regarding program selection - preliminary versus categorical

thanks for ur quick responce but i wanted to know about primary care internal medicine residency prog , not the preliminary prog.. plz let me know about that.. thanks i advance..

Hi,
This issue was addressed before which you can access by searcing the forum. However, I can review it again here. categorical is a 3 year residency whereas preliminary is a 1 year internship. IF you are interested in that specialty you are applying and not any other specialties that require one year prior residency, then choose categorical. Preliminary is for those that are going into other sepcialties that require one year residency, like Ophthalmology, ENT, Neurology etc. Preliminary positions are more competetive and hard to get, so choose categorical, if you are interested in residency in that specialty and are afraid of your chances. That is where you stand a better chance. It is very difficult to get preliminary. They offer all diferent visas like H1, J1 but not as often as they do for categorical and it is actually much harder to get into them since people with top scores aiming for other specialties like Ophthal, ENT, Radiology etc will go for them. Good luck!