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Where are all the med peds folks this cycle?
Those from previous cycles, how competitive was applying?
Those from previous cycles, how competitive was applying?
Where are all the med peds folks this cycle?
Those from previous cycles, how competitive was applying?
Med-Peds is slightly more competitive than categorical medicine and categorical peds, but that shouldn't scare you from applying. Now if you are applying only to Harvard, Duke, Hopkins, and UCLA, and you don't have stellar stats, you might be in trouble. But there is a wide range of programs with varying competitiveness. Most Med-Peds programs are located at university hospitals and the few community hospital programs are at strong university-affiliated hospitals. The past few years, there have been more AMGs applying to Med-Peds, but still overall still friendly to DOs and IMGs.
I would take this time to gather LORs from pediatrics and medicine faculty. You might want to try to get chairman letters from the medicine chair and the pediatrics chair, since some Med-Peds programs require chair letters. Each program have their own unique requirements so check the requirements of the programs you are interested in applying (there is a sticky thread up top that tries to compile the LOR requirements, but they may not be up to date)
I would also take this time to start working on your personal statement - discussing why Med-Peds, what motivates you, your hopes/dreams/goals, etc
Good luck to all who are applying this year.
Well, there's the rub, because I think I'd like to follow an academic research trajectory and apart from these few tippity top programs, there's a lot of excellent medicine or pediatrics programs that aren't joined into a med-peds program. There's no med-peds at WashU or UCSF or Stanford or Columbia or Cornell, etc. I am a tad concerned that if I want to pursue an academic career with lots of research and do this on the East Coast, I'll need to get a spot at Duke/MGH/BWH/Penn (JHU is a weird outlier that hates non-primary care types).
You don't need to train at Stanford or NYP to become an academic physician (whether clinician-educator or clinician-scientist). The vast majority of academic physicians in this country did not train at MGH, or Duke. There are plenty of strong programs that you are overlooking that can and will provide you the necessary resources and pedigree that you are seeking, such as University of Chicago, Baylor, University of Alabama, Yale, Brown, UNC, University of MIchigan, Vanderbilt, etc. Every Med-Peds program will provide excellent training that will prepare you for the boards (ABIM and ABP) as well as clinical practice.
I'm by no means aiming for the top programs. I'm going to apply to them but I'm being realistic. I'm an above average applicant with scores above the national average for those matching last cycle but I'm a US Caribbean grad. For those who matched,how competitive is it? What are some absolute must haves? Thanks for all your contributions