Do residency programs care about high impact publications?

[Datypicalpremed]

So looking at older posts in the md forums, it seems like the consensus is that the number of publications matters more than the quality of your publications when it comes to getting into residency. Eg multiple publications in low impact journals > single publication in science, nature, etc.

Anyone know if this is actually true? Will program directors actually notice if you have a first author in Nature and will this help you land more interviews or increase your chances at matching? Realize this is probably different once you are an actual PI, but gotta climb the ladder first...

I only ask because I have a ton of data and I’m trying to decide if I should compile it all into a big story (that might be good enough for the big leagues...) or break it into smaller pieces.

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[Fencer]

Top notch residencies in research intensive institutions will care about quality (Nature, Science or other high impact journal) of your research. This is particularly obvious in PSTPs. When I interviewed I interviewed in the 15 programs for my residency (ages ago), every one except one PD commented on the quality of my publications. For the average residency is about the number of publications. Without throwing thrash to others, in general, more cognitive specialties appreciate quality more.

 

[Datypicalpremed]

Top notch residencies in research intensive institutions will care about quality (Nature, Science or other high impact journal) of your research. This is particularly obvious in PSTPs. When I interviewed I interviewed in the 15 programs for my residency (ages ago), every one except one PD commented on the quality of my publications. For the average residency is about the number of publications. Without throwing thrash to others, in general, more cognitive specialties appreciate quality more.

Thanks - to inquire further, would you consider Rad Onc to be a “cognitive specialty?” I know it’s traditionally been considered a competitive specialty that generally requires research (although based on what I’m hearing in the Rad onc forums that seems to be changing...)

 

[Lucca]

Thanks - to inquire further, would you consider Rad Onc to be a “cognitive specialty?” I know it’s traditionally been considered a competitive specialty that generally requires research (although based on what I’m hearing in the Rad onc forums that seems to be changing...)

RadOnc is no longer "very" competitive based on the past few match cycles but matching at MSKCC/MDA/HMS is still very competitive and it has historically been a specialty that has attracted many MD/PhDs and based on Charting the Outcomes applicants tend to have more research on their app than others. So, I would suspect the answer would be "yes" for the top few programs and now that it's no longer competitive "meh" for every other program wrt how much they care about where/what you publish.

Spoiler: Charting the Outcomes 2018 relevant data

 

[OHCA]

This might be a pretty naive question, but are publications prior to medical school considered by residency programs? I’d imagine they are considered because it’s still on CV, but just not as much weight.

 

[Fencer]

Absolutely, yes... Publications are going to be your legacy, grants give you money for publications. Publications along the journey during college, post-bac, MD/PhD, and residency, show that you can succeed in multiple situations, increasing your attractiveness at the next step.