I would be very grateful for some help

[DnConfused]

Hello everyone,
I'm a long time reader but new member/poster. I'm an MS-4 going into IM but just finished my ophtho rotation and I loved it!! I think I'm having a crisis because I'm almost done with my IM interviews and it's too late to apply to ophtho this year. What options are available to me? Here's a little more info:
-at top 20 school
-2 preclinical honor's
-step1 and 2 of 242 and 246
-honor's in medicine, peds, and neuro; "high pass" in surgery
-mix of honor's and "high pass" during 4th year so far
-1 publication before med school (3rd author)
-a surgery clinical research project done during med school

Should I take a year off, do some research, and then apply...or go through with internship, bail out afterwards, and then apply??

Also, what are my chances at matching? Chances at staying in California at a decent program?

I'm sorry for all the questions. Any help/advice would be appreciated as no one at my school knows about this and I feel hesitant talking to my counselor about this. I would be very grateful for any help/advice. -DnC

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[mdkurt]

Hello everyone,
I'm a long time reader but new member/poster. I'm an MS-4 going into IM but just finished my ophtho rotation and I loved it!! I think I'm having a crisis because I'm almost done with my IM interviews and it's too late to apply to ophtho this year. What options are available to me? Here's a little more info:
-at top 20 school
-2 preclinical honor's
-step1 and 2 of 242 and 246
-honor's in medicine, peds, and neuro; "high pass" in surgery
-mix of honor's and "high pass" during 4th year so far
-1 publication before med school (3rd author)
-a surgery clinical research project done during med school

Should I take a year off, do some research, and then apply...or go through with internship, bail out afterwards, and then apply??

Also, what are my chances at matching? Chances at staying in California at a decent program?

I'm sorry for all the questions. Any help/advice would be appreciated as no one at my school knows about this and I feel hesitant talking to my counselor about this. I would be very grateful for any help/advice. -DnC

Go through internship as you planned. You have to do it anyway, so you might as well do it when you're sharp and just out of med school. This will give you a little more time to investigate ophthalmology. Then, apply for ophtho. You can take the year in between for a pre-residency fellowship (path or research) and cross your fingers and hope a first year spot opens up in the meantime. If you do decide to commit to ophtho, I would be as up front as possible as early as possible.

 

[Mirror Form]

Also, what are my chances at matching? Chances at staying in California at a decent program?

With your numbers you should definitely be able to match. There's no guarantee that you'll match at a strong program in cali though, but you should get into a good program somewhere.

Keep in mind that interviewing during internship is tough. So make sure to schedule your easiest rotations for december if possible.

 

[speyeder]

Go through internship as you planned. You have to do it anyway, so you might as well do it when you're sharp and just out of med school. This will give you a little more time to investigate ophthalmology. Then, apply for ophtho. You can take the year in between for a pre-residency fellowship (path or research) and cross your fingers and hope a first year spot opens up in the meantime. If you do decide to commit to ophtho, I would be as up front as possible as early as possible.

I agree with this. Doing an internship year will allow you more time to decide if ophtho is really what you want while and establish connections with the ophtho dept. at your hospital. This route will also allow you to apply directly for any PGY-2 ophtho spots that open up. Usually a few vacancies pop up each year sporadically but regular applicants can't apply for them because these require ccompletion of an internship year.

 

[yagmd]

DnConfused,

I disagree with some of the advice previously posted. It is VERY difficult to interview for ophtho programs during internship. I know some people that have done it (one of them did match successfully), but they had to forgoe many interviews becuase of scheduling conflicts. Ideally, you'd like to interview at 10+ programs, and it will be difficult to get that much time off.

Internship programs may not give you elective / vacation time during ophtho interview season (late October through mid January). Given that you are applying for categorical IM and have a strong application, you are likely to match at a top IM program, which makes it even more unlikely that they will be accomodating regarding scheduling (vs. cushy community prelim program, for example).

In addition, there's very little that you can do to strengthen your ophtho application during internship, but if you take the year off you could definitely submit a few manuscripts for publication over the next year.

If you have truly decided that want to be an ophthalmologist, I would strongly encourage you to consider withdrawing from the IM match this year, and submit you ophtho application in Summer 2005. Based on what you've told us about your application, you should match:

-- Step 1 = 242 (vs. ophtho avg for matched applicants = ~225)
-- mix of honors / high pass grades (only ~ 20% of matched ophtho applicants are AOA)

Of course none of us know what your letters will say (very important for ophtho) or how you interview, but you should have a strong application.
As for California programs, it is extremely tough to match the top tier California programs, but there are a number of solid programs in CA:

-- Top Tier (extremely selective, top 10 programs): UCSF, USC (Doheny), UCLA (Jules Stein)
-- 2nd Tier (selective, more competitive than comparable quality programs in other parts of U.S. because of CA location): UC Irvine, UCSD, Stanford, Cal Pacific
-- 3rd Tier (less selective): Loma Linda, UC Davis, Drew

You should have a good shot at the 2nd tier programs (all would provide solid training) and a shot at the top tier programs if you build up your application and get some very strong letters.

Hope that's helpful!

 

[Gottschalk]

You should also consider trying to match into a Transitional year for next year. Like everyone said, it's almost impossible to strengthen your application during intern year, so why do something harder that you don't want to do and something that won't allow you time to interview. TY programs have a ton of elective time and would be open to you having more interiview dates especially if you planned ahead and scheduled cushy electives during the interview months. Then the following off year, it would be easy enough to try to match into a pre-residency research/fellowship if a pgy-2 year didn't open up. Also, your leaving a medicine residency mid-training would definitely not be looked upon too nicely by either the IM program director or the Ophtho director because it shows that you are willing to bail on committments in order to serve yourself.

Hope this helps--good luck with these tough decisions!