Chicago, IL
Applicant sentiment — from 9 anonymous posts, 2022-2023 Derm
6.0 / 10
AI-generated summary of opinions expressed in anonymous, unverified posts. It describes what posters wrote, not verified facts about this program. · Updated Aug 2026 · Full program summary · Contest or respond to this entry · Takedown & right of reply
What do you guys think about research fellows getting interview invites at their programs?, What programs are fellow "friendly", at least to give them an interview opportunity?
Smaller departments are more likely to rank and match their own fellows. Much easier to get to know the leadership of the department and show them that you'd be good to work with
AWESOME, thank you, I appreciate it
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Although Northwestern is an away mill, were people still able to get a strong LOR? <ive never heard about this program on the spreadsheet much, also curious there isnt much about it on the tabs from last years cohort
Anyone do a rotation at Uchicago? How was it? I did one. They had four rotators at the same time as me. I spent a month there, mornings clinic with different providers usually had derm path in the afternoons. Interviewed during the rotation. It was alright. They took a prelim and ry this year.
I learned a lot and got plenty of surgical experience. Dr. Stein, Dr. Laumann, and Dr. Busby were fantastic. I found the program director to be unkind and not supportive if you did not have a PhD. Still I am quite thankful for my residency there." if you look at who uchicago derm takes in the last few years id say its pretty true they favor PhDs and nontrad applicants ie previously got MD did reserach fellowship etc. compared to the average derm program. do with this info what you will
Dr. Shea used to be the section chief & program director before the current one. It is still a division under Internal Medicine (take that for what it's worth). It's not the worst Derm program in Chicago but it certainly does not match up with what you'd think a derm program would be like with a medical school like Pritzker (unlike say Northwestern). For those in the know, you'd try as much as possible to try to match somewhere else bc of the culture at the program. It's a program that historically hasn't been too great to its home students in terms of matching at their program. < agree, resident at my home program went there for medical school and did not recommend doing an away there when I asked lol << LOL. I guess nothing has changed much at U of Chicago's derm program since the early 2000s in that regard. I don't know why that is the case, but Pritzker students try as much as possible to match somewhere else for Derm.
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
Hey guys, so I was going through this book that I used during the match, The Successful Match: 200 Rules to Succeed in the Residency Match by Dr. Rajani Katta and Dr. Samir Desai. It was published back in 2009, so some things may be dated, but according to the first page, in the 2007 NRMP match, 38.8% of U.S. seniors (MD) applying to Dermatology failed to match. To give you an idea of how competitive it was even back then, in 2004/2005/2006/2007/2008 there were 263/288/276/288/297 Derm PGY-2 residency spots, respectively.
the average unmatched derm last cycle was a 244 step 1, >250 step 2, 30% were AOA and had something like 15 pubs/abstracts/presentations. they would absolutely demolish even the matched average cohort in 2009 in a head to head matchup. 2009 was when the matched average barely even hit 240 flat for step 1. there were probably more unmatched people last cycle with >250 step 1 than there were total people who applied with a >250 step 1 in 2009. so the old folks dont embarrass themselves i would also refer people interested in this comparison to blogs by JB Carmody who dispels the myth about the USMLE exams being re-normalized like the MCAT from questions correct to a percentile. the scores are comparable by percent correct on any given form between the two years despite later years having even harder forms < I mean that's not surprising as the USMLE Step 1 average score in 2007 was 218. The mean score of the matched dermatology applicant in 2007 was 238 (mean score of the unmatched Derm applicant was 226). 47% of U.S. seniors who matched into Dermatology in 2007 were AOA, so this figure seems to have gone down precipitously from then to now.
47% to mid 30% is not precipitous. it accounts for top schools changing and/or getting rid of AOA over the last two decades which, in line with other published sources about a big chunk of the applicant pool and matched pool coming from top schools makes sense that you would see that slight drop. getting rid of AOA along with lots of academically top quartile applicants no longer having AOA but matching absolutely accounts for a less than 10% drop << Most medical schools have not dropped their AOA chapters (although some schools like U of CT and Stanford historically did not have a chapter for the longest time). 47% AOA is for ALL Derm applicants who matched back in 2007, top tier prorgam or otherwise. A 17 point drop is pretty steep.<*changing. there are a lot of derm programs that can tell AOA is not absolutely based on academics. they would rather take someone who is top quartile than someone who just happened to get AOA because they sold out the right people to the deans of the med school. a derm program can tell from your MSPE << In order to be eligble for AOA, you have to be in the top quartile of the class based on academic standing. That has not changed at all. Most AOA chapters haven't become "woke" like Mt. Sinai & Northwestern.
regardless of what is behind this likely multifactorial drop in AOA% (again still among the highest in all the specialties in charting outcomes) literally every single med student who enters and exits medical school including those who match derm are objectively better in almost every single way than in 2009. you cant dispute those facts. the data about incoming scores, GPA of med students at every med school, USMLE exams, and # of research accomplished cant be handwaved away by some argument that you are trying to concoct that maybe fewer AOA people for whatever reason are either applying or being selected for. USMLE exams, as you may recall from having studied for them yourself, are not trivial exams you take in over a weekend like the SAT or MCAT either in content knowledge or sheer length by # of questions. the rise in all of these metrics whether partially due to availability and access of more refined resources geared towards the market of test takers does not take away from the actual achievement of theses newer generations studying and mastering the material and doing leagues better than previous generations << No one is actually making that argument but you. The only one concocting that argument is you. Stop projecting onto others and ASSuming just because you have a perpetual chip on your shoulder. You're not "special" just because you have more access to online resources that didn't even exist back then.
you dont have to look far to find old derm attendings on SDN being like wtf derm averages of step 1 are 250, something something grade inflation, some other logical fallacy. if every single person in a medical school wanted to get a 250 on step 1 and had the combination of resources+innate ability+dedication to carry out their study plan theres nothing preventing them from getting a 250 other than their ability to click the right answers on test day. its that kind of an exam. im not going to out boomers for their clearly not well researched takes that you can find very easily on internet blogs. if you dont think these fallacies about how exams that are used to select residents exist out in the wild even among pools of attendings who use these metrics to pick residents then you havent talked to enough boomer faculty in any specialty, derm included.
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.
Love seeing nepotism pull through strongly this year. <wtf are you talking about yale matched like none of its people to yale < not talking about Yale <all im seeing is tons of people who did research years matched. like look at northwestern for example most of their class is internals and research year people just like it always has been. miami's class has exactly 3 umiami internals just as i had predicted < no, some people have parents in high positions < you mean cronyism and not nepotism…<where is the nepotism. please point it out i dont see a single nepotism that happened this cycle <which one of her parents is an academic dermatologist who ranks applicants for residency. i think a reasonable definition of nepotism in this context is a familial connection of the first degree who is an academic dermatologist and they are involved in ranking the accused of using nepotism in their application cohort and they wouldnt have matched/been ranked high enough to match without that. everything else you can argue is just connections many of which dont involve familial connections especially in a field like this where connection building is rampant. you wouldnt call it nepotism if your neighbor is the chair of a derm dept and you happened to live there and got exposure and then decided to use that after becoming interested to secure a chance to rotate in their clinic/do research/ get a letter would you? by going to yale med school you are essentially now neighbors with lots of influential people who can help you match into derm. but thats not nepotism because you didnt use family connections to get into yale med school on that alone < when you get connections/family to both the med school and residency, call it nepotism or whatever you call it, it's not fair <its actually hard to argue that connections by family alone in most cases is the sole reason why someone gets into a us medical school since its a very stochastic process and almost all the people you would be accusing of nepotism usually have the grades/scores anyways. no one is saying it doesnt help you get noticed but im trying to say that we should draw the line for nepotism accusations at cases where you wouldnt have gotten in without that < lol there are alot of people with great scores who don't get into derm or get into med school. Then you look at a school like mine with about 30% kids of people who studied here..sure with great scores...but it is still nepotism.
Those who rotated at Uab, why do you think they didn't interview a lot of away rotators? Spill the tea. << Well for starters, UAB is a really strong Dermatology program. They don't need to interview all rotators. Good candidates come to them in the application process. << this sounds like something written by an attending or resident < what makes Uab strong? why would you want to be a derm faculty there vs at Northwestern or UMich or UTSW or UMiami or UPenn or Yale even << You're shifting the goalposts and asking a different question w/regards to the caliber of Dermatology residency programs (how you choose residency programs when it comes to training you vs. how you choose residency programs where you want to go to be an academic faculty member are totally different questions). And to the person who wrote directly after me above, yes, I'm actually a PGY-4 Derm resident, but I wanted to give some perspective as someone now on the other side of the match process. It's somewhat hard to understand for Derm applicants while you'going through it, to see and evaluate derm programs in a methodical way until they get to the other side, where it makes a lot more sense. I'll admit that it's not ideal, when you're trying to decide as an MS-3 student, where exactly to rotate in Derm in MS-4 to maximize your chances of matching into Derm or at least receiving interviews from places that you have rotated.
Penn actually has a fair number of non-Ivy < Penn is not in the top tier because of this< penn is top tier because if you took the 5 most famous/well funded derms and they took their talents elsewhere the dept would still be a top dept. if you did the same to utsw, yale, hopkins, northwestern etc those dept rankings would take a huge dip
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