Medical Physics: Campep Accreditation Stats

[JoelCarlson]

Hey everyone,
This may be of interest for those of you looking to pursue Medical Physics in grad school.
I spent a little while making a shiny app displaying CAMPEP statistics, including enrollment data and employment post graduation.

https://joelcarlson.shinyapps.io/campep/

Something that surprised me was the relatively high residency statistics for MSc graduates in the past few years. The percent of MSc grads gaining residency doesn't appear to be all that different from that of PhD graduates, despite what many editorials and forum posts may have a person believe.

Please let me know what you think!

Notes:

• Not every school actually publishes their stats. I made every effort to find stats from each school, but several eluded me.
• Stats for 2014 are scarce, and some schools haven't yet published 2013 data.
• The degree type label "Both MSc + PhD" implies the published stats were not differentiated

 

[Choppy]

That's a great app. It's nice to see someone collecting this info so that prospective students can make decisions based on data rather than through rumours and hearsay.

I know that AAPM has been making efforts over the last few years to increase the number of medical physics residencies overall and has been paying particular attention to MSc graduates. I don't know how far along those efforts are. One particular idea is the "spoke and hub" model where larger academic facilities will administrate the residencies, but a lot of the training and on-the-job experience comes from smaller satellite (in an academic sense) centres.

What I think might be fairly common is that the MSc graduates are not as competitive for the residencies at the big research institutions as the PhD graduates and these are often the more desirable places to do residencies at (at least for people who prefer big cities). And so the MSc graduates may not be getting their top choices as frequently.

 

[JoelCarlson]

That's a great app. It's nice to see someone collecting this info so that prospective students can make decisions based on data rather than through rumours and hearsay.

I know that AAPM has been making efforts over the last few years to increase the number of medical physics residencies overall and has been paying particular attention to MSc graduates. I don't know how far along those efforts are. One particular idea is the "spoke and hub" model where larger academic facilities will administrate the residencies, but a lot of the training and on-the-job experience comes from smaller satellite (in an academic sense) centres.

What I think might be fairly common is that the MSc graduates are not as competitive for the residencies at the big research institutions as the PhD graduates and these are often the more desirable places to do residencies at (at least for people who prefer big cities). And so the MSc graduates may not be getting their top choices as frequently.

Thanks, I appreciate the kind words!

You are correct about the efforts of the AAPM, another thing that is being piloted in a few institutions is the DMP program, where graduates essentially do a residency as part of the program. Related to that, I believe several institutions are tying to guarantee on-site residencies for students accepted to their programs.

It would be nice to have information on what schools and locations MSc grads vs PhD grads are going to, to confirm your suspicions. Alas, that data is unavailable (at least, as far as I know.)

 

[Andy Resnick]

Hey everyone,
This may be of interest for those of you looking to pursue Medical Physics in grad school.
I spent a little while making a shiny app displaying CAMPEP statistics, including enrollment data and employment post graduation.

<snip>

Shameless self-promotion: Our program (Cleveland State/Cleveland Clinic) is not listed on your app, even though it's CAMPEP accredited.

 

[JoelCarlson]

Ah my apologies! Actually I looked for data from CSU Ohio but couldn't find a complete set of data, this is what I found: http://www.csuohio.edu/sciences/dept/physics/physicsweb/csu_med_phys.pdf

The app requires each school to have info on # of applicants, offers, matriculated, and stats on the graduates. There are several other schools that I couldn't find complete information for as well (eg. McGill, University of Minnesota...).

If you have complete information I would be happy to upload it to the app!