2020 Spine Fellowship Reviews

Anyone have any reviews from their spine fellowship interviews last year?

What were your top programs and why?
What were your bottom programs and why?

Would love to hear about this too. Always heard the same 5-10 names being thrown around. Where all did everyone interview and like?

Any thoughts from anyone? Thoughts on top or middle tier places????

Since no one is posting I will try to stimulate the conversation with some perspective of an applicant with basically only knowledge from word of mouth and doing research about places on the internet (here and other places).

Honestly, this whole process is quite a bit of a mystery and there is no clear cut answer as to what is the best from what I can tell.

Interestingly, I have mostly in person interviews scheduled so far. I expected to basically be an all virtual interview season but that does not appear to be the case. Perhaps only ACGME accredited programs are going virtual. Not that ACGME matters for spine fellowships though.

Popular places in no particular order that some call "top tier":
Emory
Rush
Rothman
Leatherman
Columbia
HSS
Utah

Heard good things about:
Scottsdale
twin cities
orthocarolina
wisconsin
hoag
UCSD


My questions:
Has Dr. Brodke stepped down or moved on from Utah?
Which fellowships are heavy on onc/tumor or have the availability to do more in that area?

Dr. Brodke most definitely has not stepped down. He is not the fellowship program director anymore, but he is still an integral part of a fellows education. I very nearly ranked Utah #1 because of Dr. Brodke. He really is an amazing person and would be an unbelievable mentor.

Agree with your top tier except HSS may not deserve to be up there. Other places I think people should seriously consider include Stanford, Mayo Clinic, and Cleveland Clinic. I would have been happy at any of those places and would have placed them above all the programs in the "heard good things about" section with the exception of orthocarolina which is also an amazing place.

The nice thing about Spine Fellowship right now is there are probably 15 really good spine fellowships. A couple places are optimal if you are interested in an academic career, but most strong applicants will end up at a really good program.

You have interviews set already? Who has sent out offers?