Hopefully, Match Day will be your lucky day after you finish reading our list of 10 most competitive medical fellowships in America. Match Day is when your future becomes revealed. It sounds almost like a prophet, but for those of you who are unaware, Match Day is when National Resident Matching Program or NRMP publishes the results for applicants seeking residency and fellowship. The next one is due on 16 March 2018. Before you start getting anxious about the whole process, let’s start from the scratch. First, before every fellowship, there comes internship. Which medical residencies are the most competitive? You’ll find out in our article on 10 Most Competitive Residency Programs in US. If you are afraid of too much competition and you’re not quite sure which one to go for, check out 10 Easiest Fellowships and Scholarships to Get in 2017 and breathe a sigh of relief. However, you probably opened this article because you are an ambitious high flyer and you wish to know which fellowships are hardest to get into. Your mind must be filled with all kinds of questions about your future career. For example: what fellowships are available after internal medicine? Well, the internal medicine fellowships list is rather extensive. There are 18 of them, as told by UW Medicine: rheumatology, pulmonology, endocrinology, oncology, nephrology and so on. How many years is nephrology fellowship, you may ask? The answer is 2 years. What are internal medicine fellowships salaries? It depends. Indeed says the average salary for “general internal medicine fellowship” can range from around $67,934 per year for Cardiology Physician to $199,934 per year for Internal Medicine Physician. Think hard about your choices. The latter could easily ensure you have the best internal medicine subspecialty lifestyle. Despite the minimum of your free time, money surely can help in having some quality time off. OK, future fellows, before you get down to analyzing our list and revealing if we have any most competitive internal medicine fellowships on it, let us explain how we collected the data and arranged it. Firstly, we went to Med Students to see which competitive programs are most difficult to match, i.e., for you to enroll. Spoiler alert. Hematology and oncology fellowships are competitive, but not that much. Then we decided to explore how much you will be earning after completing that long and grueling process. Naturally, after all that hard work that you have put into, you would wish for it to pay off properly. Most lucrative professions are the most desirable and competitive, aren’t they? That’s why we went to Medscape to find out the average annual salaries for each of the most competitive fellowships. For a few specialties that weren’t enlisted there, we consulted with Salary website. Finally, they were ranged from the lowest to the highest median annual salary. Also, we sometimes included into our list very useful information on how much the earnings have increased compared to the previous year. It’s always good to follow the trends, isn’t it? In addition to that, in case you have just started med school, but you are already weighing your options, we are telling you how many years you’ll have to invest into the opportunity of your choice (both internship and fellowship). How competitive are medical specialties? To say very much would be an understatement. That’s why you should read about 10 most competitive medical fellowships in America right now and make your decision. The time is running out and the Match Day is just around the corner. 10. Ophthalmology Average annual salary: $345,000 To become an ophthalmologist, you’ll need additional six years of training, but you’ll eventually be licensed to practice medicine and surgery. 9. General surgery Average annual salary: $352,000 General surgery will take you six years of postgraduate training. On the bright side, the average income for the surgeons in general surgery has increased by 9% since last year. 8. Dermatology Average annual salary: $386,000 As opposed to the previous occupation, dermatologists only saw the mere increase of 1% in their salaries. As for how time-consuming it is, you’ll need to have four years of residency and one year of fellowship. 7. Radiology Average annual salary: $396,000 Diagnostic Imaging suggests a lot of students apply for programs even before they finish their internship. In a nutshell, there’s a long waiting list for this popular calling that will occupy the following six years. 6. Otolaryngology Average annual salary: $398,000 Otolaryngologist pronunciation is easy for some, and difficult for others to pronounce, let alone have a specialization in it. The residency lasts for five years, but the fellowship will take additional 2 to complete. 5. Urology Average annual salary: $400,000 Up next in our list of most competitive medical fellowships in America are urologists who are also seeing their salary going higher by 9% in comparison to 2016. However, they’re at the very bottom of the list of physicians who are happiest with their chosen specialization. You’ll need 5 years of residency and one for fellowship. 4. Plastic surgery Average annual salary: $440,000 An increasingly popular field of medicine in our list of 10 most competitive medical fellowships in America. Its salaries went higher by staggering 24% in comparison to the last year. Six + one years. You know the maths. 3. Cardiac and thoracic surgery Average annual salary: $446,302 What is a thoracic surgeon? That’s the surgeon who deals with the inside of your chest. To become one, you first need to complete a 5-year general surgery residency and then continue education for another 2 to 6 years. 2. Orthopedic surgery Average annual salary: $460,290 The minimum of your time required is 5 years, plus an additional year for a certain field. It is one of the most competitive surgical specialties, but it’s not the top one. 1. Neurosurgery Average annual salary: $576,068 Neurosurgery is at the top of our list of 10 most competitive medical fellowships in America. This grueling job is for people who thrive on stress and adrenaline. The working hours are tough, but the salary is over half a million. All it takes is 7 years of internship and one year of fellowship. Source
