no we don't really have stats on that. it can't be deduced by the charting outcomes data I thanks for your response, what was the reapp success rate again? I remember seeing it before m

yeah, the independent applicants doesn't split it into people who applied after research fellowship, internship, or another residency.

plus IMGs etc I do you guys think the match rate for reapps is 2x that number quoted in the next box from 2006, i.e. 40% or higher?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2095663 In this paper, it is about 21%. I feel like the study should be repeated though because this was from the 2006 and I think things are much different now. I have a feeling that for those who follow the recommended steps (academic prelim, great research fellowship, keep publishing, etc) it is probably much higher. At my current fellowship, only 1 fellow has ever failed to match (and the fellowship has been around over 10 years), and they had a unique situation (attending in another specialty prior to trying to switch to derm)

That DEFINITELY is a unique situation because of funding issues. There are quite a few derm programs that just can't afford the decrease in Medicare funding for that position after someoen has completed a residency.

I think the yield from a research fellowship varies A LOT depending on who it is with.

yes definitely but there are a lot of them out there and a decent portion are high yield. if you are a competitive applicant you should be able to nab one with a good track record

I think that's the thing though. They won't tell you if you're competitive or not. Quite a few will get desperate and take an applicant, even though they have no intention of matching them.

that's why you should apply broadly and apply to the ones that are well-known to be great fellowships with high match rates. don't just settle for any fellowship without figuring out how likely it is to help you match. i applied to basically every fellowship in the country and had a lot of interviews before i settled on MGH. In the interviews, I asked them just as many questions as they asked me, because this information is not easily accessible and I wanted to choose very wisely. Things that are important to figure out: How many fellows they have had, how many have matched, do they tend to match there or elsewhere, if some fellows didn't match what do they think the reason was, is there structured mentorship especially surrounding the application process (personal statement, interview skills, etc), will the person advocate for you (make calls/emails to programs), is the fellowship geared towards publishing or are you so busy with pharmaceutical clinical trials that you don't have time for publishable projects, is there opportunity to design your own studies, do you get clinic time-- if so how often and working with whom, can you attend resident didactics and conferences, is there opportunity to present research at the AAD and other conferences (funded or not), is there a salary, do you get benefits/health insurance and vacation time/time off for interviews, are you able to do an away rotation(s)? <-- one thing I really want to do in the near future is survey all of the research fellowships I know of and try to create a sort of database with this information so that it is more easily accessible to applicants. the only issue is I don't know how much some people will be willing to share (i.e. if their answers to these questions are not desirable, they will probably want to hide that in hopes they will still get a good fellow) maybe I should survey the fellows instead?

It's really difficult to get some fellows to talk especially if they didn't match (they still need that person to move on to whichever specialty spot). Just because the fellow matched doesn't mean the fellowship had anything to do with it necessarily. I know a girl who tried twice during fellowship, didn't match. Was going to leave and just do something else, then a spot opened up that she heard about (NOT from her fellowship director nor that program) and she got in. It was very serendipitous. I think it's kept more on the DL on purpose, if you want my honest opinion based on fellows I've talked with. You just have to know right questions to ask.

It's almost a "right of passage" to find the right fellowship. Very eye-opening as to people's true character.

How many years should you do, before you cut your losses?

It just depends on how long you are willing to wait, and what the issues are with your application

Yeah, that's really hard to say, especially if you have a fellowship mentor who isn't willing to be honest with you about your chances of matching even after doing their fellowship, and will put the onus on you to figure out. Some don't mind having slave labor forever, it's less work for them.