So apparently, residency match is coming up in the next month.
EEK! Aren't you guys EXCITED????
In honor of the upcoming match, I did a little exercise involving the match list from my graduating med school class, inexplicably still saved on my hard drive:
I picked out the hottest 10 girls in my class and the hottest 10 guys, and I wrote down what each of them matched in. (I was bored. And possibly drunk.)
It was really easy to pick out the top 10 hottest girls in my class. Maybe female beauty is just more objective. Within a minute, I had a list and could have added a few more even.
I mulled over the top 10 guys for a long time, struggling to come up with 10 guys in my former class that I actually thought were attractive. It was hard because I didn't want my own personal preferences about the opposite sex to get in the way of this extremely important, objective exercise. I like nerdy, overweight guys with glasses. That's probably not any universal standard of male attractiveness though. Or, I don't know, maybe my class just had a lot of unattractive guys.
Anyway, these were the results:
Top 10 girls: General surgery, pediatrics, pediatrics, medicine, medicine, psychiatry, neurology, anesthesia, rad-onc.
Top 10 guys: Ortho, ortho, urology, plastics, dermatology, anesthesia, EM, general surgery, pediatrics, radiology
So from these lists, we can deduce that the hot guys did much better in the match than the hot girls, going for far more competitive specialties. So if you're a guy, it helps your career to be hotter. If you're a girl, not so much.
Although really, that's not the case at all. Looking at the general list, it seems like the guys just matched more competitively in general. The ortho matches were all guys, of course. So were all the urology matches. Even radiology was mostly guys. Derm, ophthalmology: all guys. The only competitive specialties that matched a good number of females were anesthesia and EM.
So in summary, being hotter probably wouldn't have helped me match in a more competitive specialty. Growing a penis might have.
But I am sure you didn't need the lists and the booze to come to that conclusion! ;)
ReplyDeleteI think this has more to do with women choosing things that are "family friendly" and men going into specialties that are more procedure based. Last year lots of girls went into things like peds, psychiatry, and family medicine, though I think we had two go into ophtho and 2 go into vascular surgery. At my school a ton of women go into derm and anesthesia too.
ReplyDeleteI had a hard time coming up with ten guys from my class at all (none of the hot ones were my type either). But yeah, a bunch went into neurosurgery, urology, general surgery, and ortho etc. I have one female friend who's an ortho.
You should look at who was AOA and what they went into. At my school (as I recall) more women were AOA than men. Not sure if it's like that everywhere.
ReplyDeleteOMDG: I actually *could* look at the AOA list and make a post like that. Maybe I should....
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't matter what you do. As long as it makes you happy. We all have to work, so you should find a job you like.
ReplyDelete"Growing a penis...". Hee! :)
ReplyDeleteVerification "Gummer" Ha, ha.
So are you saying the PM&R pool isn't that attractive? ;-) I briefly dated an Ortho resident. I wanted to ignore the stereotypes but he lacked a certain substance (or ok, maybe we just had too little in common) and subjectively didn't bring much to the looks/body table to begin to make up for it. Is that terribly mean of me to think?
ReplyDeleteThanks to Dr. Grumpy for being a voice of reason. I knew early on that I couldn't feign interest in some of the more competitive fields b/c they just didn't interest me all that much. I really hope I love PM&R.
A rare sober comment from Grumpy :)
ReplyDeleteMy residency program definitely had a few hotties, including a former model :) But I don't think PM&R above average or anything.
Hotness aside, it is clear that the men still choose the procedure (ie: big $$) specialties more than the women. If General Internal Medicine was reimbursed like ortho or radiology, I think you would see men flock to it like bees to honey. Just sayin....
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, up in my neck of the woods, ortho is slowly becoming less popular and competative, owing to the horribly run residency programs and the realization that the lifestyle isn't all its cracked up to be (last year, for the first time, there was a 1 to 1 match).
ReplyDeleteIt's funny watching my class now as the huge number of people who wanted a competative specialty realize they're not cutthroat or competative enough to get it. I think half of our plastics gunners now are interested in family or gen surg.
I'd rather match in peds or medicine than ortho or plastics any day!
ReplyDeleteum, google couldn't help me define 'AOA,' so i turn to you, wise interwebians.......for please? definition of AOA?
ReplyDeleteAOA = med student honor society
ReplyDeleteThanks.
ReplyDeleteI find your perspective a more than bit narrow-minded. This is an opinion shaped by reading many of your posts. But with regard to this post specifically, what about med students who are attractive but selectively choose to go into primary care? I've modeled before and plan on doing family med. And before you ask, I'm at a upper middle tier med school on non need-based scholarship. Yes yes, I know I'm not done yet and could change my mind before 4th year (or during residency). But I also work with some brilliant physicians at our outpatient clinics that choose, by conviction, to remain in primary care.
ReplyDelete*brilliant and pretty dang gorgeous (and unfortunately taken ;)
ReplyDeleteJenna: So are you saying JAMA won't accept this well constructed study for publication? :)
ReplyDelete