Urology match completely screwed up this year

to read the comlete saga, go to www.urologymatch.com, go to the forum, and click on "match results".

I hereby express my condolences to everyone applying in urology this year that had to go through that hell. good luck to all in the future.

Can you tell us what actually happened. I heard they matched, then called a do-over for some reason.

This is what I heard from applicants. The match occurred in January as expected and everyone got their program assignments....THEN, 6 programs (most of which were highly competitive programs) indicated that they didnt get any residents. I am not sure the reason...it may be a simple computer glitch, or maybe the programs were cocky and only ranked like 5 people.....who knows. Regardless, these programs were not expected to scramble for unmatched applicants.

So the applicants in the match were contacted and told that their assignment was retracted and that a new match would be held. A few days later, applicants were given their actual position. In theory, it should have helped all parties, since people would all have been bumped up to a program higher on their rank list. I talked to one person who was told he did not match, and then found out 3 days later that he did match. So it was stressful but should have worked out pretty well in the end.

What the AUA told us applicants was that one of the "match safeguards" did not occur. What we were able to find out was that the match was run with different software by a new group of administrators this year. It appears as if the software did not use applicant preferences in the match, only the institution preferences. Therefore elite applicants who were ranked high by both top programs and "safer" programs produced most of the problems. Elite applicants matched at lower tier programs and the top notch programs, who usually rank fewer applicants, went unmatched. In the first match 8 spots were unfilled, and in the rematch all spots were filled. I would say that the majority of the people who matched ended up rematching at the same place. Some applicants moved up in the list. I have only heard of one person moving down. Unfortunately though, it appears as if a few people who originally matched ended up not matching at all.