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Have you ever been confused when people talk about certain medical specialties being competitive?
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Me too.
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In this video, we'll go over the official statistics and explore which are the most
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competitive and desired specialties.
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What's going on guys, Dr. Jubbal, MedSchoolInsiders.com.
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For those of you who don't know, I graduated medical school in 2017 and matched into plastic
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surgery.
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To learn more about my story, visit my vlog channel - link in the description below.
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There's a tremendous amount of misinformation regarding which medical specialties are competitive.
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Everyone wants to say their specialty is competitive - and they're not wrong.
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Getting into any residency is a challenging ordeal.
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That being said, some specialties are more competitive and harder to get into than others.
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I understand the pride involved, but whether or not your specialty is considered competitive
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does not make you a good or bad doctor.
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It simply says which specialties
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are hardest to get into.
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And knowing which specialties are hardest to get into can be very useful information
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for pre-meds and medical students.
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Again, all specialties are competitive, and if your specialty is ranked lower than you would
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like, that's not a judgement or an attack on you in any way.
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This is simply the data.
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Period.
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You can find links to the data in the description.
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First, let's cover the methodologies that I used.
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I gathered all data from the official source - the NRMP, or the National Resident Matching
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Program, over the last few years.
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I manually inputted all data into a spreadsheet that I've linked to in the description for
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you to view.
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There's always someone complaining about imperfect methodologies – look, every analysis
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has its limitations.
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I urge you to view the spreadsheet and play with the data to see for yourself.
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Before we dive in, it's important to note that ophthalmology and urology are not included
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in the regular match, and therefore their data was not included in this analysis.
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That being said, if you look up their average Step scores and match rates, it's clear
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neither would have been in the top 5 anyway.
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I used data for U.S. applicants only, as incorporating international medical graduates, or IMGs,
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would muddy the analysis.
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I looked beyond just the match rate, as that would be a terribly inaccurate marker of competitiveness.
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And now you're probably confused.
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If it has a low match rate, then it must be more competitive, right?
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Well, not exactly.
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Specialties are self-selecting to a certain degree.
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I recently saw a video by someone who went only off of match rates, and in doing so,
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they suggested that general surgery and psychiatry were the third most competitive specialties.
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Anyone who is in medical school or residency will tell you that's certainly not the case.
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For example, in plastic surgery, applicants use general surgery as their backup in case
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they don't get into plastics.
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Look at it this way - if you're not a competitive applicant, you're not going to apply to
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something like plastic surgery or neurosurgery or dermatology.
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But lots of people want to do surgery, since surgery is freakin awesome, and general surgery is
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the most commonly applied to.
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General surgery is an excellent field, it's tremendously broad, extremely diverse, leaves options open to subspecialize
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after, and it's also the least competitive of the surgical specialties.
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Therefore it has a very high number of applicants and a low match rate.
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This is not a judgement against general surgery in any way.
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This is just an explanation for the low match rate in general surgery.
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In order to overcome the shortcomings of looking at match rate alone, I examined six categories
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of data: average match rate, Step 1 score, Step 2CK score, number of publications, percentage
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of matriculants that were AOA, and percentage of applicants from a top 40 NIH funded medical
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school.
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AOA, or the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society, is an honor society in medicine – what
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you need to know for the purposes of this analysis is that being AOA is a good indicator
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of being a high performing student.
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Obviously it's not perfect, as some schools don't have it.
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For example, mine didn't, and therefore I wasn't AOA, despite being at the top of
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my class.
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Top 40 NIH funded medical schools are usually more competitive, meaning students that got
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into these schools were, on average, stronger students.
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Emphasis on average.
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After compiling the data, I ranked each specialty in each of the six categories.
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This was a point-based ranking system.
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Each category was weighed equally and points were awarded directly in relation to the ranking.
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Meaning, there are 22 specialties, and the lowest ranking in that category would receive
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1 point and the top ranking in that category would receive 22 points.
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I summed up the points across each category and looked at the total points to determine
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which specialties were most competitive.
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Now's your chanc e to hedge your bets.
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Dermatology came in first, trailed closely by plastic surgery in second.
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Neurosurgery was third, followed by orthopedic surgery fourth and then ENT in fifth.
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And honestly, I'm not surprised by these results - and
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that's a good sign.
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If you're a medical student or a resident, you probably aren't surprised either.
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But many people have heard of this ROAD to success – ROAD stands for Radiology, Ophthalmology,
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Anesthesiology, and Dermatology.
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If you're surprised that the other three ROAD specialties aren't included in the
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top 5, don't be.
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Radiology, Ophtho, and Anesthesia are not nearly as competitive as the top 5.
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ROAD specialties indicate those that have a great lifestyle - NOT necessarily those which
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are the most competitive.
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An interesting pattern I noticed was that the top 5 were all very well paying specialties.
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Neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery are almost always the top 2 best paid specialties, regardless
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of the survey.
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Plastic surgery is also up there, but it's important to note that cosmetic practices
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make much more than reconstructive practices.
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Dermatologists don't make as much as the other top 4 specialties, all of which are
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surgical, and that makes sense - surgeons put in more work and do more challenging procedures,
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but dermatologists have an excellent lifestyle that's hard to beat.
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So the conclusion of all this?
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It's quite clear that the most competitive specialties are highly correlated with either
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excellent pay or excellent lifestyle.
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Correlation is not causation, but I think it's safe to say that there's more than
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simple correlation going on here.
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Exploring this finding further is a topic for another video.
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Was this analysis perfect?
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Absolutely not – but then again, every analysis has limitations.
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That being said, this is the most comprehensive one I've seen.
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So what do you think of the results?
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Are you surprised, or is this what you were expecting?
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Leave a comment down below – I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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Thank you all so much for watching.
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And I'll see you in that next one.