Internal Medicine-Pediatrics (MedPeds)
Intro Heading link
This online repository houses relevant resources and contact information for students seeking career advice. We encourage you to review the career-related materials provided (e.g. Specialty Webinar, Interview Questions, Research, etc.) as you seek support in your journey through medical school.
If you have further questions that are not addressed on this page, please feel free to contact a Specialty Faculty Mentor for further guidance.
Match Preparation and Charting Outcomes Heading link
You are more than your Step Scores! Use the NRMP page to look at the qualifications of applicants who have successfully applied to your specialty.
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Chicago
Should applicants do away rotations?
It is up to the individual applicant. Away rotations are not required or expected. However, they may be appropriate or helpful for an applicant with a specific interest or circumstance (i.e. geographic restrictions, special clinical or research interest). Would recommend discussing with an advisor prior to proceeding.
Research
It is valued and encouraged but by no means a requirement. If you did participate in research, please be prepared to discuss in detail your role, as well as, the research question, findings, and results (if available) of the project. In general, some sort of extracurricular pursuit is recommended, but it does not need to be limited to research. It can include community outreach, volunteer efforts, policy work, quality improvement, medical education, etc.
Letters of Recommendation
- Number of letters recommended – 3-4
- Chair’s letter/SLOE/special letter required? Variably department letters are required, but this is the case less and less over the years (please check program websites)
- Number of letters from within specialty? Ideally 2 letters commenting on clinical performance (from a combination of medicine, pediatrics, and/or MedPeds faculty); helpful to have an additional letter of support from another clinical rotation or a research/volunteer/scholarship advisor.
- Number of letters from away rotations/institutions? N/A
- Do you require the MSPE before offering interviews? We will offer some interviews prior to MSPE availability.
Personal Statements
In general, personal statements should convey an applicant’s motivation for pursuing medpeds training and any goals that an applicant has about how they plan to utilize their training in the future. This is also an opportunity, if comfortable, to share personal, patient care, and/or other significant experiences to help programs get to know you better, understand what motivates you, learn about any obstacles you have overcome, and make some basic assessments on if you would be able to thrive and contribute to the mission of the residency program. Additionally, personal statements are important for illustrating an applicant’s ability to communicate with clarity via writing, a very important skill for physicians. Statements should be reviewed for content but also to ensure there are no grammatical or spelling errors.
Application Timing
- When do programs in your specialty generally begin reviewing applications? As soon as applications are available to programs via ERAS. At UIC, we begin our review process about 1 week after ERAS makes applications available to us, in order to allow folks a little more time to make any final tweaks to their applications and/or upload any remaining letters of recommendation they received that were slightly delayed in being completed.
- When do programs in your specialty begin offering interviews? There is some variability, but some programs will begin to offer interviews within days of applications becoming available. There is movement amongst medpeds programs to have an agreed upon “no earlier than” date for offering interviews to allow more time for holistic review of applications and make the process more predictable for applicants. It is not yet fully settled, but there is momentum gaining for this. We joined other medpeds programs on this agreement for the 2022-23 application cycle (the date was October 11th).
- When does your program generally offer interviews? We begin offering interviews approximately 2 weeks after we receive applications from ERAS. We do our best to ensure the number of interviews we offer matches our availability. The majority of our invites will go out within about a 1–2-week timespan. However, we continue to offer interviews and develop small waitlists throughout the application season based on our ongoing interview availability. I cannot emphasize enough that no matter when you receive it, if you get an offer to interview with us, that means we are highly considering your candidacy to join our resident program. Unfortunately, we just do not have the capacity to interview every single qualified candidate, but we do our best to interview as many as we can. Our interviews usually run from late October through about early January.
Interview Advice
- If you have gotten an interview, then the program considers you a viable candidate. So, relax, you have earned your spot! Interviews are generally more conversational. Applicants should be prepared to discuss any items listed on their CV in detail. They should have questions prepared that are ideally individualized to the program they are visiting. The number of interviews during an interview day will be variable, but an applicant should expect at least two interviews (often more) when visiting a program. For now, interviews are still being conducted in a virtual environment.
- Try to participate in any social events, if available. This is an opportunity for you to get know the program and individuals you may be working closely with for the next 4 years. Getting some feel for the culture, personality, and mission is very important to best determine if you would thrive at that institution.
- The number or residency interviews that an applicant should plan for will vary. We advise that you speak with a medpeds faculty member, resident, or other advisor to help determine the number of programs you should pursue.
Post-Interview Advice
- We advise students that they should not feel obligated to contact a program post-interview. There is enough stress in the application season as it is, wondering if you should send a thank-you card or tell someone they are your number one should not be one of those stressors. Participating in the interview day is thank-you enough. If you do choose to send a follow-up or thank you note, make sure it is coming from a genuine place and is not forced. Additionally, do not read into a lack of reply or a generic reply back, as most programs seek to limit any additional contact with applicants to avoid misleading anyone.
- In the case where an applicant has an unresolved question or there are certain items the student wants more details or clarity about, then you should feel comfortable reaching out with those specific asks to the program. Finally, if a student has an important update to share or a significant piece of information to provide that wasn’t available on interview day, you should feel comfortable providing those updates to programs as well.
For further guidance, contact our specialty faculty liaison:
Pavan Srivastava, MD
psriva1@uic.eduIsaias Torres, Coordinator
isaiast@uic.edu -
Peoria
Should applicants do away rotations?
Away rotations are not required for Med-Peds applicants. We advise our students interested in Med-Peds to undertake an away for 3 reasons: 1) If they want to experience a different type of program than their home program (e.g. a larger center, a smaller center, a community based program etc.); 2) If they want to undertake an audition rotation at a site they are highly interested in Matching to get better knowledge of that program; and 3) If they want to rotate in a particular rotation that isn’t available at their home program or a particular part of the country.
Research
Research is encouraged but not required for Med-Peds. Scholastic activity of any kind (poster, platform presentation, Quality Improvement Projects, research project) shows you participated in academic endeavors during medical school, and is a great sign for a Program Director that you will do the same in residency. Advanced research isn’t a requirement in our field to be competitive as an applicant, but scholastic activity is always welcome and a great discussion topic for Program Directors on interview day.
Letters of Recommendation
- Number of letters recommended – 3-4
- Chair’s letter/SLOE/special letter required? Chair letter is optimal but not required for students who do not have access to a traditional academic Chair
- Number of letters from within specialty? None required, some centers do not have Med-Peds physicians.
- Number of letters from away rotations/institutions? None required
- Do you require the MSPE before offering interviews? No
We do not require any special letter of recommendation (e.g. SLOE letters or away rotation letters). We want to see letters of recommendation from physician’s with whom you have worked and can provide background of your skillset and qualities as a physician in training. Ideally, the physicians serving as a referral from you should know your career goals and able to speak to how you will perform in a clinical training setting. The content and quality of the letter from someone who knows you and your background and career goals means more than the type of setting in which it was acquired.
Personal Statements
Personal statements should describe what attracts you to the field of Med-Peds and why you have chosen it for residency. It should be brief, and doesn’t need to contain a “eureka” moment or a life-altering story. If those types of experiences occurred then share them, but it is also ok and encouraged to give a synopsis of why you feel drawn to the field and why it speaks to you as an individual. If you have any red flags on your application (e.g a failed step exam, a remediated class or clerkship etc.). Be honest about why the red flag occurred –most program directors do not expect perfection from applicants, but honesty will go a long way towards making a red flag less concerning to a Program Director.
Application Timing
- When do programs in your specialty generally begin reviewing applications? When ERAS opens.
- When do programs in your specialty begin offering interviews? Before MSPE is released, usually within a few days of ERAS opening
- When does your program generally offer interviews? Beginning in early-mid October to the end of December
- Do you require the MSPE before offering interviews? No
Interview Advice
- An interview day is a chance for the program to meet you, and you to meet the program –the Program Director, the Program Coordinator, Core faculty, potential fellow residents etc. Be yourself –Program Directors and program staff and residents are looking most of all to see if you fit into the culture and the environment of their program (e.g. the people, the city, the hospital etc). They will try to get to know you in the time you during the interview to try and assess what you are looking for in a program. For example, if the hospital is in a large city, and you state in your Personal Statement and interviews that you are a small city person, they will want to know what led you to apply to their program.
- Remember, you are interviewing them just as much as they are interviewing you. How do you get along with the Program Director, what was the city like, did the Program Coordinator seem welcoming, is there a sense of camaraderie among the residents? You will be training there for 4 years, so you want to try and get a sense of the city and hospital you are potentially going to be moving to.
- How many programs to apply to depends on the applicant and their level of competitiveness for Med-Peds residency. We recommend talking to academic advisors and Med-Peds Program Directors and faculty for advice on how many programs to apply to. Because there are fewer programs in the country some students choose to dual apply. Discuss this with your local advisors and if possible Med-Peds faculty prior to dual applying.
Post-Interview Advice
We advise students not to feel the need to contact us post interview. There is enough stress in the application season as it is, wondering if you should send a thank you card or tell someone they are your number one shouldn’t be one of those stressors. The interview day is thank you enough and we advise students to not feel the need to reach out. However, we also advise if any questions arise or there are specifics the student wants to know about the program to absolutely reach out with any questions, concerns etc. We want students to feel like they can access us for questions at any time before or after their interview. We don’t want them to feel obligated to contact us to let us know their interest level. If a student has an update to share that they want us to know about their application, or a piece of information that wasn’t available on interview day or something that a student genuinely wants us to know, we certainly encourage them to reach out to us as well. Conversely, however, we follow NRMP guidelines strictly and won’t share any leading information or tell a student where they will be ranked on our list, as such claims are often false and misleading to a student when they are made.
For further guidance, contact our specialty faculty liaison:
Matthew Mischler, MD
uicompcareer@uic.edu
Helpful Resources Heading link
- The NRMP publishes a survey of Applicants each year. This report presents the results of selected items from the 2022 NRMP Applicant Survey. The report documents factors that applicants weigh in selecting programs (1) at which to interview and (2) to rank in the Main Residency Match. It can be found HERE.
- The NRMP Publishes a survey of Residency Program Directors. This report examines the factors program directors use to select applicants to interview and rank. Data are reported for 22 specialties and the transitional year in the Main Residency Match. It can be found HERE.
- Looking for residency programs? The AAMC interactive, Careers in Medicine Website is where you should be! LINK
- Having difficulty deciphering this information? Contact your Student Affairs Career Advisor on your campus!!!
Below you will find resources to help you get started when applying for residency.
- American Urological Association (AUA)
- FREIDA Residency and Fellowship Program Database
- The Road to Residency Made Simple
- AMA Residency match made simple: From M4 to PGY-1 in 6 steps
- AAMC/NRMP/NBME collaborative Residency Exploration Tool
- Apply Smart
- Careers in Medicine
- Doximity Residency Navigator
- Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS)
- Medical Residency and Fellowship Map
- National Resident Matching Program (NRMP
- San Francisco Match (SF Match)
- Visiting Student Learning Opportunities (VSLO)