I know in my last post I went into the difficulty Caribbean med students have at getting interviews-- for every interview offer we receive, we tend to get 10-15 rejections. Within every specialty, you have the set number of hospitals who are historially IMG friendly and many Caribbean applicants will be getting many of the same interviews at these institutions, however people still can secure a couple more interviews at less IMG friendly programs that are intrigued enough to offer an interview. Factors that can lead to these interviews include: board scores that can't be ignored,"home field advantage" (if you are originally from the area of the program), or you know someone/ have a connection.
While going through the match lists from AUC, St. Geroge's, Ross, etc I pulled out the most IMG friendly pediatric programs that people from all these institutions were interviewing at. Aside from a few impressive matches for SGU pediatric hopefuls, most of the other Caribbean med schools had the same matches.
I didn't see any real outliers. There's always exceptions of course, but the vast majority of programs were the same across the board. Hence this makes me think that people interested in pediatrics will be able to save a ton of $$$$ on applications by just knowing which programs to apply to. Without further ado, here's a list!
Interviews I Got: hence, I know for a fact these are Caribbean friendly
-John Stroger Hospital of Cook County Program (Chicago, IL)-Hurley Medical Center/ Michigan State University Program (Flint, MI)
-Western Michigan University School of Medicine Program (Kalamazoo, MI)
-Atlantic Health Program (Morristown, NJ)
-Jersey Shore University Medical Center Program (Neptune, NJ)
-St. Peter's University Hospital Program (New Brunswick, NJ)
-Albany Medical Center Program (Albany, NY)
-Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center Program (Bronx, NY)
-Nassau University Medical Center Program (East Meadow, NY)
-New York Methodist Hospital Program (Brooklyn, NY)
-Richmond University Medical Center Program (Staten Island, New York)
-SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn Program (Brooklyn, NY)
-SUNY at Stony Brook Program (Stony Brook, NY)
-St. Barnabas Hospital Program (Bronx, NY)
-Staten Island University Hospital Program (Staten Island, New York)
-University at Buffalo Program (Buffalo, NY)
-Case Western Reserve University (MetroHealth) Program (Cleveland, OH)
-Marshfield Clinic- St. Joseph's Hospital Program (Marshfield, WI)
Other Pediatric Programs Caribbean Students Matched At (taken from AUC, AUA, Saba, Ross, St. George's, and St. Matthew's match lists)
-University of California (San Francisco)/Fresno Program (San Francisco, CA)-Florida Hospital Medical Center Program (Orlando, FL)
-University of Florida College of Medicine Jacksonville Program (Jacksonville, FL)
-Mount Sinai Hospital Medical Center of Chicago Program (Chicago, IL)
-Advocate Lutheran General Hospital Program (Park Ridge, IL)
-University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria Program (Peoria, IL)
-Louisiana State University Health Science Center -Shrevport Program (Shrevport, LA)
-Our Lady of the Lake Program (Baton Rouge, LA)
-Sinai Hospital of Baltimore Program (Baltimore, MD)
-St. John Hospital and Medical Center Program (Detroit, MI)
-Children's Hospital of Michigan Program (Detroit, MI)
-William Beaumont Hospital Program (Royal Oak, MI)
-University of Mississippi Medical Center Program (Jackson, MS)
-University of Missouri Program (Columbia, MO)
-Cooper Univ Hospital Program/Cooper Medical School of Rowan Univ(Camden, NJ)
-Rutgers New Jersey Medical School Program (Newark, NJ)
-St Joseph's Regional Medical Center Program/ New York Medical College (Patterson, NJ)
-Brooklyn Hospital Center Program (Brooklyn, NY)
-Flushing Hospital Medical Center Program (Flushing, NY)
-Harlem Hospital Center Program (Harlem, NY)
-Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center Program (Bronx, NY)
-Maimonides Medical Center/Infants and Children's Hospital of Brooklyn Program (Brooklyn, NY)
-SUNY Upstate Medical University Program (Syracuse, NY)
-Winthrop University Hospital Program (Mineola, NY)
-Cleveland Clinic Foundation (Cleveland, OH)
-University of Oklahoma College of Medicine -Tulsa Program (Tulsa, OK)
-Albert Einstein Healthcare Network Program (Philadelphia, PA)
-Crozer-Chester Medical Center (Upland, PA)
-Geisinger Health System Program (Danville, PA)
-East Tennessee State University Program (Mountain Home, TN)
-University of Tennessee College of Medicine at Chattanooga Program (Chattanooga, TN)
-Driscoll Children's Hospital Program (Corpus Christie, TX)
-Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Paul L. Foster School of Med (El Paso, TX)
-Texas Tech University (Amarillo) Program (Amarillo, TX)
-Texas Tech University (Lubbock) Program (Lubbock, TX)
This list is not exhaustive. It's 53 IMG-friendly programs out of the 210 total pediatric residencies in the United States. There are a couple of outlier programs I saw on the SGU pediatrics match that don't traditionally like IMGs (Children's at Univ of Miami, Rainbow Babies in Cleveland or WashU in St. Louis), so I figure there were other factors at play, so I left them off the list above. Anyway...apply to the programs above and any programs in your general geographic region. Otherwise, especially with many of the big name institutions (Never apply to Yale or Boston Children's or CHOP, they throw out IMGs automatically), don't waste your money applying to them unless you have some sort of connection or outstanding board scores (peds= 240+).
So are you saying you have to have USMLE step scores of over 240+ as a carribean med student for peds.
ReplyDeleteNo. I'm saying if you want a big name peds program you will have to have a score that high coming from the caribbean.
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DeleteDon't wait. Apply first. Once your score comes in you can update your application and all the programs you applied to will be notified and will be able to see your score.
DeleteI have a question! My CK result comes out on the 16th and applications open on the 15th. Should I go ahead and send my application in on the 15th without the CK score or wait?
ReplyDeleteApply right when it opens! your application will be one of the early ones. You may not get an interview till your score comes in however but once it does, load it to your eras and the programs will be notified of your new score.
DeleteHi, Andrea,
ReplyDeleteIt was a well written column. Thanks for sharing the info. Just wanted to ask you , how long after submitting myERAS application to programs, do we start getting invitations for interviews in Pediatrics? I meant to ask the average time lag between submitting my ERAS application and e-mail response from programs. I heard the response is not as quick as IM or other program.
It really depends on the programs. I got my first interview a day after sending out my applications but many programs will wait till Oct 1st once the MSPE letter is uploaded
DeleteHI Andrea, thank you for everything, your posts are brilliant.
ReplyDeleteI just started attending a school which is new and is not well known. I am very worried because it is not a big 4 and nobody has matched nonetheless graduated from this school (first graduate class is next year).
What are your thoughts? I would be in peace of mind if I had been attending a big 4, but unfortunately this is not the case.
Thank you
Hi Ammar,
DeleteI would be slightly wary of attending and paying for a school for no proven track record. You can find yourself in a lot of debt if it doesn't work out in your favor in the end. I just say proceed with caution. If you can go back and take more classes to improve your GPA or retaking the MCAT for a higher school, I would personally go that route before going to a brand new school.
Hope it all works out for you.
hi Andrea,
ReplyDeletedo you have any idea if having US clinical experience is very important or i still can apply without it and get accepted ??
You must 100% have US clinical experience if you hope in matching in the US if you are a foreign grad. Programs won't look at your application if you have no US experience.
DeleteHi Andrea,
ReplyDeleteI love your blog. Fellow AUCer here. I would like to get some input from you. For the longest time, I wanted to go into peds, but during fourth year I completed an EM elective and fell in love with it. However, my boards are mediocre although got high class rank, great LORs, extra-curriculars (research, publication). I mostly applied to EM, but still to several peds programs. EM sends out interview invites late (mid-October) but I already got peds interviews. I did not know about pre-match programs, and I just learned one of my peds interviews is at a pre-match program. I really want to do EM, but my worry is what I would do if I was pre-matched in peds at that site. I saw on your list where you got interviews at that a couple were pre-match programs. How did it work for you? Did you get offers? Some of my friends suggested if I was to get at least 10 interviews, I should not accept an offer. Since my boards aren't great, I doubt I will get even half as many invites as you did. I know it is all still hypothetical, but I would like to get as much input as possible so that by the time if I were presented with such a scenario, I will be able to make the best informed decision. Taking the offer, I would wonder if I had gotten into an EM program. Not taking the offer and not matching at all, I would be eternally upset with my decision. I like peds a lot, so I think I would still be happy in the long run; but I feel that EM is what I am meant to do. If it came down to it, I would later at least try to attain a peds EM fellowship although I would like to work in the general ED.
I am sorry, the message got a lot longer than anticipated.
~JC
Hey JC, although I got interviews at some prematch programs I actually didn't go to any of the interviews. I say don't prematch. Give yourself time and just go through the match. If EM is really want you want than keep at it. I will tell you this though, if you do end up in pediatrics you can still do pediatric ER as a fellowship. Quite a few guys from my program are going into pedi EM after this year and it's very exciting especially if you end up in a level 1 trauma center where you are stabilizing kids in car accidents, shootings, drownings, etc. I just finished ER this last week and it was quite the whirlwind.
ReplyDeleteHow did you apply to prematch programs? Can you find them all through FREIDA?
ReplyDeletehonestly, I think programs that do the pre-match are normally in the match at first, so when you re there interviewing you find out that it's for a pre-match position. This happened a couple of times in my interview trail... especially up in the NY area. NY Methodist and Bronx-Lebanon etc may try to persuade some applicants to pre-match with them
Delete