Wow! I guess a lot of you liked the last subject so I guess I'll flush out our thoughts on residency a little more. Dan wants to go into Orthopedics and is thinking of maybe specializing in either knee and hip replacement or pediatric orthopedics. Those specializing opportunities sort of color our preferences for residency since he'd need to do a year fellowship in pediatrics if that's the route he wanted to go. It would be really nice to have a year fellowship at the same place as his residency since we wouldn't really want to move our kids that much, but then again kids bounce back and he's not totally sold on the pediatric business.
Keep in mind that Dan has a list of somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 programs he's going to apply for. I once made the mistake of asking him where they all were, but then stopped listening at around 15. There's just too many possibilities and we really have very little say over where we end up. That's why I've chosen to focus on three. Three seems to be the number that my brain can actually handle.
Anyway, Daniel talked to his advisor after she'd met with someone from University of Colorado and she said it was sort of a long shot for him, even with his good board score and grades. There's just a lot of applicants and there's only really two spots open for students who didn't go there for medical school. She said though if we even wanted a shot at all he'd have to do an away rotation there. We'd really like to live in Denver because it's close to my sister and easily within driving distance to Dan's brother. We could also drive to other extended family on both sides even though that would be a long drive. Also, they have a pediatric fellowship and Daniel really likes how the residency program is set up. Knowing nothing about the programs I have no comment on that. On top of that Colorado is awesome.
She also raised concern about U of U. It is a little less difficult to get in, but, like Janelle said in the comments, their reputation is to stay away from our demographic (that being married with children and active in the Latter-Day Saint religion). Luckily Daniel didn't attend BYU as an undergrad because we've heard they really shy away from those students. I have no idea anything about the program other than Dan said it was "really good." We'd like to be in Salt Lake because it's fairly central to both sides of our extended family. Plus, I have a Grandma in Salt Lake that I'd really like to be able to live close to for health reasons.
The Mayo Clinic is also very competitive program, but each year a few students from Daniel's medical school go there for residency. They don't have a pediatric fellowship though so that's one drawback. But Daniel pretty much loves the way their program is set up. It has a lot of one on one instruction. I have heard NOTHING but positive reviews from people who have lived or vacationed there. Everyone loves it. The only cause for concern is that I looked Rochester up in my gardening book and it has the same climate zone as Siberia. SIBERIA! My husband is thinking of taking our family up to Siberia to become frozen Popsicles. He knows what a wimp I am.
So last night after reading the email from his advisor Dan said, "I guess I'm going to have to ask her what she thinks isn't a long shot for me."
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5 comments:
Since Dan is going into Orthoyou may want to think about applying for more than 30 programs. In the last few years medical schools have opened up extra spots but residencies have not. Last year there was an overabundance of applicants overall, but especially in fields like Ortho. Last year's match was actually pretty rough, meaning there's extra people left over from last year to apply again this year- creating an abundance for the next year- and so on. Painful as it is to spend all that extra on applying and interviewing- believe me, you don't want to NOT match. I don't want to freak you out- just prepare you.
Denver is very attractive to many people/ professions. It's just so darn near perfect here.
I heard that even law firms here don't like to hire from out of state because they are afraid the hires expect to go skiing all the time and not dedicate as much time to the firm as the firm would like!
Dan's dad graduated from CU med school & his grandmother still lived in Grand Junction - maybe that info will help......plus he doesn't ski!
Janelle-Yeah, I've heard that 30 is really low as far as ortho is concerned and he's not opposed to going higher than that. I just can't even fathom all the options so I don't even think about it right now. I figure I'll face it when I have to.
TRS- I think the whole "Colorado Experience" is a big issue for CU. A lot of people apply there because they would like to have it so it makes sense that the schools would shy away from out of state students.
I, of course, think personally think that he would be a great fit there, with family from both sides living in the state and a Dad that attended there but the decision isn't mine.
it's my dream to live in colorado. that would be neat if you got to go there. kevin applied to 47 programs and then 10 or so for intern year. we thought interviews would be torture but in the end it wasn't so bad. also, kevin wrote several programs when he heard of others getting interviews places, if he hadn't heard from them yet, and told them why he'd really love to go there, his wife was from there, etc. it helped a lot and we think he got several interviews from that.
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