I'm Applying for General Surgery Residency: Here's What I Would've Done Differently
If you got to this page and realized this post would be too much for you to sift through right now you can find a boiled down video version of it here.
A few weeks ago I submitted my application for General Surgery residency. Now that I have started to prepare for the next step (i.e. interview season), I have spent a lot of time reflecting on how I got here- to my fourth year of medical school. As is common with self-reflection, I can appreciate how much I’ve accomplished, while simultaneously wishing I’d done a few things differently. In this post, I’ll talk about the latter. If I could go back in time, here are three things I’d do to solidify my interest in general surgery and maximize my competitiveness for residency.
1.) Seek out mentorship early.
During my gap years, I connected with med students to learn about the med school application process. During my first and second years of medical school, I connected with students ahead of me to prepare for the wards. During my various sub-internships, I spoke with residents and fellows about residency apps and the MATCH. As I begin to think about what I want my career to look like in 10 years, I am left with questions that only an attending can answer. Only recently did I begin seeking out mentors who are established attending surgeons in their respective fields, and it has made a world of difference.
The single-most important thing you can do during medical school is seek out mentorship and I encourage you to do so early on. Mentors often bring opportunities that otherwise would not present themselves. They can prepare you for what lies ahead. They can serve as an invaluable resource to you for years to come. If it isn’t clear how you’re going to go from high school senior to full-blown liver transplant surgeon- FIND A MENTOR. I can talk more about mentorship in a future post, but if you want to make sure you’re a good mentee, take a second to learn about “managing up”.
2.) Shadow attendings in the various surgical specialties/subspecialties.
According to several residents, one of the most common questions you encounter on the residency interview trail is “where do you see yourself in 10 years”. During my away rotations and sub-internships, I made sure to rotate on different services (despite the comfort a familiar service would afford me) because I wanted to know for myself where my career would take me. Now that I’ve realized I can see myself in many specialties, I am grateful for my initial decision, and wish I would’ve started the exposure process sooner. Our entire life trajectories are reliant on what we’re exposed to and to answer the question thoughtfully - “where do you see yourself” - it helps to figure out what you love so that you can speak about it with some level of conviction. I’ve been told many people find they love something different during residency, and that’s ok. I think it’s less about being “correct”, and more about being proactive.
3.) Find a research (or passion) project early.
I did neurosurgery research the summer after my first year of medical school. When I decided I wanted to pursue general surgery instead, I took on a clinical research project with a pediatric surgeon (my current field of interest) as my scholarly project. When it was time for letters of recommendation, I felt I had not worked with my research mentor long enough to ask for one.
Research mentors are often great letter writers because of their extended exposure to your intellectual capabilities, work ethic, and resilience. Instead of the one-month clinical snapshots provided by attendings you work with on rotations, they can speak to your work over several months (or years!) if you get involved early. Residency programs value letters like these; the strongest letters come from people who know you best. If you’re lucky, when you seize an opportunity to do research, you’ll find a project you are truly invested in, while gaining a mentor in the field you hope to pursue. Remember what I said about exposure? Beyond having something to put on your CV and talk about during an interview, research experiences can also help you figure out the direction you might be headed in after residency training.
The research I am doing as part of my scholarly project has been a wonderful learning opportunity for me. But I think it’s also worth mentioning that while my medical school years were not defined by significant research involvement, they were filled with commitments to other things- teaching, mentorship, and advocacy.
Sometimes I forget the extraordinary impact these interests have had in my personal and career development. Where do I see myself in 10 years? Splitting my time between clinical responsibilities, education, and advocacy. I see myself mentoring medical students and training the next generation of surgeons. I see myself working diligently to recruit individuals from diverse backgrounds into surgery. I see the promotion of equity as central to my career. Whether that means I fall in love with global surgery or pioneer a pipeline program for historically marginalized youth here at home, only time will tell.
If you’re early in your medical school education (or perhaps still in college) I hope this post encourages you to take full advantage of the opportunities ahead. If, like me, you’re further along I want to remind you that the opportunities are still out there. My residency applications are in. There isn’t much I can do to change my odds of receiving an interview invite at this point. But I still have time- time to reach out to attendings with questions, time to be as productive as I can be with the research project I’ve undertaken, and time to reflect on where I hope to be in 10 years. So much can happen with time well spent.
