Psychiatric Residencies?
I am thinking about becoming a psychiatrist.. I have talked with an advisor at my school (UCR) and she had told me that if I have my heart set on being a psychiatrist, or neurologist, that I shouldn't go to med school due to the fact that you never get matched with the program you want. She suggested being a therapist or something else in the field, and that if you want to be a doctor to go to med school but if you already know what you want to specialize in to not go. Can someone who is in med school or has graduated please tell me how match works? Any info would help! She literally ruined med school for me.
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Your adviser should consider a new career stacking shelves in the supermarket. Both Psychiatrists and Neurologists are required to go through Medical school.
How do matches work? My daughter is planning her pre match visits right now (third year). She will spend two weeks in the spring at each place where she wants to do her residency, this gives them a chance to look at her and vice versa.
To be sure of getting the residency you want, you need to stand out. It is not about having the best grades. A couple of published papers will work far better. Carefully chosen summer internships each year while you are at med school are essential. This is a small world, everyone knows everyone. Choose your undergraduate thesis with care, you may be able to get a published paper out of that. Will help your application for med school too.
Your adviser is recommending you become a Clinical Psychologist, the work is very similar. The only real difference is that you cannot prescribe.
I would suggest Neurology. Research is suggesting that many mental illnesses have a physical cause in the brain which means that they are neurological problems rather than psychiatric problems. For some illnesses like Schizophrenia there is a genetic disorder involved. The genetic disorder affects how the brain works making it a neurological problem.
You don't need to go to med school to be a psychiatrist. You need a PhD in psychiatry, and medical school is not necessary. That would be about 7-8 years of school.
Neurology is an specializatio for a medical doctor. So you would need a Bachelor in science in Biology, pre-med or nursing, plus fantastic gpa and MCAT to be accepted into medical school 3-4 years plus clinicals, and after that a specialization in Neurology which is an additional 2 years, so 10 years of school plus.
To be accepted into pre-med or Bio as an undergraduate, you need AP Bio, AP Chemistry, AP physics, and a fantastic gpa and sat scores. To go to medical school, you need a 3.7 gpa in college plus meet all pre req classes and score high on the MCAT. Med school is extremely competitive. To be able to get an specialization, you need high gpa in med school too, Neurology is extremely complex and only very gifted individuals enter this field.
Psychiatry in the other hand, is a PhD in social science, not medicine.
There's no guarantee you will match with a program, much less your first choice.
However, attend a good med school and do well and you won't have a problem matching with a program. No one can guarantee Psychiatry, but you may not even want that by the time you get to match time.
That makes absolutely no sense.