Can someone help to guide me?

[Enolate]

Hello all, I am presently a third year that is going into obgyn. I have a few questions:

1. What types of places should I apply with my stats?

I can't get a straight answer out of anyone:
Okay school.
High 240 step 1, will take step two in the summer
Lots if extracurriculars (volunteering, clubs, class board)
Research in family planning
Possibly AOA (won't know until the summer I guess)

I'd like to be in a city, but is it even worth it for me to apply to the "best" places? (by the way, what are they?)

2. Should I do away rotations?
Another situation were I can't get a straight answer out of anyone, because it seems there is no straight answer, but it would be nice to know the consensus in the sdn community.

3. What are some programs that have low(er) OB volumes and high surgical volumes?

4. Good places for gyn onc?

5. Good places for minimally invasive surgery?

Thanks for all your help in advance! I'm in psych now and I feel like it's making me crazy so sorry if these questions are a little insane.

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[gurudoc]

I'm not expert on ob gyn but I'd imagine you could interview anywhere you like if you match that step score on step 2

Hello all, I am presently a third year that is going into obgyn. I have a few questions:

1. What types of places should I apply with my stats?

I can't get a straight answer out of anyone:
Okay school.
High 240 step 1, will take step two in the summer
Lots if extracurriculars (volunteering, clubs, class board)
Research in family planning
Possibly AOA (won't know until the summer I guess)

I'd like to be in a city, but is it even worth it for me to apply to the "best" places? (by the way, what are they?)

2. Should I do away rotations?
Another situation were I can't get a straight answer out of anyone, because it seems there is no straight answer, but it would be nice to know the consensus in the sdn community.

3. What are some programs that have low(er) OB volumes and high surgical volumes?

4. Good places for gyn onc?

5. Good places for minimally invasive surgery?

Thanks for all your help in advance! I'm in psych now and I feel like it's making me crazy so sorry if these questions are a little insane.

 

[jv24601]

Hello all, I am presently a third year that is going into obgyn. I have a few questions:

1. What types of places should I apply with my stats?

I can't get a straight answer out of anyone:
Okay school.
High 240 step 1, will take step two in the summer
Lots if extracurriculars (volunteering, clubs, class board)
Research in family planning
Possibly AOA (won't know until the summer I guess)

I'd like to be in a city, but is it even worth it for me to apply to the "best" places? (by the way, what are they?)

2. Should I do away rotations?
Another situation were I can't get a straight answer out of anyone, because it seems there is no straight answer, but it would be nice to know the consensus in the sdn community.

3. What are some programs that have low(er) OB volumes and high surgical volumes?

4. Good places for gyn onc?

5. Good places for minimally invasive surgery?

Thanks for all your help in advance! I'm in psych now and I feel like it's making me crazy so sorry if these questions are a little insane.

I'll take a stab at it, although most, if not all, of your questions have been addressed previously on this forum...

1. Your stats should be competitive to interview anywhere so I wouldn't limit yourself based on competitiveness

1a. "Best Ob/Gyn programs" has been addressed in several prior threads. I myself tried to ask around about this and found that every faculty member had different opinions. Also, residency isn't really like med school in terms of best programs because everyone has different goals (academic vs community, location, certain specialties, significant others).
That said, here are academic places I kept hearing good things about from faculty:
Strong overall academic: Pitt, Yale, Duke, Penn, Northwestern
Northeast: BI, MGH/BWI, Brown, NYU
Southeast: UNC, UAB, Hopkins
Midwest/South: WashU, UTSW, Baylor
West: UCSD, UCSF, UW, Utah, Colorado
I don't know anything about community-based programs because I didn't look at them. I'm sure there are some great places I forgot as well.

2. Again, this depends and has been covered previously. An away can help you, especially if you have a particular interest in a specific program. Doing an away rotation usually (not always) can help get you an interview. It can also help you if your school doesn't have top notch faculty, and you work with and impress someone important at another place who can write you a LOR. It can also hurt you if you make a bad impression, even once, in front of residents or faculty so you constantly have to be on your A-game for an entire month. That's why if you're a good applicant some people suggest not doing an away and relying on your application. I would suggest doing an away to see how other places do things and to see if you fit in with a favorite program.

3. I have no idea. I'm sure you could find the stats online somewhere- i know someone posted about percentiles in prior posts. Most places I looked at try to maximize both Ob and Gyn numbers.

4. Any place with a gyn onc fellowship- most people apply to all 46:
http://www.abog.org/downloads.asp
ie- see above, plus Sloan Kettering and MD Anderson have onc fellowships without residency and are highly competitive

5. MIS is much younger than other fellowships and the fellowship is 1 yr, so I'm not sure that there is such a thing as "best". Just an opinion, but I get a feeling that most of these fellowships are being done to get another year of experience/figure out what to do rather than providing a mastery of MIS.

 

[anonperson]

Hello all, I am presently a third year that is going into obgyn. I have a few questions:

1. What types of places should I apply with my stats?

I can't get a straight answer out of anyone:
Okay school.
High 240 step 1, will take step two in the summer
Lots if extracurriculars (volunteering, clubs, class board)
Research in family planning
Possibly AOA (won't know until the summer I guess)

I'd like to be in a city, but is it even worth it for me to apply to the "best" places? (by the way, what are they?)

2. Should I do away rotations?
Another situation were I can't get a straight answer out of anyone, because it seems there is no straight answer, but it would be nice to know the consensus in the sdn community.

3. What are some programs that have low(er) OB volumes and high surgical volumes?

4. Good places for gyn onc?

5. Good places for minimally invasive surgery?

Thanks for all your help in advance! I'm in psych now and I feel like it's making me crazy so sorry if these questions are a little insane.

I'm a third year resident.

As far as your scores. You should be competitive for basically all programs across the country. It's hard to predict who will and won't give you interviews but you can safely apply to any program and have a reasonable shot.

The more well known programs are generally academic. In no particular order and this list is not all inclusive:

UTSW, UAB, Hopkins, UCSF, UCLA, Brown, Ohio State, Brigham and Womens/Mass General, University of Michigan, Wash U, Penn, Duke, UNC,

The above list is very general. Some places have very different strengths. For example, OSU is very strong in MFM and Gyn Onc but their REI department isn't too big. UTSW has a very strong MFM department. Not to say the other departments are weak but certain programs have a slant.

Away rotations generally aren't needed. With your scores and ranking, you should be able to secure invitations. Aways can help you, but there is a decent chance they will hurt if someone on your rotation doesn't like you for whatever reason. A month is a long time to screw up, and you will at least once.

As far as OB vs gyn numbers, you'll have to look at the numbers for individual programs. Each program varies and they will give you specific numbers at interviews. Even if you don't like OB, it is valuable in your training and you'll want to have a good exposure to OB.

A good gyn onc experience depends on what you're looking for. If you want to match in gyn onc for fellowship, generally you want an academic program with its own fellowship and attendings who are well connected in the Gyn Onc community. This does not necessarily translate to a great gyn onc experience (though it can) as a resident if you're scrubbing with fellows and attendings for cases. That probably would be better in places where there is no fellow and it's just attendings and residents.

MIS is moot. Generalists are doing laparoscopy and robotic surgery. You should get that exposure during residency regardless of where you go. If you want to do the fellowship, you can essentially go anywhere and match into a MIS fellowship.

 

[Enolate]

Thanks for all your help to those that have responded!

I felt like I could access this information on these forums but it was somewhat outdated or didn't quite apply.

I feel like when applying and trying to figure things out it is so hard to get a straight answer from anyone, and school advisers are generally useless because they really don't know what's going on (or at least mine doesn't).

Thanks again!

 

[Miss Alyssa]

I did my Sub-I in MFM because it allows you to see so much of the program. You have the attendings, fellows and residents on the MFM service, plus regular interaction and rounds with the attendings and residents on the labor floor. It also makes the transition to doing call on the labor floor easier because I knew the residents. I have a friend that did REI at the same program and time that I was doing MFM and she only got to meet 1 attending, 1 fellow, and 1 resident who came twice a week; plus that office was located outside of the hospital. I don't know what other people have experienced on REI.

In terms of where to apply with your scores, I agree that you can apply anywhere and have a good chance of getting an interview. For me I got interviews at some "better" schools and waitlists/rejections from other places. On JV's list "Strong overall academic: Pitt, Yale, Duke, Penn, Northwestern Northeast: BI, MGH/BWI, Brown, NYU" I applied to all of those and got interviews at 6 and my Step 1 is in the low 230s (step 2 high 240s). You will do well!