Reliability of Getting Residency in Area of Choice

[DeiReus]

Hey all, this is my first post on this forum, and this does seem the appropriate place to ask my question.

My question is how much can I rely on my wife to get a residency in the city of her choice?

Here are the details and the "why" behind the question. My wife is a MS1 at BCM currently and I am graduating this semester and looking at law school for next year. If I were to go this year, we would both graduate at the same time and both be looking for our jobs/residency simultaneously and this wouldn't be that bad; except for the crushing 150k debt I would face if I went to law school in Houston where we currently are. I have been offered a much more feasible tuition price from the law school in Ft. Worth however, but I can wait to go there for a few years to support my wife through this hard time. This of course infers that doing LDR is off the table for us, it just won't work. I don't mind deferring my dream for three years to avoid debt and support the wife, (she already has enough debt!) but I would rather go into monster debt together than risk her not getting a residency because she applied too narrowly for my sake.

I know residencies are mostly contingent on STEP scores, or whatever the term may be (sorry), but does her having roots in the city, being a URM, being interested in pediatrics, and going to a top program improve the odds of this enough that I can wait to go my professional school with near certainty; or would this be a recipe for disaster for the both of us and I would be better off proceeding with jumping off the debt cliff with the other lemmings?

Any and all input is appreciated!

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[smq123]

Hey all, this is my first post on this forum, and this does seem the appropriate place to ask my question.

My question is how much can I rely on my wife to get a residency in the city of her choice?

Here are the details and the "why" behind the question. My wife is a MS1 at BCM currently and I am graduating this semester and looking at law school for next year. If I were to go this year, we would both graduate at the same time and both be looking for our jobs/residency simultaneously and this wouldn't be that bad; except for the crushing 150k debt I would face if I went to law school in Houston where we currently are. I have been offered a much more feasible tuition price from the law school in Ft. Worth however, but I can wait to go there for a few years to support my wife through this hard time. This of course infers that doing LDR is off the table for us, it just won't work. I don't mind deferring my dream for three years to avoid debt and support the wife, (she already has enough debt!) but I would rather go into monster debt together than risk her not getting a residency because she applied too narrowly for my sake.

I know residencies are mostly contingent on STEP scores, or whatever the term may be (sorry), but does her having roots in the city, being a URM, being interested in pediatrics, and going to a top program improve the odds of this enough that I can wait to go my professional school with near certainty; or would this be a recipe for disaster for the both of us and I would be better off proceeding with jumping off the debt cliff with the other lemmings?

Any and all input is appreciated!

It depends on a lot of factors.

One of the biggest factors is specialty choice. If she decides to do primary care (which generally implies family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics), and she is a decent student with reasonable interpersonal skills, she will almost certainly get whatever residency she wants. Especially if she has a compelling reason to be in a particular location.

If, however, she decides to do something more competitive, such as neurosurgery, radiology, anesthesiology, etc., then she will have to apply much more broadly.