Does Prestige Matter for Fellowship in Neurology?

[Sidus1011]

Hey all,

I've been looking at a variety of programs and their alumni just out curiosity and have noticed that many of the fellowship matches for majority of residents seem awesome even coming from more university affiliated or community programs.

Does prestige impact fellowship match at all? If not, should location take priority in residency selection?

Thanks

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[s5260205]

Most neurology fellowships are not competitive, and fellowships are mostly in "name-brand" places as they can better offer higher load of patients within each subspecialty for training purposes.

More prestigious programs have more neurologists and more subspecialists, and among those, more research-oriented neurologists. For those who are more research minded, it would then be important to match into a more "prestigious" program as they would then have access to these researchers and find a mentor with whom they can also jump start their research career. Certainly, residents coming from these programs will then have letters of recommendation from these researchers and more easily transition to a more "prestigious" fellowship program.

I should add that for majority of students who are not interested in research, prestige would then matter less. It would be more important to find a program where all subspecialities are represented where you can gain adequate exposure to each field and make an informed choice on fellowship. Beyond that, location would be as important, so are the people at the program (making sure they are collegial and not "toxic").

I trained in both medium and large programs, and I would prefer medium-sized programs for residency training as you develop closer relations with every attendings, while in larger programs (>8 residents per year), your exposure to many attendings are very limited. Larger programs are better for fellowship training, as there would be sub-subspecialists who may have panel of patients with very rare diseases for training purposes.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[neglect]

At some point people matter more than the institution. I can think of several examples of amazing stroke programs: Cincinnati and Calgary that aren’t well known unless you’re in the field.

So there is sometimes a disconnect.

In the end it doesn’t matter for much as the qualities you bring.

 

[Aldertonghen]

It does matter for neuroIR and interventional pain, and slowly starting to matter for vascular as vascular gets more competitive. For others, if you work hard in residency, you would be able to get into “a” brand name fellowship, if not a specific one (which is hard because it’s dependent on internal candidates at those places).

 

[xenotype]

It does matter for neuroIR and interventional pain, and slowly starting to matter for vascular as vascular gets more competitive. For others, if you work hard in residency, you would be able to get into “a” brand name fellowship, if not a specific one (which is hard because it’s dependent on internal candidates at those places).

vascular is not competitive, and there are not a lot of factors that would make it become more competitive. very few jobs give a crap if someone is vascular trained, and I continue after many years to believe there are not a lot of benefits to a vascular fellowship over improving EEG/EMG skills or doing movement to be better at weird stuff. everyone does constant stroke alerts all residency. it's a big disadvantage to get out into the real world and have no clue how to do an EMG or be totally incompetent at reading an LTM with subtle seizures on it. most PP jobs absolutely want someone who can do at least either EEG or EMG and a lot of jobs want both but I haven't met anyone that long term was really competent at both.

 

[Aldertonghen]

vascular is not competitive, and there are not a lot of factors that would make it become more competitive. very few jobs give a crap if someone is vascular trained, and I continue after many years to believe there are not a lot of benefits to a vascular fellowship over improving EEG/EMG skills or doing movement to be better at weird stuff. everyone does constant stroke alerts all residency. it's a big disadvantage to get out into the real world and have no clue how to do an EMG or be totally incompetent at reading an LTM with subtle seizures on it. most PP jobs absolutely want someone who can do at least either EEG or EMG and a lot of jobs want both but I haven't met anyone that long term was really competent at both.

Vascular became competitive only last year- prior to that it was not. Nowhere near as competitive as pain or NeuroIR, but basically vascular absorbed a chunk of potential neurocrit applicants as neurocrit no longer offers visa in most places. This will revert back to normal once neurocrit fully switched to ACGME and applicants apply to neurocrit again. The other reason is people can now do telestroke while being outside of the US through a loophole- making this the only specialty where one can sit in Europe on a boat and earn