Applying to Multiple Specialties

[humhum]

5 hours ago, GrouchoMarx said:

since elective time seems to matter A LOT, and elective time is a limited resource, splitting electives between two or more fields reduces the chances of matching to any of them. 

people like to talk about things that help people match, but the most consistent one that i have seen is that they dedicated their important elective time to only the field they wanted.

last minute epiphanies are notable because theyre against all odds victory stories. the people who have last minute epiphanies and fail probably arent speaking out but i bet they outnumber the former. survivorship bias.

nobody cares about generalism. thats just med-ed gobbledygook. good letters, good elective performance, and maybe research will do someone just fine. i have not seen pds to reject gunners. i have seen plenty reject 'generalists'

rad neuro is fine because neuro is not competitive. peds gen surg might be a harder sell but still not impossible (surgeons might think peds is too soft, peds might think surgery is too hard, so the student is never considered high enough in rank lists for either field)

the new paradigm is pick a specialty early, give it all you got, and back up with the states. if it doesnt work then, prepare an application to family countrywide for the next year. 

Your suggestions taken to their logical end is a good way to go unmatched, and your impressions about what PDs think in peds vs. surgery is counter to what I have seen and heard from PDs first hand. Also, a minuscule fraction of Canadians go on to match to a competitive specialty in the US. Busting your ass to get a 270 on a USMLE would have been better spent doing meaningful research or outreach for 2 or more different specialties in Canada.

And people forget it is not just about you on paper. The most impressive interviewer is the one that can sell themselves as someone who can make mature judgments. If you have gone through 4 years of medical school, and you are dead set that the ONLY thing that can possibly make you happy for rest of your life is doing sinus surgery, then that close-minded character will betray at every single question asked of you. Electives are not just for spending thousands of dollars travelling across the to fill up check marks on your CaRMS app to demonstrate you are a gunner that lives and breathes differentials for skin moles.

Getting a competitive is equal parts luck and equal part competence. The luck part is out of your hands, and some insanely qualified people don't match to what they deserve every year. It is suicidal not to have a strong parallel path.

[GrouchoMarx]

12 hours ago, humhum said:

Your suggestions taken to their logical end is a good way to go unmatched, and your impressions about what PDs think in peds vs. surgery is counter to what I have seen and heard from PDs first hand. Also, a minuscule fraction of Canadians go on to match to a competitive specialty in the US. Busting your ass to get a 270 on a USMLE would have been better spent doing meaningful research or outreach for 2 or more different specialties in Canada.

And people forget it is not just about you on paper. The most impressive interviewer is the one that can sell themselves as someone who can make mature judgments. If you have gone through 4 years of medical school, and you are dead set that the ONLY thing that can possibly make you happy for rest of your life is doing sinus surgery, then that close-minded character will betray at every single question asked of you. Electives are not just for spending thousands of dollars travelling across the to fill up check marks on your CaRMS app to demonstrate you are a gunner that lives and breathes differentials for skin moles.

Getting a competitive is equal parts luck and equal part competence. The luck part is out of your hands, and some insanely qualified people don't match to what they deserve every year. It is suicidal not to have a strong parallel path.

we have had different experiences. i dont know where you are coming from. im in pathology. i get to see the people who didnt match in round one try to get spots in my program. they overwhemingly have split their electives down two programs. lots of competitive programs also only offer interviews to people who rotate through their department. by splitting electives you are losing a chance.

the people i see in the second iteration are good people who had bad strategies. i dont think theyd be very happy in family or path but theyre on their plan c. they expressed their regret to me that they didnt also apply to the states. some fields like derm are as impossible there as they are here, but fields like radiology emergency and anesthesia are doable for a canadian grad with competitive scores. if thats what someone wants to do then it is wise for them to take advantage of that opportunity.

youre right about luck and competence being equal. but i just dont see how splitting electives in the canadian system would do anything to make you more competitive for either field. in the cmfs unmatched report that just came out, applying to many varieties of programs was associated with going unmatched in round one. that saying about hunting two rabbits...

[indefatigable]

1 hour ago, GrouchoMarx said:

we have had different experiences. i dont know where you are coming from. im in pathology. i get to see the people who didnt match in round one try to get spots in my program. they overwhemingly have split their electives down two programs. lots of competitive programs also only offer interviews to people who rotate through their department. by splitting electives you are losing a chance.

the people i see in the second iteration are good people who had bad strategies. i dont think theyd be very happy in family or path but theyre on their plan c. they expressed their regret to me that they didnt also apply to the states. some fields like derm are as impossible there as they are here, but fields like radiology emergency and anesthesia are doable for a canadian grad with competitive scores. if thats what someone wants to do then it is wise for them to take advantage of that opportunity.

youre right about luck and competence being equal. but i just dont see how splitting electives in the canadian system would do anything to make you more competitive for either field. in the cmfs unmatched report that just came out, applying to many varieties of programs was associated with going unmatched in round one. that saying about hunting two rabbits...

Putting every elective in a single specialty means not splitting the risk at all, i.e. not backing up.  I think it's a matter of degrees and risk tolerance, since almost every specialty can be considered "competitive" today.  Mixing two highly competitive unrelated specialties, like ophthalmology and emergency probably wouldn't work, for instance.  

[brady23]

Don't some schools have a 6 week maximum of an elective in a particular field?

So with 13 weeks of electives, you'd have to be doing electives in at least 2 specialties? 

 

[humhum]

Definitely we are into uncharted CaRMS world these days, where basically every specialty is becoming relatively competitive. My experience was applying to a top 5 competitive specialty, and another one that was in the top 10, and honestly I loved both equally (ranking was excruciatingly difficult). I have no idea where I was on the bell-curve for either one in terms of competitiveness.

But I remember one thing on the top 5 specialty tour: there were a lot of superstars, but there were a handful of applicants that were another league entirely, and basically got an interview at every school they applied to for this competitive program. Somehow, at least on paper, they were attractive to every program across Canada. I talked to them and try to figure out what they had in common, and the surprising thing was that they had very little in common with each other. But each were highly well rounded, and had one pitch about their life experience that made them very unique. It wasn't hard to see why every program wanted a chance to nab them and advertise them proudly. The other surprising thing was that many of these ultra-stars had parallel plans. In my opinion, their very open-mindedness said something about their character that made their whole person an attractive candidate.

Meanwhile there were gunners in my class that barely got any interviews for the specialty they wanted, and at the same time, they had done so little to show they had any interest in their backup plan. I'm sure these gunners would have made outstanding specialists, and they were indeed superior medical students compared to me in terms of clinical knowledge and intelligent, but unfortunately, somehow that doesn't cut it anymore.

[FailureToThrive]

1 hour ago, humhum said:

Definitely we are into uncharted CaRMS world these days, where basically every specialty is becoming relatively competitive. My experience was applying to a top 5 competitive specialty, and another one that was in the top 10, and honestly I loved both equally (ranking was excruciatingly difficult). I have no idea where I was on the bell-curve for either one in terms of competitiveness.

But I remember one thing on the top 5 specialty tour: there were a lot of superstars, but there were a handful of applicants that were another league entirely, and basically got an interview at every school they applied to for this competitive program. Somehow, at least on paper, they were attractive to every program across Canada. I talked to them and try to figure out what they had in common, and the surprising thing was that they had very little in common with each other. But each were highly well rounded, and had one pitch about their life experience that made them very unique. It wasn't hard to see why every program wanted a chance to nab them and advertise them proudly. The other surprising thing was that many of these ultra-stars had parallel plans. In my opinion, their very open-mindedness said something about their character that made their whole person an attractive candidate.

Meanwhile there were gunners in my class that barely got any interviews for the specialty they wanted, and at the same time, they had done so little to show they had any interest in their backup plan. I'm sure these gunners would have made outstanding specialists, and they were indeed superior medical students compared to me in terms of clinical knowledge and intelligent, but unfortunately, somehow that doesn't cut it anymore.

Therefore, doing electives in two competitive specialties won't necessary get you screened out as long as you show a genuine interest to each specialty and aren't gunning for one specialty in particular?

[Bambi]

25 minutes ago, médecine said:

Therefore, doing electives in two competitive specialties won't necessary get you screened out as long as you show a genuine interest to each specialty and aren't gunning for one specialty in particular?

Correct. You can be gunning for one as long as you have a credible story of why the other competitive specialty. And importantly, your soft skills (collaborative, get along with others, enthusiastic, hard worker) come into play!