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Is it worth it to complete an intern year at a prestigious program if you matched derm?
i do not want my panel to be full of patients who are screening for their derms intern year program by prestige. the mgh trained people can have fun with those patients :). id rather have the less neurotic ones. there is no shortage of derm patients
Depends. I wouldn't recommend going to an HCA prelim program where you're smarter than all your Carribean seniors either.
Any recommendation for programs that take Research fellows as future candidates? << Are you referring to med student fellowships or MD clinical research fellowships?
Both :) >> Hard to say. There are medical students who even do Harvard Derm research fellowships who don't match (although I notice they have matched during intern year). In terms of MD clinical research fellowships (so for those who went unmatched in MS-4 and completed an internship + USMLE Step 3), your best bet is looking at the track record of previous clinical MD research fellows for that faculty member matching into Dermatology. >Thank you!!!!!
Do people without a RY or additional degree (PhD, MPH, whatever) have any chance at the top programs anymore? Harvard, Penn, and UCSF all didn't take a single person who didnt... < theres no chance honestly with the amount of people doing RY year, it almost hurts you if you dont.
Is it still helpful to take a RY if it's not connected with an academic program? < is it paid? , my guess is probably not a good idea < Definitely not. The whole point of a RY isn't even the publications it's literally ALL about connecting with a department in the hopes that they'll like you enough to rank you highly. I know finances are difficult but also wouldn't suggest you let the pay distract you from this-- in the end it's a whole year of your life that you might be giving up if the RY doesn't pan out<most people dont match at the research institution they do the research year at...in fact the most powerhouse institutions that have the most number of people they match year in and year out to derm and most publications etc dont even give much consideration to their research fellows for ranking them (harvard, northwestern, ucsf, upenn etc) unlike USC and others. at these places they still try to match you well but youre just a hamster on a wheel and shouldnt get your hopes up of getting ranked at all there. they wont even remember you if you matched or not the following year there will be more people to try to match, more people they are recruiting to their RY and so on. i wouldnt take it personally their research-matching machine depends on people continuing to match so its easier to imagine yourself as insignificant and not likely to get ranked there to set expectations low. dont let this fear of being afraid of crashing like all the waves before you get to your head at the same time - remember that you're not just a wave - youre part of the ocean << OP here, appreciate these responses and yes it's paid and has a good track record of matching ppl and the PI is well known but this is primarily about working in a private clinic and also doing research (may speak with previous fellows to get a better idea) < Yeah maybe institutions don't always match their own fellows but every RY mentor has connections in multiple places... doing research in a private clinic doesn't really help you build connections at academic institutions. But it's your life you do you!
its becoming more typical from what ive heard from faculty. phd doesnt carry all that weight as it used to for derm regular track or 2 matching more about what you can do. its the rare applicant but there are some studs out there that can go toe to toe with phd applicants for 2 without the phd usually research year people
Is it worth even trying for an away at stanford, or too low yield ? < You miss all the shots you don't take<there is no harm in applying. if you apply for and get the away rotation at stanford what people were trying to say is suddenly your pre-test probability for actually matching there is a lot higher having gotten the away there than getting any away rotation by itself at any other institution given the scrutiny they place on selecting just a few rotators. the math works out but people still dont like to believe in facts on here < I personally know of 3 people that got aways at Stanford but none seemed to match there so I'm wondering if its low yield even after getting the away<if you made it this far as a trainee i dont need to tell you what is wrong with extrapolating from n=3 people. stanford away rotators have gotten ranked very high and many have matchrd there before. your odds are better there than umiami or harvard or almost any institution besides places like emory maybe. since stanford derm interviews are such a small number of trainees you can literally extrapolate how ranking would have been done many years of applicants and show that the odds are incredibly high for away rotators < on the flip side I know of about 4 people who did aways this past year and they all interviewed and matched there so
Isnt the match binding? There is some story about someone who matched at stanford last cycle but now is a harvard med derm resident. How is this possible ?
what? no they stayed in medicine. you can break the match if both parties agree
med-derm actually. As long as this person is happy, that's all that matters!
And it opened the door for a previously unmatched applicant
Do we know which schools had several unmatched applicants? <stanford < how many? < Miami, around 7 or so from the 15 the applied<sad but thats like normal for miami. stanford is unusual. we started praying for umiami this cycle when we heard there were that many applying < whats the # matched for stanford??? < The spreadsheet would suggest at least 5 but who knows how many applied < what about Brown? at some point people were saying they had more applicants than usual < Brown matched 6/6 < great!< Brown only had 6? When I rotated, they said there were 10-11 < only 6 applied this cycle in the end. People ended up taking research years. < iheard stanford was 5/10 but im not sure?
umiami is a mid tier shcool with a good derm department, so that sucks.<a dept that has a tradition of not interviewing half their students thanos style, some who even match to better derm departments < harvard is the same < Miami is a strong middle tier medical school which just happens to have a top tier Derm program. Many Miami Miller students end up doing a research year there, but as huge as their class sizes are, 15 people from Miami matching into Derm would be very unusual.
Did anyone from a top medical school not match derm this cycle? < yes < I'm at a T20 and 2 people didn't match out of 8 applying< belived stanford happened<what happened there? < several from top programs didn't match (large majority did but you are kidding yourself if you think every single applicant from top 10 schools matched)< how do people know this? It sounds like hearsay<some harvard md phd guy didnt match last year< he was very selective in where he applied.
I wonder with things being virtual in terms of interviews, whether derm residency programs are now looking inwards and thus mainly recruiting from internal candidates (who they have known for a longer period of time over 4-5 years), unlike when you got to meet external candidates face to face in formal interviews. Case Western Derm matching mainly their own students at Case is very unusual and not at all in line with how they have matched Derm applicants in previous years and in the last two decades. Or maybe it's just possible they're being nicer and better to their home students.
people are just here to find echochamber to reinforce their bias without any evidence. << Probably true, although it doesn't really answer why certain derm residency programs that never used to recruit heavily from their internal home candidates are now suddenly doing that a lot more. < they could just be better candidates.... << And you think that wasn't the case in the past? I've matched so it's not really an issue for me, but I do think that future medical students (especially those who are maybe of lower income and don't have as many resources at their particular medical school) applying to Derm should be able to know if it's really worth taking the time to rotate at a particular place or applying to a particular program if they really don't have a chance of getting an interview or matching there.
Case western taking their own students is like an NFL scout picking students from LSU... why wouldn't top med schools feed into their own home programs? < Why the FUCK would you say LSU and not Alabama in this example? < What's the difference between the two? <<< To the OP, I guarantee you in past match cycles Case Western has gotten students from top tier med schools, so to use your analogy, they're actually dropping down, compared to before when they were clawing their way up in terms of matched Derm applicants.> Wayne state and UIC are not top med schools, maybe in the midwest << Case Western is a much higher ranked Derm residency program compared to UIC and Wayne State, due to their clinical & basic science research base. < what the fuck is the point of this comment. of course this is a true statement that has nothing to do with this discussion. im waiting on someone to tell me which harvard or yale student case western has matched recently. << Why are you so salty?<because someone is lying, distracting, and or all of the above to hide up observations about the case western match list and likely rank list that are not only true. but useful for future applicants. so obvious when this happens. << I have no idea why UIC and Wayne State were brought into the discussion.<those are med schools the residents from case western the last 4 years have come from. midwest schools. they take residents from midwest state schools they dont have harvard students interviewing there and ranking them high very often. that is useful to know. < Again, that's not been Case Western's recruiting process previously. They're not a state flagship. They've matched people coming from USC, Pitt, Harvard, Penn, etc. but stay salty and mad.
no one has shown proof of recent yale or harvard to case western residents. its not hard to pull up a link of someone online if this actually exists. if it exists it is a rare phenomenon and they probably had family in the area or something. why the heck else would you want to go to cleveland <<< This isn't criminal court. You can either believe it or not. No one cares.>again, just showing this spreadsheet is full of bad faith actors who dont really care to point out things that are helpful to most future applicants. if you are a midwest area student with strong credentials for dermatology application case western is probably a good target program for you. no one seriously looks at case western when they interview there and think shit do i not have a shot here because the 5 harvard and yale people are going to end up here over me. you do feel that way, however at other midwest programs sometimes.
MS3 here--now that we see who matched where, who is the best person to do a research year with? Anybody have a great experience with their mentors or see a list of people who matched well? Saw the spreadsheet but not sure where to start. Any other good ones?
tally up the people who have been named dropped. thats who you should work with< if you do a RYwith one of those people, are you basically guaranteed to match?<what part of theres no gurantees to match do you not understand that has been repeated dozens of times. there are only pre-test and post-test probabilities. and these things increase your pre-test probability of matching<so youre saying theres people that work with people like arash and april and then dont match?<no. arash and april are the best of the best PI's in all of dermworld. a step below those people and you end up with extremely strong but non perfect batting averages. of the PI's who regularly have at least one med student research fellow a year and have done that for at least several years you can count on your hands the ones that have perfect track records. a pragmatic outlook is a strong research year mentor probably has had someone not match before on the first try at a minimum which usually says more about the process than about them as a mentor. arash and april understand as people with perfect track records more than anyone that literally any of their research fellows no matter how strong could just not match and the longer they go at it maybe that might be the case one day. its just probability.
some of armstrong fellows go unmatched every year
do april and arash make calls for their mentees?>i doubt they need to
any other good ones?
Look at their websites and old fellows--scroll to bottom of this https://mostaghimi.bwh.harvard.edu/who-we-are/current-members/ <i would be careful as a lot of people who are not of that caliber as arash mostaghimi do the simple magic trick of disappearing people who didnt match or ended up pursuing something else afterwards to make their stats look better. look at what happened to the mt sinai person. none of us are truly shocked because that happens every year dozens or more places its pretty normalized in derm academia. without knowing anything about these people or how arash picks research fellows you can, from public sleuthing, find that many of these people already had several derm publications and thus letters of rec from academic derms without the research year, the ones who didnt go to top med schools were on AOA lists of their medical schools. again, what is your pre-test probability of matching and how can you improve it. that should be the question not necessariliy who is the best RY person to work with. << This is a very good point to keep in mind. Many research fellows now are those who in previous years would have easily matched based on stats (class rank, AOA, USMLE scores) alone even before starting the research fellowship. A lot of this involves being honest about where you stand in terms of your application before jumping in. Don't be surprised if certain PIs (not talking about Mostaghimi here because he's totally awesome) don't want to talk about certain fellows who didn't match or maybe moved on to another specialty. You'll very rarely hear about those people.
What are the top 10 derm programs? Is there a clear consensus on this?
Penn UCSF Harvard NYU Stanford Yale Mount Sinai Northwestern UTSW etc.
It matters for people who want to go into academics/do research... << LOL, no it doesn't. Academia is in need of dermatologists. Beggars can't be choosers.
To the point below: 1) programs that didn't happen to match any URM candidates didn't necessarily do so intentionally, the match is a 2-way process and not indicative of the population interviewed or the program's match order 2) Asians aren't URM lol when derm people say "increase diversity" this it not the population they're referring to (and I'm Asian)
1. Most programs pick the applicants they want. Especially top tier ones. 2. I think they were making fun of the fact that someone said they're trying to make "asians extinct" when she still is taking plenty of Asians at her program lol << I mean she can't make every spot URM the way Howard University Derm can. < It's just funny that whenever diversity initiatives get mentioned, Asians get more upset about it than white people, even though whites are racist towards asians as well. That's what I was making fun of. < < Yes, black people are never racist towards Asians. (looks at all the people disproportionately committing violence against Asians)
True that this is a 2-way street. However the question is: why do URM people not rank those programs highly enough to match? This part matters a whole lot too - there are characteristics about specific programs that may be perceived as red flags for URM ultimately informing their ROL. I mean out of 10 (ten) spots in harvard this year, there is not a single Black person.
Right, and Harvard picks who they want (doubt they go past 15 on their ROL list). From what I've heard, Boston is a VERY hostile place for black people. << My guess is at the end of the day while Harvard may care about URM recruitment, it's not the #1 factor (nor should it be). Naturally if you're a highly qualified URM in terms of academics and grades w/many publications, the Derm academic faculty world will be eating out of the palm of your hand.
Those on DermTwitter will have seen the guy who didn't match this cycle with over 50 publications. Clearly pubs aren't everything < pubs and research are just one part of the whole picture. You need to have an overall strong application < Well yes, but we can't assume that their application was weak otherwise < he interviewed at top programs so i dont think he had a weak app at all < which top programs? < I think we all know he would have matched if he applied a couple of years ago without all the craze < who is the guy?<50 pubs wtf < over 60 pubs with no RY. insane. < they run a research ring at Case Med for all derm applicants < research ring is stupid. having strong advocates is much better. < still have no clue who this guy is< just look on Dermtwitter
pub number alone was never the gurantee. nor anything about impact of publications. you still need pubs though, some quantity and some quality. but do you think people fight to work with Arash Mostaghimi and Jonathan Silverberg and April Armstrong type of PI's *just* because they publish the most publications with their trainees. no. its cuz any one of those people on any given afternoon if you were a research fellow working with them were like hey i ran into trouble with some stats they would pull you aside roll their sleeves up and help you troubleshoot since they actually do their own work including stats on research. they actually walk the walk and you learn a lot from the experience and are armed with skills coming out of doing it. the same cannot be said out of every type of research experience < these are the type of people who are heavily invested in their trainees and will make phone calls < some of these PIs are actually known for not making phone calls...< he published with several Harvard ppl and didn't interview there. < let's stop discussing one person specifically
why does yale always match people from nnon-top tier schools? do people from top schools not rank it high?< this isn't true< why would they rank it high? overrated. < that and they like people who send LOI, top applicants wouldn't usually send a LOI to Yale < so they would rather have desperate people who want to be at yale than top applicants. sounds like they have pride/ego issues < this year they were super committed to URIM recruitment because they have an image issue and really want to diversify the program. Usually they take a bunch of internals and people from other Ivy League schools. < current roster has no other top schools? < internal here…they seem to care most about board scores/research achievements + wanting to come to Yale + internal applicants. I know for a fact that they don't care much about where the applicants come from but more about what they've done since starting med school. The chief resident I worked with in clinic there told me that they almost never like Harvard applicants because they too often are arrogant or are not as accomplished as similar applicants from lower tier schools who have had to work hard to be competitive. I kind of get that based on my experience with Harvard people tbh lol. But they've also taken NYU, Cornell, Stanford people in the past 5 years just to name a few.
Love that a bunch of people are dragging yale for having over 12 derm applicants on tik tok. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought it was messed up < i dont think 12 from yale is nearly as outrageous as 15 from harvard that one year. harvard is still on another level. people from yale and upenn who are otherwise academically strong candidates dont match often. harvard is the true problem, not yale < Yale literally only had 2 people go into FM < links to tiktok?
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no one cares if you matched