Medical Education US

I'm a 4th year medical student who recently decided to apply to psychiatry residencies. Eventually, I would like to pursue a fellowship in Neuropsych or Forensics. I also would like to stay in the northeast (Boston, New York, Philadelphia). Could you tell me which psychiatry residency programs are considered competitive for this geographic region, or point me to a resource with this information? By competitive, I mean a program that will give me the greatest chance of securing a fellowship afterward.

Also, I'm curious as to my chances of getting into one of these programs. Since I just made the decision within the last month, I haven't had the chance to speak to anyone about this. I honored most of my pre-clinical classes, and high-passed the rest, with a couple of passes. As for my clinical years: honors in psych, peds, and ob/gyn. High passes in the other 3. USMLE Step 1: 248/99. Also have significant extracurriculars, but none in psych, and only premed research with no publications. Thanks!

Just off the top of my head, the competitive programs have generally been Columbia, Mass General, and Harvard's other psychiatry programs. I'm sure there are others, but I'm not that familiar with the northeast part of the US. I would ask to have a meeting with the chairman of your psychiatry department to talk to him/her about your interest and get his/her impressions. Also, if you are doing any 4th year electives in psychiatry, you should talk to the attendings to get their perspective. I'm a bit out of the psychiatry loop now that I'm 5 years out of residency, and 10 years out of looking into psychiatry residency programs.

When applying for residency programs, you may need a "chairman's" letter anyway (at least I did for internal medicine), so meeting with the chairman is a totally reasonable thing to do. I did also meet with my chairman of psychiatry at my medical school, which in my case was not the most productive meeting - as he mainly tried to recruit me to stay at my home medical school even though I made it extremely clear that my interest was in going elsewhere.

As to getting accepted into the most competitive psychiatry programs, your scores / grades certainly seem competitive, but it would also depend on how competitive of a medical school you are at, and how good your letters of recommendation are. If you happen to have a chairman that is well connected with any of those programs, it can also help if the chairman personally recommends you to that program. Usually this type of recommendation is only needed in very competitive fields, but it certainly would help in any program.

Best of luck.

Good list of competitive programs.

With a 248 you're golden at any psych program in the world.

In general, I recommend you do an externship/sub-I at the program where you want to do your residency. If you impress, they'll rank you high in the match. If you flake, a 248 won't help much.