Why We Created Our Site

Briefly, we created Appletto to help create a resource for medical professionals to more easily find places to live when they study, train, and work.  It is our hope that Appletto will more efficiently help you sort out where to live when deciding on committing to the long haul journey that is training to become a physician in the United States.  

Up until this time, there are many resources that help people sort through, organize, and explore medical schools, residency programs, and fellowship programs (MSAR®, FREIDA®, Doximity’s Residency Navigator, among others).  However, there are no free resources that provide knowledge and data on the location as it relates to the ease and quality of living for medical schools, residency programs, and fellowships in a cogent, easy-to-use design.  We determined the use case for Appletto when we applied to residency and asked people, “What is the most important thing in deciding where you want to train?”  The majority of responses to this question enumerated location as the first and most important factor in people’s decision of where to train.  Data gathered from survey respondents in 2022 from the NRMP® match corroborates this fact.[1]  In fact, 88% of active US allopathic seniors ranked “Desired geographic location” as the #1 consideration that goes into their decision-making when selecting residency programs across all specialties, the highest percentage for any factor for this cohort.  Active osteopathic seniors also highly rated desired geographic location highly, ranking it just below “perceived goodness of fit.” (84% vs 86%).  Both cohorts ranked desired geographic location over other categories including “reputation of program”, “quality of residents in the program,” and even “work-life balance.”  

Suffice to say, we wanted to create a level playing field where people would have access to data assimilated in a manner that would assist decision making whether one is deciding between several medical schools, programs on their rank order list (ROL), or searching for a different/easier pace of life during their training, among other reasons.  Previously, there have been resources to rank medical schools and programs based off prestige and reputation (US News, Doximity, etc.), however, the data clearly show this is not the most important factor in choosing a residency.  

For this reason, we have created a free, easy to sort tool that indexes a variety of different data points that are salient to life for whatever level of training you are at, be that medical student, resident, fellow, or attending.  We have incorporated proximity to major airports, every Costco (if within reasonable driving distance) in the United States, walkability, bikeability, and various living indexes among other metrics, including some that we are still rolling out. 

Make an account on Appletto for free right here: https://appletto.com/register  

[1]https://www.ama-assn.org/medical-students/preparing-residency/which-factors-do-applicants-weigh-most-when-picking-residency