From my experience, the programs that are malignant are the ones that are in the bottom of the barrel, not university programs, and accept applicants that would have otherwise had problems getting to other places. There are exceptions.
While what I stated may cast no sympathy for the residents because obviously a good candidate shouldn't go to such a program, as I mentioned, scores and such don't accurately reflect what's going on. Some of these residents are in a hell-hole and would make good physicians and don't deserve to be in a situation on the order of a slave.
What aspects of an interview or application yare valuable or could be useful in predicting a good resident?
In studies, and I hate saying this, the only things that seems to yield anything of value is the standardized exam scores and grades. (The crowd: I thought you said you hate rating a candidate on their USMLE!!!! Kill him!). Hear me out.
It turns out that standardized exams are highly manipulative in the test maker's ability to modify and study it. With years of experimental questions, being able to put it through the statistical ringer, this and that, these tests do yield something that is of some substance.
It's just that as we know, it's not a good indicator and that's my point. It's not good but it's the only one out there that yields something of benefit other than grades.
Grades? Even less useful than standardized exams though still having some statistical validity.
SO WTF are we supposed to do? I hate saying it but we don't really have much but given the above knowledge here's where it does help us.
1-Do not overemphasize USMLE scores. This does not make a good candidate. If the guy screws up as a resident and his USMLE score rocked, this should have pretty much no bearing given that the proof is in the pudding and that is the resident's performance, not their board score.
2-Forget about interviews (in general-see below). This just proves that the resident is a good talker. I'm sick and tired of faculty and residents saying "yeah well he gave a good interview, accept him" just based on that. The fact that they're a good talker could be a bad thing in some ways, especially if the resident is found to be unethical, socially manipulative, and stretching the truth.
3-Interviews, LORs, and personal statements do have relevance (despite what I said) if there's something exceptional in there. Truly exceptional. E.g. the LOR is written by a doctor you know and you know they are a good judge of character. In which you call that doctor up and double check. LORs are testimony but testimonies could be relevant usually only in the case that it's from a known reliable and valid source.
Interviews: only relevant if the person brings up something truly exceptional that can be verified.
Personal statement: same too. Only if there's something very exceptional and verifiable. Some cases I've seen, a candidate from a third world country, grew up in a warzone, came to America with her family, paid for her own education, is currently helping the rest of her family get to America.
4-Volunteer work of exceptional scale: This is usually not possible in medical school but volunteering on a level that proves they just didn't do it as a fraternity requirement or just to fill their application to prove they care (by seeing those homeless people that they feel are lower than scum) doesn't prove anything to me. Exceptions: A vet that works with Wounded Warrior Project, someone that does hundreds of hours of volunteer work a year.
5-Exceptional life experience: E.g. former sgt in the marines, saw combat, may even have a Purple Heart, former business owner, former exceptional leadership experience-e.g. not only had a leadership position but did something for real with it, not just got elected to some bogus office due to class popularity. E.g. while on office wrote the manual on safety on campus and brings it in and it's thorough. People only do that if they give a damn and did a good job.
6- Knowledge of something in the field that is truly exceptional. E.g. I read
Young Man Luther by Erik Erikson in high school. A guy comes in and can tell me about it, I'm more convinced the guy really wants to be in mental health.
7- Something just so out of the ordinary: A buddy of mine, a DO with average scores got into opthamology residency. He told me during interviews, he was asked to bring in something to prove he really wanted that field. He brought a copy of the first printed opthamology book ever. I forgot how old it was but it was hundreds of years old and had damage from bookworms (though now clean). HE said it as his dream to get into the field. His book was convincing. This got him into that very competitive field.
8- Something that you can read in between the lines that shows this candidate is good.
E.g. a buddy of mine, a graduated chief resident, went out of his way to accept two candidates into his program that were kicked out of other programs. What? That usually blacklists you. EXACTLY. See some people kicked out of programs were unfairly kicked out. They were still good residents and this is especially true of malignant programs. Whenever he saw someone kicked out, if he detected something that showed it was not fair, he'd dig deeper and try to figure it out. Candidates like that are usually thankful for the rest of their lives for the second chance. Out of that list he got, he was able to verify that those two did likely get kicked out unfairly. They turned out to be the best two residents of their year in the program.
9-THE BEST INDICATOR, ALWAYS is knowing how good the applicant is because you've seen them do the work.
The entire process typically used with scores and such only allow one to weed applicants out of the pile. One cannot humanly give each application the time each one deserves when there's hundreds to thousands and you have only a few dozen hours to prune it down to a few dozen.
When the process, however, gets to that few dozen you can give more time and investigation.
