University of Southern California
Clinical experience: County hospital based program for the most part. A few rotations done at USC Norris Cancer Center. Lots of autonomy at the country hospital since its mostly resident-run for most residencies. Which is great since you interact with a lot of residents directly when discussing patients across different departments. Downside is that the resident training did not seem very structured to me, and I’m not sure there is enough of a focus on education/making sure residents know the literature.
Lifestyle: Decent hours, residents home at 5. Plenty of vacation.
Research opportunities: Seemed like research is an increasing focus, but USC is definitely a clinically focused program.
Leadership: Awesome PD and Chair! They both seem very invested in the residents and the chair is well known.
Job Outcomes: Seemed less than optimal. Jobs are tight in Southern CA, so its understandable, but a large number of recent resident graduates had chosen to do fellowships.
Location: Downtown LA. LA is awesome – culturally diverse, lots of food/entertainment options, lots of young people, but Cedars Sinai and UCLA are located in better locations.
Overall: Great people, fun location. Program seems to be on the upswing in terms of developing research opportunities. But the program seemed to lack as structured an education/clinical supervision as I would have liked. And job outcomes are not great unfortunately. If you had to be in Southern CA, I would rank this below UCLA/UCSD and above the others.
University of Wisconsin
Clinical Experience: You will be very well trained here. Residents know their stuff coming out of residency here. It seemed to be on the heavier side in terms of caseload but it clearly paid off and was not because of scut
Lifestyle: Residents worked pretty late during PGY-2 (leaving at 7-8 PM seemed common), but it got better (5-6 PM) as time went on. Definitely a place you work harder than others.
Research Opportunities: Amazing. Lots of residents designing clinical trials etc. Faculty are very supportive.
Leadership: Chair is one of the friendliest I met – he’s an awesome guy. PD is very supportive and all the residents like her – although her service is apparently the hardest in terms of work!
Job Outcomes: The residents are very well trained and are competitive when it comes time for the job search. Seemed like residents were able to get academic or PP jobs.
Location: Not my cup of tea. Small Midwestern college town, not a whole lot of ethnic/cultural diversity from what I could see, very cold. And unfortunately still a pretty expensive place to live compared to other places in the Midwest.
Overall: Great program – you will come out very well trained. You will work harder than most. The location is what dropped this program a bit on my rank list.
Mayo
Clinical experience: Truly amazing. What really sets this place apart is the Senior Resident Associate rotation the last 6 months of your training. You effectively work as an attending (with your own scheduling person and everything) and see all pathologies. You see patients completely independently and an attending just have to sign off on the treatment plan. Residents know the literature, know how to treat patients, and will be ultra competitive (on par – or better – than any top 10 program) when it comes to PP jobs for sure because of their clinical expertise.
Lifestyle: Great hours – residents out at 5/530 and get protected academic time.
Research Opportunities: Not a basic science place from what I could see, but GREAT clinical research opportunities. No pressure to do research, so residents can be very, very productive (because of all the time/resources they have) to much more clinically focused – its really your choice.
Leadership: PD seemed nice, did not get a chance to really interact with chair during interview day unfortunately
Job Outcomes: Ultra competitive residents at graduation. Can get academic or top notch PP jobs from what I have heard from residents at Mayo as well as PGY-5s/young faculty I talked to at other places.
Location: Rochester is pretty terrible…
Overall: Unless you want to do basic science, this place should be near the top of your list. I went to other places in top 10-15, and Mayo was more impressive than all of them (except for “the big 3”). Unfortunately, the reality is that Rochester is a pretty terrible location, so think long and hard about whether you are willing to spend 4 years here.
Cleveland Clinic
Clinical Experience: Great clinical experience, residents really know their stuff by graduation. Residents emphasize how awesome all of the faculty are to work with – and I could tell why on interview day. The didactics are Socratic method (think WashU/UChicago) but because all the faculty are awesome, and they do pass around questions if you don’t know the answer, it was not at all malignant. But you do have to work hard to learn all the data. They emphasized that residents typically score 95th percentile nationally on the in-service exam
Lifestyle: Decent. Residents seemed to leave at 5/530, but they did take work home with them and had to study for didactics.
Research Opportunities: Amazing. Residents are among the most productive in the nation and research is definitely an expectation here.
Leadership: One of the nicest, most invested PDs I met on the trail. Truly a great guy who is key to the residency program being so awesome. Chair comes across as a bit stoic on interview day but is also actually awesome and the residents love him.
Job Outcomes: Amazing academic jobs right out of residency! 80-90% get academic jobs – so this is the place to go for a top notch academic job coming out! The PD did say they don’t push residents into academic vs. private and one of the residents mentioned he was interested in PP.
Location: Cleveland…is okay. It does have some areas of town with decent bars/food. And it’s a big enough city that you will get some diversity. And you have different types of neighborhoods you can live in (downtown type spots if you’re young and single, very close suburbs with affordable houses).
Overall: This place went up on my rank list after interview day. Awesome job outcomes, seemed like a very happy/fun group of residents/faculty. Overall a solid place to do residency and I would be very happy to end up here.
UCLA
Clinical Experience: Steinberg (chair) has done an awesome job to build this place up. Lots of great people for every disease site and doing a lot of innovative work (ViewRay, SBRT for prostate, etc) which is interesting to see. Residents seemed pretty well trained. Didactics are well structured, although they seemed maybe too laid back to me…to the point where I’m not sure how well the upper level residents grasp some of the finer details of the literature that residents at other programs do grasp.
Lifestyle: Much of the scut that plagued the program in the past seems to be gone. PD made this a point and residents seemed to get out by 6 most days. And growing to 3 residents/year has helped. That being said, it did seem like there was still less support staff (NPs/Pas) than other places.
Research Opportunities: Growing. Seems like there is a lot of clinical trials and other research going on. From what I could tell, the older residents did not seem to have a whole lot of research under their belt, but the newer ones have taken advantage of research opportunities.
Leadership: Steinberg/Chen is probably the best chair/PD combo I met all interview trail. Awesome people and very invested in residents. The rest of the faculty are all awesome too, making this a good place to train in terms of the people working there.
Job Outcomes: Probably better than all the other programs in LA, but recent graduates still seemed to struggle. With changes over the past 2-3 years however, this program is definitely THE definition of program on a meteoric rise.
Location: Best location in LA. Little to no traffic/commute if you live close by (which is rare in LA…). If you like interesting people, cultural diversity, fun things to do, amazing food, the beach, and expensive housing…this is the place to be.
Overall: Solid program, on the upswing for sure. This program went up on my rank list after interview day due to awesome PD/Chair and faculty….as well as location. The only thing to worry about is that, historically, UCLA has not been that great of a program. I would say #1 in SoCal.
WashU
Clinical experience: Amazing clinical experience. You have every single radiation toy known to man. Normal structures are almost always contoured for you (so you focus on tumor volumes), which is amazing! Residents really know the evidence. Didactics are socratic (which may not fit everyone’s style), so you have to spend time to learn your stuff, but it pays off.
Lifestyle: Great. You come in at 730 get out at 5/530. Get plenty of academic time to contour/do research. Call is a bit on the heavier side – you do typically have to come in on Saturday when you’re on call. Residents are overall very happy with their lifestyle.
Research Opportunities: Clinical trials. Basic science. Chart Reviews. You can do anything and everything and WashU has amazing resources both within rad onc and outside of it.
Leadership: Chair is awesome – basic science powerhouse if that’s your thing, but he also is really invested in your development as a resident. PD is well liked. Some of the faculty seemed to be “rougher”, but residents all seemed to joke about it and co-applicants who rotated here told me they were all nice/are great people.
Job Outcomes: Heavily recruited. It seemed like residents got interviews from across the country, and about 1 a year stays on as faculty.
Location: St. Louis is a medium sized city. It does have some happening spots (downtown and central west end, sort of). You do have more sports/entertainment options and a bit more diverse/cosmopolitan population than other Midwestern cities which is nice. City does have one of the highest crime rates in the country.
Overall: Truly awesome program in a decent location. Would be ecstatic to match here!