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Cornell
#21
(01-03-2022, 02:18 AM)Guest Wrote: No one in their right mind should care about what non-neurosurgeons think about their neurosurgery residency. It's a small world that people outside have no idea of. To bring this up is playing with med students' minds about, literally, worthless things; like how your estranged uncle will react to when your parents tell him what you do. We all know about the high-profile names that are average at best in the neurosurgery realm.

Shoot for the residency, not the name, and consult trusted individuals in this realm about it. Cornell is definitely an above-average program with great academic ties and opportunities, and some world-class faculty.

While it is true that the Barrow is not where it was during the German reign, I'd be careful about dismissing their academic success. One aspect of being an academic powerhouse is the publication output and academic faculty. No chance the BNI is not up there. Not many pure Ph.D. faculty but incredibly growth in recent years with Sanai's brain tumor hirings and Lawton's investments in vascular bench labs. The clinical research output, however, is in the top 3 countrywide. How many programs can say they offer their residents 10+ illustrators and editors that do literally all the dirty work related to publishing. In addition, a lot of freedom in their 18 months off and lots of resident funding for very little effort and bureaucratic hassle with their own pool of philanthropic funds. Another aspect that defines academic powerhouses is their close ties to academic leaders, mainly former fellows and residents. Look around the country for Spetzler and Sonntag fellows and you will find more than plenty of leaders in academic neurosurgery, with more and more Lawton fellows in academic placements, too. It has virtually no ties to a fancy university, I already sound super biased so I'll go ahead and tell you that, for the most part, this is for the better as schools and big names suffer from the same problems as big companies do. Too much hierarchy, too much administrative BS. Plus your chair is, with the exception of Henry Ford or Duke, no one to the suits who run the hospitals and universities.

For the person asking why the BNI is mentioned everywhere on this forum, it's mostly a running gag at this point so don't take it too seriously. Barrow or bust
 
I don’t get your comment about Duke
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#22
(12-27-2021, 04:11 PM)drstrange Wrote: Yes, your fellowship position is the top line of your application. Some PGY7 fellowships (spine and endo) will get you most of the way there. Unless you go to Buffalo, people aren't going to care too much about your endo training. If you really want a good deformity position, you probably have to go hang out with Uribe, Schaffery, or go to someplace like HSS.

For an open CV position, you probably need a fellowship unless Lawton steps up for one of his residents (which is probably what happened for the guy going to Maryland). Those positions boil down to a handful of people - Lawton, Day, or equivalent.

Pedi, tumor, and functional academic jobs are probably more "credentialist" than all the above (although a ton of people have come out of UCSF recently without functional fellowships - probably the only place with enough functional to do that).

Comparing BNI and Cornell is going to look lopsided. BNI gives people amazing training but their graduates don't usually go into academics. However, if someone went there you would probably not have a hard time getting the fellowship of your choice and moving right into a good academic position. You'd also have the benefit of the doubt of all your colleagues that you know how to operate well.

Finally - anyone saying that an open CV job at Mary isn't "top 40" is probably high. That's a historically great place.

Is Maryland a strong program?
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#23
(01-03-2022, 10:52 AM)Guest Wrote:
(12-27-2021, 04:11 PM)drstrange Wrote: Yes, your fellowship position is the top line of your application. Some PGY7 fellowships (spine and endo) will get you most of the way there. Unless you go to Buffalo, people aren't going to care too much about your endo training. If you really want a good deformity position, you probably have to go hang out with Uribe, Schaffery, or go to someplace like HSS.

For an open CV position, you probably need a fellowship unless Lawton steps up for one of his residents (which is probably what happened for the guy going to Maryland). Those positions boil down to a handful of people - Lawton, Day, or equivalent.

Pedi, tumor, and functional academic jobs are probably more "credentialist" than all the above (although a ton of people have come out of UCSF recently without functional fellowships - probably the only place with enough functional to do that).

Comparing BNI and Cornell is going to look lopsided. BNI gives people amazing training but their graduates don't usually go into academics. However, if someone went there you would probably not have a hard time getting the fellowship of your choice and moving right into a good academic position. You'd also have the benefit of the doubt of all your colleagues that you know how to operate well.

Finally - anyone saying that an open CV job at Mary isn't "top 40" is probably high. That's a historically great place.

Is Maryland a strong program?

It’s a program
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#24
John Sampson, who was the prior chair at Duke, is now president of their whole physician group. I assume that that’s why they were singled out as a program were leadership probably has more influence
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#25
(12-27-2021, 10:05 AM)Guest Wrote: All 4 from Barrow went into academics last year, none did a postgrad fellowship
Labib - open vascular at Maryland
Whiting - epilepsy at Allegheny
Walker - spine at Cedars Sinai
Godzik - spine at UAB
Wrong.
Each and everyone did a fellowship. Barrow is making the mistake of not transitioning to a PGY6 chief year, so none of their fellowships will be CAST approved, but it doesn’t mean their residents don’t do enfolded fellowships.
  1. fellowship from North Shore University Hospital in New York (and others). https://www.umms.org/find-a-doctor/profi...16?si=ummc
  2. Fellowship at Cleveland Clinic https://findcare.ahn.org/Alexander-C-Whi...1641206402
  3. Fellowship at San Diego https://www.uab.edu/medicine/neurosurger...es-holland
  4. Fellowship at San Diego https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/pr...pine-team/
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#26
(01-05-2022, 07:58 PM)Guest Wrote:
(12-27-2021, 10:05 AM)Guest Wrote: All 4 from Barrow went into academics last year, none did a postgrad fellowship
Labib - open vascular at Maryland
Whiting - epilepsy at Allegheny
Walker - spine at Cedars Sinai
Godzik - spine at UAB

Wrong.
Each and everyone did a fellowship. Barrow is making the mistake of not transitioning to a PGY6 chief year, so none of their fellowships will be CAST approved, but it doesn’t mean their residents don’t do enfolded fellowships.
  1. fellowship from North Shore University Hospital in New York (and others). https://www.umms.org/find-a-doctor/profi...16?si=ummc
  2. Fellowship at Cleveland Clinic https://findcare.ahn.org/Alexander-C-Whi...1641206402
  3. Fellowship at San Diego https://www.uab.edu/medicine/neurosurger...es-holland
  4. Fellowship at San Diego https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/pr...pine-team/


Read my prior comment to get a better idea on this. Re "Barrow is making the mistake of not transitioning to a PGY6 chief year, so none of their fellowships will be CAST approved", this does not make your fellowships CAST approved. Even if you finish your chief year as PGY6, you cannot graduate before PGY7 even if your program let you go to another place for fellowship during PGY7. CAST approval requires completion of residency and graduation. Regardless, you don't need CAST-approved fellowship for getting hired
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#27
I think poster was implying that none of the BNI grads had to do a post-grad fellowship (extra year) in order to secure an academic job
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#28
It's unclear how many people who mention cornell on this forum are actually familiar with the department or residency program structure.

Job landscape: from 2015-2021, only one graduate landed a non-academic position. The rest either went with straight academic hires (Cornell, Northwell, Sinai) or fellowships then academics (MD Anderson -> MSK, Miami -> Cornell, UCSF -> WUSTL, UW -> Sinai, Emory -> Sinai, UCSF -> Cornell, Boston Children's -> Miami, Sick Kids' -> TBD). This is publicly available information for anyone curious enough to look.

Academics within residency: without getting too aggressive about counting year-by-year, roughly 30-50% of residents in the last 4 years ended up doing enfolded fellowships in endovascular and the rest spend time doing research. The "research" block time is 1.5 years of protected time during residency (PGY4->PGY5.5). Chief year is PGY6, and PGY7 is designated as either time to focus on completed enfolded CAST fellowship (vascular), or focus on a particular area of academic/clinical interest (i.e. spend the year focusing on complex deformity, whatever). But ultimately, what's referred to as research time should really be categorized as career development and academic pursuit time, as fewer residents are selecting to spend the year doing bench research, though that still of course remains a supported, funded option.

Surgical ability and acumen: aside from comparing fresh hires at outside hospitals, there isn't a great way to objectively know how "good" graduates are. The only people who can really speak without bias to a program's ability to teach residents to operate end up either being visiting fellows, visiting medical students (who don't really know what they're looking at anyway), or faculty in departments that hire graduates. As above, graduates appear to obtain reasonably well sought-after fellowships and jobs, though no one's getting hired at MGH for example. Would be more interesting to hear if visiting fellows/sub-interns have some perspective on how "good" the residents are clinically and surgically.
- With respect to department volume, at least, Cornell and Sinai, by the books, have hired more faculty in the last 4 years including amidst the pandemic than the other departments in NYC; it's unclear how many of these hirings are to boost volume at sister campuses, however.
- I'm sure this could be debated endlessly, but in my book a resident's training experience is a function of 1) greater department volume, 2) fewer of residents in a program, 3) APP support and emphasis on early operative exposure, 4) graduated autonomy from faculty (no sense in autonomy without teaching, easy way to learn bad habits and almost by definition can't gain clinical acumen this way), and 5) the resident's own desire for self-improvement. Cornell/MSK is quite a small residency program in comparison to the number of faculty they have on staff and the number of ORs run between the two campuses, so the surgical training there is probably only limited by how much individual faculty members are willing to mentor and a resident's desire for self-improvement.
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#29
Cornell > NYU > Sinai~Columbia
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