in my second tier so if you’re feeling extra generous today you should rank either Utah or Yale first and Case third! (Kidding... haha sort of)

I am a current resident at Case so I'll try to answer some of your questions.

1. The chiefs still have a "mini fellowship." Now that our home institution went Level 1, the chiefs rotating at that hospital are definitely doing more trauma while there but the overall amount of trauma experience during the year has not changed much. There are two chiefs that switch off covering the Trauma room so half of the 4 months at UHCMC are still spent covering whatever cases they want. Plus, the chiefs are also no longer getting wrecked while over at our county hospital so that's pretty nice too.

2. The Allen fellows are very productive. One of last year's fellows had 12 pubs ready for submission 3 months into the year and one finished with nearly 30 pubs 2 years ago. The average is probably around 10 pubs though. It all depends on the resident. They usually have at least one basic science project and several clinical studies going on.

Yale: I recently heard from a resident at Yale who said their hospital's recent merger has caused all of their mid-level providers to quit and now the interns are mostly just doing floor work with very little operative experience.

Utah: I don't know anything about this program