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deleted1009711
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You need to read the forums. But if you want San Diego, you need to join the Navy. Being fit is probably the worst reason I’ve ever heard to join the military
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deleted1009711
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What makes you think that being in shape has any say on your location? Closest I think I’ve seen to that is being really out of shape preventing you from taking some billets but if you pass standards you pass standards. No one is giving you priority for billet selection because you bench more than the other guy.
That said some answers to your questions:
1. You should contact a recruiter for specifics timeline questions. That said I wouldn’t let a signing bonus be the deciding factor for where you go to Med school. (And remember they are pretty ill informed about what it is actually like in the medical corps)
2. Shouldn't have any extra obstacles that someone coming from outside the area that isn’t in the military would have. Most difference I can think of is you might be looking for a job from overseas or you did a GMO and out so you aren’t looking for an attending job but are looking for residency.
3. Do well in school, do research, get good board scores, have the program like you. No different than civilians. Any other specific answer is service and specialty specific. Like gastrapathy said San Diego is pretty much all navy with a few residencies having some Air Force spots though that’s just the current state of affairs.
4.You apply for a match. They won’t make you do a residency you don’t want but they don’t ever have to give you a residency either. Availability will vary. (For example this year the Navy matched four radiology residents and when I matched it was 9, before that I think it was 12)
5. See multiple posts on this subject on this forum. The Navy does a lot more GMO positions than the Army and AirForce but the other services have other downsides associated with this. (Like a battalion surgeon billet right out of ER residency for example)
All that said you should make sure you get some personal experience with the realities of milmed. (The fitness comments kind of reveal a lack of understanding about the medical corps) Read the forum and if you are in San Diego and have any ties to the navy maybe see if you can talk to some navy docs before signing the dotted line.
That said some answers to your questions:
1. You should contact a recruiter for specifics timeline questions. That said I wouldn’t let a signing bonus be the deciding factor for where you go to Med school. (And remember they are pretty ill informed about what it is actually like in the medical corps)
2. Shouldn't have any extra obstacles that someone coming from outside the area that isn’t in the military would have. Most difference I can think of is you might be looking for a job from overseas or you did a GMO and out so you aren’t looking for an attending job but are looking for residency.
3. Do well in school, do research, get good board scores, have the program like you. No different than civilians. Any other specific answer is service and specialty specific. Like gastrapathy said San Diego is pretty much all navy with a few residencies having some Air Force spots though that’s just the current state of affairs.
4.You apply for a match. They won’t make you do a residency you don’t want but they don’t ever have to give you a residency either. Availability will vary. (For example this year the Navy matched four radiology residents and when I matched it was 9, before that I think it was 12)
5. See multiple posts on this subject on this forum. The Navy does a lot more GMO positions than the Army and AirForce but the other services have other downsides associated with this. (Like a battalion surgeon billet right out of ER residency for example)
All that said you should make sure you get some personal experience with the realities of milmed. (The fitness comments kind of reveal a lack of understanding about the medical corps) Read the forum and if you are in San Diego and have any ties to the navy maybe see if you can talk to some navy docs before signing the dotted line.
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They'll reward you less than you think for being in shape. In the medical corps, it really doesn't count for much. I mean, your life is easier if you're in shape, but there are a ton of out-of-shape military docs.
So, you know, good on you. Great to be in shape. The military cares much less than it probably should.
1 - Not entirely clear. My understanding is that people get out any time up to and until they actually do basic, but you're playing with fire a little. I think you're going to get a lot of gruff on this forum if your thought process is that you really think HPSP would be great unless you get in to a school where you don't need it, and then you're out. I'm not criticizing you, I'm just preparing you for some blowout. Most of the people on this thread dedicated a good portion of their life and finances to the military, and they don't like to feel like it's a backup plan. Additionally, a lot of people in military medicine are very unhappy with their circumstances, and so most people will tell you that if military medicine isn't something you really want to do - to the extent that you would be willing to sacrifice your career for it to some extent - then you shouldn't do it.
2 - If anything it can look better having been in the military, with rare regional exceptions. People for some reason assume that you came out very competent. The hardest part about finding work in San Diego will be the job market in San Diego.
3 - It depends. The only way you're going to San Diego as a resident is Navy (with extremely rare exceptions). How hard it is is just like everything else: you have to know if they train your specialty there (I imagine they train just about everything in San Diego? Maybe a few exceptions like Neurosurgery) and whether or not you're competitive. Here's the thing with military medicine, however: you will have one option in that area. If you don't match there, you won't train there. As opposed to the civilian side, where you may have more than one training option.
4 - No one is going to force you in to EM or surgery. The biggest question for you will be whether or not the military is training the full breadth of specialties in 4-5 years. They probably will be. But there's a lot in flux right now and no one knows for sure. If for some reason they weren't, you'd be looking at GMO time and then matching as a civilian 5 years after your medical school.
5 - You'll love this one: if you want to avoid GMO tours, just join the Army. They have them, but they're traditionally far more rare than they are in the Navy, where they're very common (unless that has changed recently). There's no sure-fire way to avoid GMO in any service. It's just about hedging your bets. Very unlikely in the Army (but you won't be training in San Diego), very common in the Navy. But once you sign on the dotted line, the military owns your life, and they will do with you whatever they want to do with you. It's not about what they "can" or "can't" do. It's about what they're likely to do, what's the next most likely, and so forth until you get to "very unlikely."
So, you know, good on you. Great to be in shape. The military cares much less than it probably should.
1 - Not entirely clear. My understanding is that people get out any time up to and until they actually do basic, but you're playing with fire a little. I think you're going to get a lot of gruff on this forum if your thought process is that you really think HPSP would be great unless you get in to a school where you don't need it, and then you're out. I'm not criticizing you, I'm just preparing you for some blowout. Most of the people on this thread dedicated a good portion of their life and finances to the military, and they don't like to feel like it's a backup plan. Additionally, a lot of people in military medicine are very unhappy with their circumstances, and so most people will tell you that if military medicine isn't something you really want to do - to the extent that you would be willing to sacrifice your career for it to some extent - then you shouldn't do it.
2 - If anything it can look better having been in the military, with rare regional exceptions. People for some reason assume that you came out very competent. The hardest part about finding work in San Diego will be the job market in San Diego.
3 - It depends. The only way you're going to San Diego as a resident is Navy (with extremely rare exceptions). How hard it is is just like everything else: you have to know if they train your specialty there (I imagine they train just about everything in San Diego? Maybe a few exceptions like Neurosurgery) and whether or not you're competitive. Here's the thing with military medicine, however: you will have one option in that area. If you don't match there, you won't train there. As opposed to the civilian side, where you may have more than one training option.
4 - No one is going to force you in to EM or surgery. The biggest question for you will be whether or not the military is training the full breadth of specialties in 4-5 years. They probably will be. But there's a lot in flux right now and no one knows for sure. If for some reason they weren't, you'd be looking at GMO time and then matching as a civilian 5 years after your medical school.
5 - You'll love this one: if you want to avoid GMO tours, just join the Army. They have them, but they're traditionally far more rare than they are in the Navy, where they're very common (unless that has changed recently). There's no sure-fire way to avoid GMO in any service. It's just about hedging your bets. Very unlikely in the Army (but you won't be training in San Diego), very common in the Navy. But once you sign on the dotted line, the military owns your life, and they will do with you whatever they want to do with you. It's not about what they "can" or "can't" do. It's about what they're likely to do, what's the next most likely, and so forth until you get to "very unlikely."
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You really should not do HPSP. Your post shows too many conditions upon which your happiness appears to depend to be able to expect a positive experience from military medicine.
Avoiding debt is about the only sure benefit you will have.
Avoiding the GMO tours? As others have pointed out, the Navy has the highest probability of requiring one. But if you want a chance of serving in California, the Navy has the most billets there, and many of them are for GMOs.
Getting a residency or duty station in California? Both are possible, mainly with the Navy and some with the Air Force (no residency there unless you are deferred for a civilian residency and you match somewhere in California, both not certainties.) While the Navy does have residencies in San Diego, they have twice as many elsewhere.
How unhappy are you going to be if you never get a billet on the West Coast, you end up in Bethesda or Portsmouth or San Antonio before and after a GMO tour somewhere not in California? If you can't come to terms with that, you should not take HPSP.
You will still have to do well in med school if you want good residency options in a competitive specialty, in or out of the service.
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First off, congrats on your acceptance. It's a big achievement.
California is rough. Has been forever ... the medical school at my own UC undergrad campus shunned me, didn't even send out a secondary. There were something like 400 pre-meds in my not-plain-biology undergrad major alone.
Not at all.
Fitness has is zero impact on duty station assignments. (If you're obese or actually fail the fitness test, it can conceivably hurt you, but there's no bonus points for doing well.)
The typical reward for being exceptionally fit in the Navy, and by "exceptionally fit" I mean maxing out the fitness test twice per year, is that you might get a 72 or 96 hour liberty (i.e. a 3 or 4 day weekend) twice per year, if the circumstances and schedule can support it. And by "typical" I mean some commands do it and some don't.
Being fit is such a nonadvantage that I (and many others) just do the minimum numbers during the test and stop. Truthfully, my primary goal during the fitness test is to not sweat even a single drop so I can go straight back to work without having to use the locker room showers. That this is possible to do at all should give an idea of how low the bar for "fitness" is. (For me "good" is 24 push-ups, 34 sit-ups, and about 90 calories burnt on a stationary bike in 12 minutes.) To be clear, I'm reasonably fit, but documenting it for Navy purposes isn't really worth the effort.
You're not signing up to be a SEAL.
If someone told you stats don't matter when applying to military residencies, somebody lied to you. GPA, board scores, and faculty recommendations are king. If you are looking forward to fitness helping you out, you're going to be 2x as angry when you learn about nebulous factors like FITREPs and "general military potential", easily gamed stuff the GMESB's research-value-point-chart that equates a peer-reviewed publication in Nature with a pair of posters hung up in the hallway, and whatever other subjective horsetrading happens behind closed doors.
These are good reasons to join the military.
Not looking to judge, just give answers.
Seriously, spend a couple days digging through the forum. Don't get me wrong, there's excitement and adventure to be had in the military medical corps (well maybe not so much the Air Force). But you seem to have some misconceptions about the life. Basically, we're just doctors working in hospitals, with some occasional free travel to occasionally interesting places.
California is rough. Has been forever ... the medical school at my own UC undergrad campus shunned me, didn't even send out a secondary. There were something like 400 pre-meds in my not-plain-biology undergrad major alone.
Not at all.
Fitness has is zero impact on duty station assignments. (If you're obese or actually fail the fitness test, it can conceivably hurt you, but there's no bonus points for doing well.)
The typical reward for being exceptionally fit in the Navy, and by "exceptionally fit" I mean maxing out the fitness test twice per year, is that you might get a 72 or 96 hour liberty (i.e. a 3 or 4 day weekend) twice per year, if the circumstances and schedule can support it. And by "typical" I mean some commands do it and some don't.
Being fit is such a nonadvantage that I (and many others) just do the minimum numbers during the test and stop. Truthfully, my primary goal during the fitness test is to not sweat even a single drop so I can go straight back to work without having to use the locker room showers. That this is possible to do at all should give an idea of how low the bar for "fitness" is. (For me "good" is 24 push-ups, 34 sit-ups, and about 90 calories burnt on a stationary bike in 12 minutes.) To be clear, I'm reasonably fit, but documenting it for Navy purposes isn't really worth the effort.
You're not signing up to be a SEAL.
If someone told you stats don't matter when applying to military residencies, somebody lied to you. GPA, board scores, and faculty recommendations are king. If you are looking forward to fitness helping you out, you're going to be 2x as angry when you learn about nebulous factors like FITREPs and "general military potential", easily gamed stuff the GMESB's research-value-point-chart that equates a peer-reviewed publication in Nature with a pair of posters hung up in the hallway, and whatever other subjective horsetrading happens behind closed doors.
These are good reasons to join the military.
Not looking to judge, just give answers.
Seriously, spend a couple days digging through the forum. Don't get me wrong, there's excitement and adventure to be had in the military medical corps (well maybe not so much the Air Force). But you seem to have some misconceptions about the life. Basically, we're just doctors working in hospitals, with some occasional free travel to occasionally interesting places.
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Ditto on that. It used to tick off the NCOs something fierce, but..you know...what’s in it for me?
And sometimes we’re doctors struggling to practice at something barely resembling a hospital. And sometimes we’re doctors just wanting you see enough sick call to earn the right to finish our training in 1-4 years. And sometimes we’re doctors who were forced to stop practicing medicine as we know it so that we can be a heeled dog to a line unit command. Maybe not often, but people need to know these things happen with varying frequency whether they want it or not.
Which I know pgg knows, I’m just dovetailing.
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deleted1009711
These are GREAT answers guys, I will re-read them many times, thanks a lot!
Off topic, but in regards to your user name and fact you love military history, if you ever get the chance to go to Minsk they have an incredible WWII military museum largely associated with Operation Bagration (in fact even the city square, etc has many more interesting monuments regard this 1944 epic battle). I got to see it on a business trip and at the time only part of it was open but it was still very impressive... as you can imagine it has a slightly biased presentation viewpoint
