UC San Francisco-CA

Harvard and Penn are very similar academic programs with strong emphasis on research and inpatient derm. NYU has better clinical volume/training. << NYU has probably the most "different" vibe of those - great clinical training...but a very large program with MANY facult, long hours, and historically not the happiest residents. Penn is great - probably a bit more "supportive" and "coddling" than UCSF or Harvard.

~30 << not true

more? less?

def more. they have 8ish spots. << wahhhhh I wanted this one!!!

probably closer to 60 invitations

seems like a lot. their yield is probably high <lol no WAY is it 60

It's probably the same as most other programs, ~40. But if you look at the match list from last year, for example, not a single person on that list wasn't connected in some strong way. So likely applicants are ranked before interviews and it doesn't change much after interviews.

Fake news. Not everyone last year was connected to the program

Who wasn't? x2

Even the non-Harvard rotators had gone to Harvard for undergrad << This.

This also applies to Penn. x2 << Basically applies to every top program in the country

Based on my extensive sleuthing, it 100% applies to Harvard, Penn, and Yale. As in you're SOL if you don't have a strong connection of some kind. To a much lesser degree, it applies to Stanford and UCSF

Definitely less with UCSF since they don't have an undergraduate college :)

but you have to have CA ties

Stanford and UCSF to a much lesser degree yes, but CA ties are almost required

disagree no california ties and got UCSF

aren't you a special cookie? We're talking about people who matched, not interview invites you snowflake

I was going to say what this person to the left said, but not as rudely. Yes I'm talking about people who MATCH, not get invited for an interview.

lol got it. thanks for the non-rudeness person #2 i get what ur saying<<what exactly do strong connections mean for these top programs? Like regional, rotating there etc?

reposting from edit history:

congrats superstars!!! are any of you external without any connection/away?

myself x5

that's so awesome, congrats friend!

thank you amigo/a!

Are you guys from other top schools though or have 260+ Step scores? There must be some method to this madness, it can feel so random sometimes x2

I think if it were just 260+ they would still have a lot of work to do to pick candidates. Doubt a place like HMS has to go just based off stats to pick their bunch.

Not true, there's only around 40 applicants with step 1 scores > 260 and they likely interview around 40 candidates" >> as an interviewee, I can tell you the assumptions above are not true x4

what assumption? x2<<needing 260+ step scores.

<hey guys is harvard a good program; first time hearing about it

I think they’re relatively new, I wouldn’t rank personally

yeah my PD asked if its a community program when I mentioned it

My PD didn't recognize the name, is it DO? << I thought it was in the Caribbean, I didn't apply for that reason.

oh SHIT it was spelled with an H in the front; been calling it ARVARD

either way, I think the program is low on brand recognition. who would go there?

yeah the interview date conflicted with a race in my city (which I organized, for just myself) so I declined it

yeah probably not worth the money of flights and hotels, tbh. good call. <I've seen ads for this school inbetween my youtube vids I think

:'D >> Heard Harvard is on probation and might not get accredited next year :/ Pretty poor reputation

LOLOL

Rotated at Harvard. They have overall good breadth of training with MGH, Brigham, BIDMC, few other sites. Lots of research opportunities and seems supported by the department. I found the resident surgical skills, dermatoscopy skills, and skin cancer screening skills were subpar at least in comparison to my home program. The department is great and has lots of leaders in derm - but it has a bit of of a very "old-school" feel with lots of white-haired, Caucasian males at the top of the leadership chain. It definitely has an old-school, East Coast medicine feel. This was sort of a turn off for me. Some of the faculty are primarily research clinicians who work 1/2 day a week in cinic - some of these attendings have really not maintained good clinical skills / not particularly interested in clinical medicine and it clearly showed. The number of faculty is huge - which means many residents don't get a lot of exposure to working 1:1 with a smaller group of faculty (there a few expections - for instance, Kroshinky who runs the inpatient service and is just overall the best person ever). Overall, my take home from my experience there was that Harvard has good training and great research opportunities, but that "prestigious" programs aren't necessarily everyone's preference / despite Harvard's own self-perception as "the holy grail of medicine", you can get similar high-quality of training at other less prestigious institutions.

did you get an interview?

no

oh no! you seem really nice, I'm sorry. thanks for the write up! x 2

< Is Kroshinsky nice? I've heard not as positive comments about her, but I much prefer to believe she's as nice as some people have said. Did you interact with Mostaghimi or Chen while you were there? I thought they are both big on inpatient? Were they nice? << Kroshinsky is a superstar x3

are you 3 internals?

not me. Did a research year with her

oh so you're matching Harvard? ;)

<-- Korshinsky is nice. So is Mostaghimi. I didn't work with Chen.

thank you!

Dr Chen is seriously the nicest person on the planet, encourages even med student autonomy in clinic/inpatient

Have heard conflicting things about Mostaghimi though. Heard he can be hard to get along with from an external rotator there

Are you serious?? Hard to get along with in what way? He seems like he'd be so nice and funny! << seemed judgmental and not very friendly << maybe he just has RBF (resting bitch face lol)?? I really don't want to believe he's not as nice as seems :(

< did your friend who was a rotator recieve an interview? << yup

<< white-haired white dude leadership is a thing at a lot of derm programs.... suprised it's still a thing I thought we were in more modern times

only difference is that people not at the top 5 are the only ones that ask that question

LOCATION. SF and Redwood City/Palo Alto are vastly different from each other. Also, Redwood City is still ~20-30 minute away from the main Stanford Campus, depending on traffic

Also rotated at both and agree UCSF > Stanford. I think UCSF has the best clinical training in the entire country with the diversity of patient population, subspecialties you get to see. <<I am surprised people tiered Stanford in top 5 programs on here. It is great, but a little below the other 4, and I will likley rank other west coast programs above it (but city is a big factor for me...and my SO)

I have no idea what gauge you're using to say Stanford is "a little below the other 4". In what way(s), and does that criterion/criteria really define the strength of a program?

<beware many people will tell you the opposite of what they think (ie ranking program lower) so that you may rank it lower, and they can rank it higher and have more chances to match. Take everything on here with a grain of salt and trust your gut

this x10000. Stanford is an incredibly, incredibly popular program, and people will pull some shit like this

< was just about to post that! Stanford >> UCSF. Less demanding, better name recognition to your patients, and the community/alumni network are incredible. << I think you have to take everything with a grain of salt here, but these are both literally great, so it comes down more to city/fit/your personal opinion. Don't rely too much on other people for top program comparison. People interviewing at both of these will be sucessful regardless of where we go. It is about where you will be happy.

I think Stanford and UCSF are vastly different programs with different institutional cultures. UCSF is a public, urban, medical focused university with excellent dermpath and derm surgery programs. Stanford is a wealthy, private university with lots of money in a very suburban area with great basic science research. I would say UCSF has more leaders in academic dermatology than Stanford and better clinical training. Stanford has better basic science research, lots more money, potential networking connections given the law/business/grad programs/etc., and overall a little more "cush" / hand-holding culture. Even though they are geographically close, these are vastly different programs.

I think UCSF is better than Stanford in pretty much all regards. Stronger dermpath, peds derm, derm surgery, and med derm. They're both great obviously, but UCSF is definitly the stronger program.

Did your school have grades or P/HP/H for preclinicals? I feel that schools with a more emphasis for grades end up with more serious students. I don't know whether that's associative or causative.

nah we're P/F. maybe we're just boring

< don't get me started on the bullshit that is grading. my school has restricted honors for the top ten percent of the clerkship overall, while other schools have a set number you have to score above. talking to other students on away rotations really opened my eyes to how much each school is different and how little programs care besides seeing the "H" next to the subject.

I went to a school with unrestricted honors. After getting some of my feedbacks, such as ([Name] was one of X students getting honors for this rotation), I realized that in the end, only 15-20% of students ended up getting honors anyway. They set the goalpost (specificed ahead of time) knowing that anyone could meet that standard, but very few people would actually make it. Ultimately, I think this was the right approach because people could still work hard for themselves, regardless of whether or not they met the challenge. << yep this is a great attitude to take to it if the goalposts are properly set! someone's schools had to get 90% on evals, 80% on shelf, unrestricted number. i was like....lol what.

Thoughts on UCSF testing straight P/F grading for clinical clerkships?

In general, I don't think UCSF has an amazing match list compared to Harvard, Penn, and Stanford if we remove the in-home matches. I do think that it will make things harder for the PDs << it might also skew towards the name. P from Harvard? Who even cares, it's Harvard. No H from MidTierStateU? LOL what a pleb. So i dont think UCSF policy will really change anything in the MSPE. << also would reduce the stress level for clinical clerkships. << P/F curriculums may have shifted pressure onto Step 1, could P/F clerkships put more pressure on Step 2?

possibly. Or more pressure on the LORs

Maybe they will move us over to EM's standardized letters of evaluation. I know that some admins in dermatology wanted to do that this year but they were not able to do so. >> 2 cells over in E

I understand that most derm PD's or people reading apps have a sense of individual schools and what the typical grade distributions are << it was made better this year by including graphs in the MSPE

really? I hate those graphs. fucks over half the people in the class << i mean im the OP in the cell to the left. it clearly shows <20 people in my class getting honors directly next to the text for my evaluations so IF, and big IF, the person actually reads why i didn't get honors, they can see that it was only a select few who did. idk, from the underachiever pov, it looks good. << Point taken

i think it'll start depending more on school prestige and LOR maybe like you said, and of course step scores. good school prestige begets good LOR so it's a trickle-down system all the way to the interviews haha. holy shit i forgot about SLOE, imagine that in Derm! hell no, fuck SLOEs. Hate being reduced to a single number/grade as if I were a cow << lol look at the charting outcomes and step score distribution, or like filters that exist already. i hate it too but sometimes its gotta be done

I'd rather be evaluated on the quality of my LORs than another hoop to jump through. Step 1 (and to a lesser extent, Step 2) is enough of an objective measure.

But still, you'd be surprised. In the state of California, Stanford and UCSF had middling average Step I scores compared to places UCLA and UCSD, probably because the students knew that Step I wouldn't matter as much for them in the perspective of other program directors would be happy to have some Stanford/UCSF students as part of the program.

do we have official numbers on these? I don't doubt that it exists, but it'd be nice to know the extent of the disparity of avg Step 1 scores of accepted derm applicants from top vs mid schools

I don't know, I go to a top 3 school. I got a slightly above average score for derm, and my Dean and PD told me that I should be "competitive anywhere" although they did warn me that the places that I'd get interviews may seem random and that I may not get all the interviews that I wanted (and I didn't)

Also at a top 3 with derm average step and don't have many interviews (but others here do). maybe trickles will come

<< prestige man, prestige. its exactly what you said, they'd love to have a person from x program on their resident and potentially staff roster. for us mid-low tier schools, we gotta kick ass on step 1 and etc to have a shadow of your position, potentially with not as good LORs << do we need more hoops to jump through, though? I don't think the answer to leveling the playing field for students not from the top tier schools is to create yet another metric. We have to do so much already, from getting a good Step 1 score, to kicking ass on clerkships, doing research, etc << true man. someone down the sheet suggested having a set number of programs to apply to, like 20 or so, i think that might really be playing with fire and lead to a LOT of people unmatched or SOAPing, both applicants and programs << for sure. we'd need a transition period or something. couldn't ERAS spend a fraction of their $$$ to hire a data scientist to study the optimal number of programs to apply to? << they did that, for derm it was high 30s. let me see if i can find link

https://students-residents.aamc.org/applying-residency/filteredresult/apply-smart-data-consider-when-applying-residency/ i think that is what we are discussing - meme

Heads up: more NYC dates coming 1/8 week

UCSF interviews all their 2 candidates on the same date but there are non research track people that date also. The 2 is a 2 day thing with the research part the day before the regular interview.<thanks for the clarification.

Yeah I feel like we would see the same people at a lot of the top programs. It feels so strange to be invited to Harvard but not Penn - does anyone else feel the same?<invites from Harvard, UCSF, NYU...but not penn. I do not understand

Minus UCSF, same. So weird! I wonder why, especially in your case with 3 of the other top 5!<<im not sure tbh. I expected Penn more than UCSF considering i have no ties to the west coast. My only rationale is that my step isnt the absolute highest for these top places, and idk if penn considers step score more than some of the other top programs.

You know what, I too have a sneaking suspiscion Penn values high step scores more than any of the other top 5. I'm around a 255 so maybe they really want that 260+? I really wanted this one :(<<yea im in the low 250 range as well. oh well cant win em all.

True. And sounds like it's Penn's loss in your case :)<<best of luck to you in your interviews kind stranger, and congrats on your well deserved merits!

haha thank you!! :') you too!!

I was fortuante to top 5 IVs with step >260 soI think they just have a really good applicant pool and we missed out because they look for different things?

Congrats on the impressive score and interviews!! Yeah, could be! I think the person who commented in 14D explains well some one the inherent and unavoidable randomness in the process. <- do you guys remember what your responses to the penn supplmemt was at the beginning of the cycle? my step scores weren't as high as yours and i got penn but my response was interest in epidemiology

Congrats!! And that's strange about the tracks, do you think that mattered? And I just selected the 3 year track and combined clinical and research training. Maybe Dr. Gefland was the person who reviewed your app lol <- step 1 was mid 240s

i doubt a 250ish step 1 score would be the disqualifying factor in an otherwise outstanding candidate?

No it's not that it's disqualifying, it's that there's SO MANY qualified applicants with a 250ish step score, you just can't interview them all. <i guess my point is i feel like they would look at some other aspect to try to differentiate applicants rather than just a few points on a standardized test (at least that's the hope lol)

Yes one'd hope lol

On the bright side, I appreciated that the subject started with, “unable to offer interview” x6

There is no bright side. Nothing is bright anymore.

lol, I didn't get an invitation or a rejection so i don't know if I have sheer joy or more disappointment headed my way. ::shrug::

<< That sounds terrible. Anybody with experience at Harvard or UCSF? Even Upenn but that would hard for my SO << I have had several friends at Harvard who swear by their expeirences there << wherever you go, def pick clinical research over basic science research (more pubs). also don't just go for the fancy names, look into places that would actually match you after spending a research year there (not to say that you're not good enough for harvard/ucsf/penn, but also top programs historically don't give a crap if you spent time with them)

I don't know if I agree about a place that takes their fellows. It's not a bad strategy but also a mentor who fights for you can go really far!

Are there any specific people or groups that are worth reaching out to? How did you guys find where to go? << I have heard of people having success with Kroshinsky at Harvard, Koo at UCSF, Rosenbach at Penn, and Mostaghimi at Brigham

I did research with Mostaghimi. He wasn't around most of the time and I didn't find the experience that fulfilling tbh << Not sure why comment was deleted. Seems like someone has an agenda. I worked with Mostaghimi and thought he was really dedicated to me and his other students. If you are thinking about working with him he will put you in touch with people who have actually worked with him and you can get a sense of what their experience was like. Don't believe everything you read on these boards.

I found my research year by talking to just about every upperclassman who had done one in the 1-3 years before me. Really variable year to year and I agree that big name places can be a let down. There's just no way Harvard cares when they have so many research fellows. heck, they a least a few of their own med students didn't match last year so don't expect an interview.

<< Can't speak for insitution at large but both at Harvard and other institutions the specific individual that you work with is the most important part. Look at the people who have worked with these attendings in the past, they've genreally done well. Do your homework, find a person and talk to peple who have worked with them before

Email< did regular Miami come out?

Also trickle

< This is frustrating because same day as UCSF, we basically have to choose now

^ what are good scores and good amount of research? I thought I did too but I guess not :( congrats on the interview to the both of you!

Also, at this point, matching into derm is harder than rad onc.

Depends on the fellowship a good mentor will open up a LOT of doors!!

For reals, I think that getting a good mentor is the most challenging step. He/she should be able to make calls for you on your behalf. One of the people whom I'd worked with actually went out of their way to find an outside match PGY-2 position for a resaerch fellow.

< what are some good research positions (post prelim year)? All I know of is Yoo at UCSF?

do you mean Youn at Stanford?

faculty turn over at ucla is an issue -- regardless still one of the best programs in the country. Both are powerhouse programs

really? Both powerhouses?

people on this sheet throw around "one of the best in the country" and "powerhouse" and the phrase "hands down" like its candy on Halloween x2; "powerhouse? powerhouse? we got UCSF and Stanford crushing it on the west coast, and about 20 stronger programs than UCSD and UCLA, and ya'll want to talk about powerhouse?"

Don't think you can go wrong with either. For me it would come down to am I an LA person or San Diego person.

NYU is the top creme de la creme program.

i would cream myself to match any of the top 5 x2 <My mentors have mentioned slightly different lists to me that they consider the top programs (though 3-4 of those always make the list), so it is all subjective. <<< Thanks for the input, good to know that they may not be as static as they seem

< would love to hear your mentors lists

Tufts, Harvard, BU, UCLA, UCSF

LOL <why are 3/5 in Boston? That just doesn't sound right to me.

this is on the interview invite page in post communication

it just says no everywhere on the post-communcation except UCSF, not exactly the most useful info

man i feel for you, im not saying its right or anything.

I feel for UConn and Maryland internals/rotators. Only given 1 date << can you imagine if you rotated at both, and then had to pick between invites at JHU, UCSF, Northwestern, UC-Davis, UMiami, Mayo-AZ?<<that was me, i had to pick between ucsf, northwestern, mayo AZ, Davis, and hopkins <goals x3

i would love to have those problems

I hate the overlap especially since I have had to pick even though I only have 5 invites. However, with people going to 15+ or 20+ interviews, I'm glad they do this to force a little trickle. << problem is for some of us we already got rejected from these programs, so even if the spots are now open...it won't be to us :(

As someone with far more rejections than invites, we have to accept that those were not for us.

also rotated at UCSF and thought the people were genuine and kind