Hi everyone. I am a second year student with a hypothetical question about the match and looking for the best approach to landing a neurosurgery residency.

If one does not get an early neurosurg match, what is the best route to take if neurosurgery is the goal (prelim, general residencies/research?). Also, I saw that in 2009, neurosurg no longer require a year of general surgery. Does this mean that if you did a year of preliminary or general and reapplied to neuro, you would have to start the program from the beginning and lose that year?

With that in mind, I am assuming that most people apply to both neuro and general surgery programs. Would a sub-I in general surgery be a wise decision to secure a spot to fall back on?
Thanks

I expect most programs would require you to start over as year-one intern.

With regard to applying to general surgery backups, the data shows it’s simply not the common case. The average number of specialties ranked per successful U.S. Senior was 1.1 in 2011, which implies that out of every 10 applicants who matched after ranking neurosurgery first, only one of them also ranked another specialty.

latebl00mer - 25 January 2012 03:59 PM

Hi everyone. I am a second year student with a hypothetical question about the match and looking for the best approach to landing a neurosurgery residency.

If one does not get an early neurosurg match, what is the best route to take if neurosurgery is the goal (prelim, general residencies/research?). Also, I saw that in 2009, neurosurg no longer require a year of general surgery. Does this mean that if you did a year of preliminary or general and reapplied to neuro, you would have to start the program from the beginning and lose that year?

With that in mind, I am assuming that most people apply to both neuro and general surgery programs. Would a sub-I in general surgery be a wise decision to secure a spot to fall back on?
Thanks

There is no “early” neurosurg match.  Neurosurgery matches in the regular match now.  It does not require a year of gen-surg.  You are correct there.  Some programs will accept you as a PGY-2 after a prelim gen-surg year, and some won’t.  It all depends.

However, doing a year of gen-surg is not a reliable option.  Most people only apply to neurosurgery unless they are very weak applicants.  I would NOT recommend wasting valuable sub-I time doing general surgery.  You are either going to have to lie to them or admit that gen-surg is your backup. 

Just work your butt off, ace boards and be an outstanding student on your sub-Is.  You may not get your top choice, but, if you’re a competent student, you should match somewhere.

Osteopathic - 25 January 2012 06:42 PM

There is no “early” neurosurg match.  Neurosurgery matches in the regular match now.  It does not require a year of gen-surg.  You are correct there.  Some programs will accept you as a PGY-2 after a prelim gen-surg year, and some won’t.  It all depends.

However, doing a year of gen-surg is not a reliable option.  Most people only apply to neurosurgery unless they are very weak applicants.  I would NOT recommend wasting valuable sub-I time doing general surgery.  You are either going to have to lie to them or admit that gen-surg is your backup. 

Just work your butt off, ace boards and be an outstanding student on your sub-Is.  You may not get your top choice, but, if you’re a competent student, you should match somewhere.

I wasn’t aware that it is no longer an early match. That clears up a lot of confusion. Thanks.