Is med-peds harder to get into...

[mercaptovizadeh]

...than either IM or peds alone?

What sort of things bolster an application? Is a great Step I as helpful as it is for ultracompetitive specialties? Does basic science research help or is the focus more on primary care/clinic type extracurriculars?

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[johnnywalker]

here's what program directors deemed important

http://www.nrmp.org/data/programresultsbyspecialty.pdf

 

[dragonfly99]

The overall competitiveness of peds and med/peds is definitely greater than IM, just because there aren't as many spots. I really don't know if med/peds is harder to get vs. straight peds...I would guess yes, because there aren't many med/peds spots, but I'm ONLY guessing.

For IM, board scores are less emphasized than a lot of other specialties, though high board scores are definitely helpful at the more well known academic places (think Hopkins, UC San Francisco, Duke, WashU, etc.). "High" for IM is really anything 230 or above...of course the higher the better. I also know that there are quite a few people in pretty high tiered IM programs who only got 220's or so on the boards...this is if they had other good qualities in their applications like solid 3rd year grades, maybe went to a well known med school, and/or did a lot of leadership activities, etc. I'm guessing that med/peds PD's are probably similiar to IM PD's as far as what they are looking for in an applicant in terms of board scores.

I don't think basic science research would hurt, especially if you say that you want to specialize later, but I don't think it's really necessary in your application. At the place where I did IM, more of the med/peds people were going into primary care vs. the rest of us (IM residents) but definitely some still subspecialized.

 

[group_theory]

dragonfly99 is correct - the rule of thumb is that med/peds may be a little more competitive than its respective categorical internal medicine program and pediatrics program mainly due to the the numbers. For a med/peds program to exist, there must be an internal medicine program and pediatrics program to work with. Almost all med/peds program are based in instutitions with decent medicine and pediatrics programs.

Statistically there may not be any big differences (USMLE, AOA members, class rank, etc) between IM, Peds, and Med/Peds.

It might be a little harder since you might need LORs from both medicine and pediatrics (and show interest in combined programs)

You might find this site useful
www.medpeds.org

From the site

Med-Peds Fact Sheet

• More than half of the pediatric residency programs in the US also have Med-Peds programs.
• Med-Peds residents score identically to catagorical residents on both the Internal Medicine and Pediatrics Boards.
• Med-Peds residency programs match a higher percentage of US medical students than Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, or Family Practice.
• Med-Peds has been in existence for 40+ years, longer than Family Practice.
• Studies show that Med-Peds physicians do continue to practice primary care for both adults and kids.
• A higher percentage of Med-Peds residents go on to practice primary care than Internal Medicine or Pediatrics residents.
• More than half of all Med-Peds physicians have some type of academic appointment.
• Those medical students interested primarily in Med-Peds list Internal Medicine as their most common second choice, followed by Pediatrics and then Family Practice.