harley-davidson2007 - 10 January 2009 02:25 PM
I interviewed at Indiana this year and really liked it. It looks like the merger between Indiana and Methodist neurosurgery groups is going through, and they are building a state-of-the-art neuroscience facility together. I really haven’t seen too much about the program on this website and am wondering what people’s opinions are. In particular, only about 30% of the residents choose to do fellowships. For someone unsure about academic/private practice, do you think it is a gamble to go to a place like this?
As one of the IU’s 11 MSIV applying this year, I’ll bite.
Overall it is a solid program that is very underrated. It provides great training if you want to go into private practice (thats why so few fellowships), especially now that it is 6 yrs. You get plenty of autonomy running the services at Wishard and VA and start operating early. The merger definitely makes the program look better because now we have better access to interventional and a few niches like pain we didn’t get. The thing about ING is they also get stuff just as complicated as the IU service so potentially you get access to those cases as well. Volume was never an issue with the training but now has the potential to be massive and much more convenient to get exposure to any aspect of neurosurgery you want.
Personally, I’m not sure how the merger will affect the demeanor of the training which attracted a lot of the residents (a very layed back group, all good guys) and that several faculty were med students who trained there and stayed as faculty (and that there are 11 of us coming out and why many want to stay at IU). But the Nelson and Shapiro are great as are the rest of the faculty and all the ING guys I have met. One of the reasons for the demeanor was that no trauma was at the University Hospital, so now with the move to Methodist I’m not sure that the demeanor or the strong early operative experience would continue.
If you really want to have a very high profile academic career then IU may not be the best choice (currently basic science research is limited but improving). They are working on that to make it a more balanced program and is otherwise a fantastic choice.
