Radiology residencies in Boston

Hi All!

Well, my partner has made it to the end of his third year, and he is starting to focus on residency. He is seriously considering Radiology, as he was a Physics major undergrad, and worked in an MRI unit before med school. My question is this. We live in Boston, and are pretty immobile. Anyone have any thoughts on how tough it is to get a residency in radiology here in the Hub?

Thanks

Robert

[DCJenn]

Hopefully some of our current or past Boston residents will be able to pipe in. Tabula Rasa's husband did a Rads residency in Boston. Maybe she'll have some information for you.

Jenn

[spotty_dog]

Rads is on the ROAD and it's my impression that all those specialties can be kind of hard to match. But if he's a good interviewer and doing pretty well in clinicals, I'm sure you've got a great chance! Have you looked at the FREIDA site to see how many programs you have to consider in the area? Also, he should have a counselor or advisor of some sort at school who can help point him in the right direction (I know my husband got a lot of his info about which were the "good" and prestigious and competitive residencies from his advisor!)

Hi!!

My husband has just gone through all that rig-a-ma-roo for applying, interviewing, matching for radiology. He had managed to score interviews in some pretty great places--MGH in Boston being one of them. Honestly, he was shocked that he was able to get good interviews like he did because he did his MS in Buffalo (nothing AGAINST Buffalo, but it isn't Harvard if you know what I mean...). He did well on his Step 1 and on his rotations and stuff. But again, he was still honored to get an interview there. He also got interviews at Mayo, Michigan, U of Virginia, UNC, a bunch of the programs in Upstate NY, Vermont, NMexico...but he ranked Mayo as #1, MGH #2, then Michigan #3 and we matched at Mayo. He had MAJOR MAJOR trouble deciding on how to rank all of the programs because each one was very unique and had something great to offer. To us, Boston was just TOO DARN expensive to live (and we are both what you might call "country folk"...) so he ranked Mayo #1. We will always wonder if he would have matched at MGH, but I guess we will never know. SO, back to what you were asking (sorry...I have a problem with digression) I don't know about other programs in Boston, but at MGH they seemed to be very interested in high Step 1 scores, research, and good letters of recommendation.

As for deciding to do radiology...my DH also had lots of trouble deciding between rads and neurosurgery. He decided that to him, radiology more suited his personality. And we both discussed the idea that any surgery specialty meant lots and lots and lots of long hours and lots of time away from family. So, he chose radiology. Again, I hope that he made the right choice for him but I guess we will be finding out soon!

Good luck to you and your partner. Hang in there. Residency time for us was very stressful at times, but once match day rolls around...its all good!!!

[Rapunzel]

The radiology programs I know out in Boston are generally highly highly competitive. MGH being the absolute most competitive. Brigham and Women's is also very difficult to match into.

I'm not as familiar with the other programs (Beth Israel, Boston University's Med Center). But, you can pretty much expect the Harvard programs to be hyper competitive for match purposes. Once you get in the programs all have different "feels" from what I understand - all good, just different atmospheres.

One thing going for you is that the New England programs like to keep things "regional" - in other words it's harder to get an interview (let alone match) the farther away you get from the NE area (with the exception of California applicants it seems - some of these programs are pretty tight with some of the CA programs from my perspective). I've heard theories as to why and, maybe, that is changing - but it seemed to be a phenomenon when we were there.

My dh was on the admission committee for a couple of years at one of these institutions and I can tell you that competition for interviews and then residency slots was fierce and just to get a foot in the door you had to have something that made you stand out from the pack. Once you got an interview the best thing you could do at my dh's former program was give the committee the "feel" that you would work well in their program, contribute to it's standing in the medical community, and generally fit into the environment.

I think that outside of the Boston area there are smaller rads programs that you might consider - community based hospitals, I believe. And, then there is Brown down in Rhode Island, of course.

Boston Radiology Residencies

Thanks for all of the responses. The more info we have, the better. If anyone has some infor on life as a Rad resident, I would love to hear that as well!