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[QueenStan]

d

[Edict]

Theres more to a career than just money...

[QueenStan]

6 minutes ago, Edict said:

Theres more to a career than just money...

I know which is why I'm asking if it's another factor like lifestyle...

[Tullius]

There's also the job itself, probably more important than lifestyle.

[hero147]

More prestige maybe?

[Edict]

1 hour ago, QueenStan said:

I know which is why I'm asking if it's another factor like lifestyle...

If you "know" then you wouldn't have phrased your question like this: "Why is Ophtho so much less competitive than plastics when they're making double the average salary?"

[NLengr]

When did optho become less competative than plastics?

[hero147]

30 minutes ago, NLengr said:

When did optho become less competative than plastics?

Probably since 2012/2013

[QueenStan]

On 4/16/2019 at 1:03 PM, NLengr said:

When did optho become less competative than plastics?

1

[QueenStan]

3 hours ago, Edict said:

If you "know" then you wouldn't have phrased your question like this: "Why is Ophtho so much less competitive than plastics when they're making double the average salary?"

Thanks mom! I'll double check my grammar next time so I don't get snarky remarks that don't address my question 

[Snowmen]

3 hours ago, QueenStan said:

Thanks mom! I'll double check my grammar next time so I don't get snarky remarks that don't address my question 

Step 1: Have 6 posts to your name

Step 2: Be sassy with people who've been here for years

Step 3: Still expect help

Step 4: Wonder why you're not getting any

[1D7]

In my experience students choose specialties based on factors in this order:

1. Interest

2. Perceived prestige (and/or lifestyle, depending on the type of student)

3. Perceived job availability

4. Pay

Interest is driven by the day-to-day work (patient population, procedures, work culture, etc.), prior exposure, and strong mentors. Perceived prestige is influenced by the CaRMS competitiveness and correlates with pay. The students who don't care about prestige generally value lifestyle instead. Job availability is self-explanatory. Money itself, separated from prestige, is usually not a deciding factor.

To answer your question, with regards to CaRMS statistics you have to first understand that there is a lot of variability because of how small many of these fields are: 10 more people applying one year can almost double competitiveness in ophthal for example. There are 1000+ students applying to FM each year; it only takes a small trickle to rock the boat.

IMO plastic surgery's competitiveness is driven largely by the first 2 factors I listed. There is a lot of potential interest in it from day 1 since it's a well-known specialty and procedural. Its competitiveness has reached a point where it draws in more students than pushes away since it adds to its exposure and perceived prestige. Students applying to competitive specialties put less emphasis on job availability in the first place (unless it's known to be exceedingly horrible for some reason, like cardiac surg).

With regards to pay, most students categorize it into something like "really good, good, not great" and both specialties you mentioned fall into the "really good" range. Reported specific numbers often do not capture many important details, like differences between practice location & setting, patient population, private billings, etc.

[QueenStan]

1 hour ago, Snowmen said:

 Step 1: Have 6 posts to your name

Step 2: Be sassy with people who've been here for years

Step 3: Still expect help

Step 4: Wonder why you're not getting any

Step 1: Expect new posters to kiss the feet of random strangers on the internet

Step 2: Have thin skin

 

I see this is still a premed forum through and through

[ZBL]

27 minutes ago, COMMANDO said:

Or ENT honestly - no jobs but ppl are killing themselves to match

That’s a specialty I never understood. Super random discipline, not glamorous/publically known, decent hours for a surgical specialty but it’s still a surgical specialty, very good pay but not crazy high, yet tons of med students are 100% ENT gunners from day one. 

I think it’s a good specialty, but it’s competitiveness confuses me. 

[xiphoid]

16 minutes ago, ZBL said:

That’s a specialty I never understood. Super random discipline, not glamorous/publically known, decent hours for a surgical specialty but it’s still a surgical specialty, very good pay but not crazy high, yet tons of med students are 100% ENT gunners from day one. 

I think it’s a good specialty, but it’s competitiveness confuses me. 

For when you want to be a surgeon but don't want to commit to being a surgeon 

In seriousness, I really like the variety in ENT. You get both the medical and surgical aspects since there isn't a medicine counterpart (unlike neuro and cardio), the clinics are more procedural than clinics for other surgical specialties, and I like the anatomy, physiology and disease processes themselves that they're treating. Wish it was less competitive, because I really like the specialty but I don't want to gun for it from how competitive it sounds to be.

[ZBL]

22 minutes ago, xiphoid said:

For when you want to be a surgeon but don't want to commit to being a surgeon 

In seriousness, I really like the variety in ENT. You get both the medical and surgical aspects since there isn't a medicine counterpart (unlike neuro and cardio), the clinics are more procedural than clinics for other surgical specialties, and I like the anatomy, physiology and disease processes themselves that they're treating. Wish it was less competitive, because I really like the specialty but I don't want to gun for it from how competitive it sounds to be.

And that's a perfectly good reason to pursue ENT. But why are so many interested in it before they even know what it is, like  on day 1 of med school? Derm and plastics everyone knows in the public realm, but ENT is not really "known" outside of the medical community. 

[1D7]

1. Interest: Sure not many people know of ENT before medical school, but since it's competitive many people hear of it early on. 'Sexy' ENT procedures make a huge impression on M1s and M2s; watching a laproscopic cholecystectomy usually isn't as exciting. Things sometimes change during clinical years, when students realize the day-to-day isn't that exciting, but by then there's already a lot of time, effort, and 'identity' investment into the specialty.

2. Perceived prestige: It's highly competitive so it becomes even more attractive to this subset of students. Students who prioritize lifestyle more have already self-selected themselves out.

3. Job availability: Students applying to competitive specialties in the first place generally value #1 and 2 more. Plus, this is hard for students to gauge. Basically everyone basically tells you it's getting better. Even orthopedics fellows doing their 2nd fellowship told me the job outlook in their specialty was improving.

4. Pay: Separated from perceived prestige, not a deciding factor in and of itself for most students.

[Thunderbirds]

Even as someone who just went through CaRMS and matched to Internal Medicine (my top choice program, I am very happy!), I am not going to lie and say I've never thought about the "prestigious" specialties, and whether it would be "sexier" to tell people that I am going to be a general surgeon, or dermatologist or plastic surgeon. I've also had colleagues who went into FM and they felt similarly at some point in clerkship. But at the end of the day, and this is what I would tell all incoming med students: do what you really, really like... and if that is a competitive specialty, so be it. However, please, do not think about what your specialty sounds like to other people because you have to live through it for the rest of your life, not them. 

It is no surprise that barely anyone wants to do FM in pre-clerkship (okay, maybe that is an exaggeration) yet for most medical schools, about 40% of the class chooses to do FM by end of 3rd year. The appeal goes out of the window when you have to wake up at 430 am and put in so many hours, and realize half of your patient list is pressure ulcers and awful-smelling debridements. 

[JohnGrisham]

2 hours ago, Thunderbirds said:

Even as someone who just went through CaRMS and matched to Internal Medicine (my top choice program, I am very happy!), I am not going to lie and say I've never thought about the "prestigious" specialties, and whether it would be "sexier" to tell people that I am going to be a general surgeon, or dermatologist or plastic surgeon. I've also had colleagues who went into FM and they felt similarly at some point in clerkship. But at the end of the day, and this is what I would tell all incoming med students: do what you really, really like... and if that is a competitive specialty, so be it. However, please, do not think about what your specialty sounds like to other people because you have to live through it for the rest of your life, not them. 

It is no surprise that barely anyone wants to do FM in pre-clerkship (okay, maybe that is an exaggeration) yet for most medical schools, about 40% of the class chooses to do FM by end of 3rd year. The appeal goes out of the window when you have to wake up at 430 am and put in so many hours, and realize half of your patient list is pressure ulcers and awful-smelling debridements. 

At least 20-30% of my med class incoming wanted to do FM. More once they realized how much harder training in other specialities is and job outlooks.

[Aetherus]

Another consideration is the number of spots in Quebec for the two specialties. 

Ophthalmology:

Quebec: 13

Rest of Canada: 25

 

Plastic Surgery

Quebec: 5

Rest of Canada: 20

Quebec is very different than the rest of Canada and most applicants will be unable to apply to those spots. We don’t have actual data yet for this match, but it is possible that the Quebec schools have a better ratio in spots per applicants and this raises the average more so for Ophthalmology than Plastic Surgery. 

It would be interesting to see a comparison of competitiveness when the Quebec spots are removed from the analysis. I think the gap in competitiveness would be decrease slightly. That being said, I agree with many of the previous posters. Plastic Surgery is definetely more competitive than Ophthalmology, but you are comparing two specialties that are consistently top 3 or 4 in competitiveness. 

[Snowmen]

19 minutes ago, Aetherus said:

Another consideration is the number of spots in Quebec for the two specialties. 

Ophthalmology:

Quebec: 13

Rest of Canada: 25

 

Plastic Surgery

Quebec: 5

Rest of Canada: 20

Quebec is very different than the rest of Canada and most applicants will be unable to apply to those spots. We don’t have actual data yet for this match, but it is possible that the Quebec schools have a better ratio in spots per applicants and this raises the average more so for Ophthalmology than Plastic Surgery. 

It would be interesting to see a comparison of competitiveness when the Quebec spots are removed from the analysis. I think the gap in competitiveness would be decrease slightly. That being said, I agree with many of the previous posters. Plastic Surgery is definetely more competitive than Ophthalmology, but you are comparing two specialties that are consistently top 3 or 4 in competitiveness. 

I personally did separate the Quebec data manually for about 5 years (2013-2017). I don't have the data on hand right now but ophthalmology is indeed much less competitive in Quebec like quite a few specialties. Others are much more competitive in Quebec, to the point where they seem to be fairly competitive on the Canadian scale but are actually mildly or barely competitive in the ROC. The ones I can remember right now are mainly ortho (roughly 0,2-0,3:1 in QC), pediatrics and OB/GYN.

[obiwankenobi]

34 minutes ago, Snowmen said:

I personally did separate the Quebec data manually for about 5 years (2013-2017). I don't have the data on hand right now but ophthalmology is indeed much less competitive in Quebec like quite a few specialties. Others are much more competitive in Quebec, to the point where they seem to be fairly competitive on the Canadian scale but are actually mildly or barely competitive in the ROC. The ones I can remember right now are mainly ortho (roughly 0,2-0,3:1 in QC), pediatrics and OB/GYN.

What explains this discrepancy? Does the funding model in Quebec reward those specialties more than in the ROC? 

[MedP111]

Data from 2018 (I used tables 27 and 34 from the CaRMS 2018 data page, someone tell me if I'm doing this wrong lol):

Ophtho: 35% of the residency spots were in QC (including McGill), while 34% of people who put ophtho as first-choice were from QC

Ortho: these numbers are 15% and 41%, respectively

OBGYN: 13% and 23%

Peds: 18% and 31%

For context, 31% of applicants in the CMG match were from QC (table 6). So only ortho seems disproportionately popular for some reason, but even then, it's not by that much. The problem with ortho, OBGYN and peds in QC, it seems, is just that there's a reaaally disproportionately low number of residency compared to ROC. And ophtho doesn't seem that much less competitive in QC from this year's data at all. But of course this year could've been an outlier, it just takes a few more applicants in these small specialties to swing these ratios wildly.

[Aetherus]

1 hour ago, MedP111 said:

Data from 2018 (I used tables 27 and 34 from the CaRMS 2018 data page, someone tell me if I'm doing this wrong lol):

Ophtho: 35% of the residency spots were in QC (including McGill), while 34% of people who put ophtho as first-choice were from QC

Ortho: these numbers are 15% and 41%, respectively

OBGYN: 13% and 23%

Peds: 18% and 31%

For context, 31% of applicants in the CMG match were from QC (table 6). So only ortho seems disproportionately popular for some reason, but even then, it's not by that much. The problem with ortho, OBGYN and peds in QC, it seems, is just that there's a reaaally disproportionately low number of residency compared to ROC. And ophtho doesn't seem that much less competitive in QC from this year's data at all. But of course this year could've been an outlier, it just takes a few more applicants in these small specialties to swing these ratios wildly.

Did you use the 2019 or 2018 data. I don’t think the 2019 data is completely out. If you used the 2018 data, Ophtho was very competitive in Quebec last year which was an outlier.

[MedP111]

42 minutes ago, Aetherus said:

Did you use the 2019 or 2018 data. I don’t think the 2019 data is completely out. If you used the 2018 data, Ophtho was very competitive in Quebec last year which was an outlier.

Yup 2018!