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Psychi

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1 hour ago, Psychi said:

I’d love to get into a psychiatry residency is NYC (potentially Columbia or NYU) but I’m wondering if it’s realistic to get in coming from University of Montreal. What do you think? And if it is realistic, what can I do to optimize my chances? Incoming M1 here. 

Extremely unrealistic. Everyone wants to be in NYC, especially at the academic programs you highlighted. You should take a look at the list of current residents at those two programs to give you an idea of how competitive it is. I'd be surprised if those two programs had a single resident who was a non US MD. Probably 90 percent of the residents came from the same top 20 or so medical schools. You could probably get a psych residency somewhere in the US if you do well on Step2, but it's very unlikely that you'd get an academic program in a desirable coastal city like NYC, DC, Boston, SF or LA.

Also US psych is four years vs five years in Canada. I don't know the specifics of the Royal College accepting ACGME training as equivalent.

Additionally, you would only be able to do residency on a J1 visa and would be forced to come back to Canada for two years after finishing residency. There are some loopholes around the J1 home requirement, but they're not easy to get. The Canadian match also runs before the US one, if you want to match to the US, you'll have to essentially opt out of CaRMS.

Another issue is that the only Canadian schools that Americans have heard of are UofT, McGill and possibly UBC. Other schools are essentially unknown. I don't know if there would be any additional issues about being from a French school, especially since most Quebec graduates don't have an undergrad and don't take the MCAT. Someone from Quebec could probably address this better than me.

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7 minutes ago, zoxy said:

Extremely unrealistic. Everyone wants to be in NYC, especially at the academic programs you highlighted. You should take a look at the list of current residents at those two programs to give you an idea of how competitive it is. I'd be surprised if those two programs had a single resident who was a non US MD. Probably 90 percent of the residents came from the same top 20 or so medical schools. You could probably get a psych residency somewhere in the US if you do well on Step2, but it's very unlikely that you'd get a top tier academic program in a desirable coastal city like NYC, DC, Boston, SF or LA.

Also US psych is four years vs five years in Canada. I don't know the specifics of the Royal College accepting ACGME training as equivalent.

Additionally, you would only be able to do residency on a J1 visa and would be forced to come back to Canada for two years after finishing residency. There are some loopholes around the J1 home requirement, but they're not easy to get. The Canadian match also runs before the US one, if you want to match to the US, you'll have to essentially opt out of CaRMS.

Another issue is that the only Canadian schools that Americans have heard of are UofT, McGill and possibly UBC. Other schools are essentially unknown. I don't know if there would be any additional issues about being from a French school, especially since most Quebec graduates don't have an undergrad and don't take the MCAT. Someone from Quebec could probably address this better than me.

Thank you for your honest response! very insightful7B0E3D89-4917-42CD-A27A-B52619D93925.jpeg.60b406428ed5c0cfe2a13de64c665f64.jpeg

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11 minutes ago, zoxy said:

Extremely unrealistic. Everyone wants to be in NYC, especially at the academic programs you highlighted. You should take a look at the list of current residents at those two programs to give you an idea of how competitive it is. I'd be surprised if those two programs had a single resident who was a non US MD. Probably 90 percent of the residents came from the same top 20 or so medical schools. You could probably get a psych residency somewhere in the US if you do well on Step2, but it's very unlikely that you'd get an academic program in a desirable coastal city like NYC, DC, Boston, SF or LA.

Also US psych is four years vs five years in Canada. I don't know the specifics of the Royal College accepting ACGME training as equivalent.

Additionally, you would only be able to do residency on a J1 visa and would be forced to come back to Canada for two years after finishing residency. There are some loopholes around the J1 home requirement, but they're not easy to get. The Canadian match also runs before the US one, if you want to match to the US, you'll have to essentially opt out of CaRMS.

Another issue is that the only Canadian schools that Americans have heard of are UofT, McGill and possibly UBC. Other schools are essentially unknown. I don't know if there would be any additional issues about being from a French school, especially since most Quebec graduates don't have an undergrad and don't take the MCAT. Someone from Quebec could probably address this better than me.

I’m just curious, are any residency programs in Columbia or NYU (or any good school in NYC) realistic for me? Or should I just give up on moving to a big city in the US and focus on carms?

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27 minutes ago, Psychi said:

I’m just curious, are any residency programs in Columbia or NYU (or any good school in NYC) realistic for me? Or should I just give up on moving to a big city in the US and focus on carms?

Why not just do fellowship there? Or see what options are to practice afterwards? Toronto is a big city, Montreal, Vancouver. People do fellowships all the time in big cities (at least surgical)

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On 4/30/2021 at 4:49 PM, Psychi said:

I’m just curious, are any residency programs in Columbia or NYU (or any good school in NYC) realistic for me? Or should I just give up on moving to a big city in the US and focus on carms?

You'd get community programs in NYC in IM, FM,and EM if you do well on Step2 and possibly do an elective there. Probably Psych as well, though I'm not 100 percent sure. You'd need to go through the list of the community psych residents in NYC to see if they have a history of taking IMGs.

Also make sure that you understand the difference between a community and academic program. In Canada all residencies are by default academic, the US is not like that. Academic programs like NYU and Columbia are much tougher to match into than community program.

But keep in mind that you could not match in NYC and end up in Peoria Illinois, Jackson Mississippi, or Des Moines Iowa. You could even end up completely unmatched. You wouldn't be able to take those leftover Quebec FM spots either since CaRMS would have run earlier than the US match.

This is somewhat unrelated but I don't understand your fascination with NYC. You'll be working 80 hours a week, making very little money, paying high rents, and the community programs are generally in the Bronx or Queens. I have many New Yorker friends and they admit that the main reason they live there is work(finance), family and friends.  NYC is a good place to be rich and idle, but a terrible place to be working and poor. Do your psych residency in Canada and just go and work there as an attending. The academic programs are always desperate for psych faculty and Canadian training would allow you to sit the US boards.

P.S.

If you want big city life at a fraction of the cost, Chicago is a great choice.

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To echo others in this thread, assuming you're not an American citizen/green card holder, it seems that NYU accepts J1 visas but Columbia isn't clear, it says you have to be a permanent resident to apply but also accepts visas?. Here's the 2021 American psych match spreadsheet so you can see what people's impressions were

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/165uCk1wWpCQZG2kH_N2jJiJ0FWdlOFHzQEctUk4ParA/edit?usp=sharing

Unfortunately, you will see that they are some of the most desired psych residencies in the US. Psych in the states is also extremely competitive now with lots of people matching to a backup or not matching. That's not to say it isn't technically impossible, but you would likely need to be a unique candidate with extremely high percentile step 2 CK scores (i think step 1 will be pass/fail by then?) research or something else that sets you apart, and likely some connection to New York or those specific universities. You would also need electives there. The issue is that if you gun for these places you're basically going to need to set up your whole medical school to revolve around it and customize your app to it so it would def impede your ability to apply broadly in Canada for a more realistic scenario, which I would do.

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15 hours ago, bearded frog said:

Psych in the states is also extremely competitive now with lots of people matching to a backup or not matching

Everyone in the US is saying that Psych is the new Derm. Cush lifestyle with solid pay if you do a cash only practice. Basically working 9-4 five days a week in some tony suburb. Not my cup of tea but to each, their own.

Also I just remembered that there's actual data about what percentage of matches to a specialty in each state are filled by US MDs, IMGs, DOs etc. Canadians are actually counted in the elusive "other" category. Keep in mind that NY state isn't just NYC. It includes Buffalo, Ithaca, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, etc. There is no NYC breakdown to my knowledge. You'll see that only 56 percent of those matched to psychiatry in NY state are US MDs.  Those are actually better odds than I thought so it's not impossible or even that improbable for you to match psych in NY. Again, it would be much harder to match to an academic residency in NYC, the NYU and Columbia that you originally asked about.

https://mk0nrmp3oyqui6wqfm.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Specialty-by-State-and-Applicant-Type_2020.pdf

Overall US MD match data for all specialties including psych:

https://mk0nrmp3oyqui6wqfm.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Charting-Outcomes-in-the-Match-2020_MD-Senior_final.pdf

Interactive Data breakdown for all specialties since 2016:

https://public.tableau.com/profile/national.resident.matching.program#!/vizhome/ChartingOutcomes2020/ChartingOutcomes

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