Yale Med School for Harvard Residency

[FastSpiking]

I noticed that while Yale's residency director ranking isn't particularly high (4.3/5 in USNWR, the lowest in the top 10), something like 1/3 of their class each year gets residencies at Harvard-affiliated hospitals, which seems like a huge percentage to me. So does Harvard like students from Yale Med in particular when it comes to residencies (moreso than other top schools)? Any thoughts/comments would be appreciated!

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[NotAsking4Much]

I noticed that while Yale's residency director ranking isn't particularly high (4.3/5 in USNWR, the lowest in the top 10), something like 1/3 of their class each year gets residencies at Harvard-affiliated hospitals, which seems like a huge percentage to me. So does Harvard like students from Yale Med in particular when it comes to residencies (moreso than other top schools)? Any thoughts/comments would be appreciated!

It's academic nepotism. Because of the close proximity as well as small world in medicine, a lot of yale professors probably came from or are good friends with people at Harvard. Well if these people write your letters, then it's very likely the residency directors at Harvard will be like "wow I know that letter writer. He's a good friend of mine and if he can vouch for this kid, he/she must be good." Also we have a good rep at Harvard.
Don't forget that applying for residency is similar to applying for jobs. Connections matter.

 

[drugsarefun]

I noticed that while Yale's residency director ranking isn't particularly high (4.3/5 in USNWR, the lowest in the top 10), something like 1/3 of their class each year gets residencies at Harvard-affiliated hospitals, which seems like a huge percentage to me. So does Harvard like students from Yale Med in particular when it comes to residencies (moreso than other top schools)? Any thoughts/comments would be appreciated!

Yeah that is interesting, and I have heard some people say "oh, you never know what Yalees learn without grades or mandated exams", etc. but the fact is that Yale matches fantastically. Take the Harvard hospitals out of the picture, and see UCSF, Yale, Penn, Duke, Columbia. 90% of this years graduating class matched at a top 20 academic medical center. That is pretty unbelievable.

I think that the abundance of Harvard has to do with proximity and connections, as stated above. But none of the Ivies are going to doubt the education that Yale students receive. I do think it is interesting that not one person matched at Barnes Jewish (WashU's hospital, and a top 10 hospital in general not to mention a research and academic powerhouse), and I can believe that stemming from the pretentiousness of WashU regarding an "unmeasured" scholastic performance (re: outrage MCAT averages). Of course, I assume Yale's Step 1 averages are very high, but maybe not. Anyone have info on that?

 

[DoctwoB]

It's academic nepotism. Because of the close proximity as well as small world in medicine, a lot of yale professors probably came from or are good friends with people at Harvard. Well if these people write your letters, then it's very likely the residency directors at Harvard will be like "wow I know that letter writer. He's a good friend of mine and if he can vouch for this kid, he/she must be good." Also we have a good rep at Harvard.
Don't forget that applying for residency is similar to applying for jobs. Connections matter.

Connections matter as do location preferences. People in med school on the east coast tend to want to stay on the east coast and vice versa for the west coast. I've noticed that schools in the middle have a much more geographically distributed match. That being said, I definitely agree that certain medschools have "pipelines" into certain programs (entirely specialty dependent) based on connections of the PDs and faculty and also because a given program has had good experiences with students from a given school in the past.

 

[gravitywave]

Dartmouth has a similar setup with Harvard-affiliated residencies; if you're going to continue the rankings comparison, I doubt that any other school in the 30s is sending 10% of their class every year to Harvard.

long story short, yeah, it's regionalism and connections.