Match Week 2015

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Gfunk6

And to think . . . I hesitated
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Best of luck to all Rad Onc applicants in this upcoming Match Week. Please do consider giving back to the community via interview impressions and/or match stats.

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Good luck to all!

It's pretty crazy thinking back to last year. Feels like much more recently. A lot of y'all will just be waiting for the email tomorrow just to make sure it actually happened... then will resort to freaking out until Friday like everyone else.
 
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While the vast majority of you will be thrilled (thrilled!) with the email you will receive tomorrow, a few will not. Don't fret -- every year, good people get unlucky, but those who persevere will find positions outside the Match and go on to be wonderful, happy, successful radiation oncologists. Just take a look at the stickied thread at the top of this forum to see a list of new and/or open positions that have popped up since last March.

Either way, all the best as you anticipate your noon (eastern) email tomorrow!
 
While the vast majority of you will be thrilled (thrilled!) with the email you will receive tomorrow, a few will not. Don't fret -- every year, good people get unlucky, but those who persevere will find positions outside the Match and go on to be wonderful, happy, successful radiation oncologists. Just take a look at the stickied thread at the top of this forum to see a list of new and/or open positions that have popped up since last March.

Either way, all the best as you anticipate your noon (eastern) email tomorrow!

Agreed. For those of you who are US MD seniors and do not match, resist the urge to panic-SOAP into something you did not want to do originally. There have been somewhere around 10 out of the match PGY-2 positions that opened up over the past 12 months. Competition for these spots is mostly made up of people from schools outside the US and people trying to switch from other fields. Being a US senior puts you at an advantage because the playing field is small. Hopefully everyone at least gets a partial match into a prelim spot, but if not the most important thing is to lock in a solid prelim year ASAP otherwise you cannot apply for these spots.

Also, be aware that there likely will be a few programs that don't fill that are not in the SOAP. This means that either the spot was intentionally not filled or else it didn't fill but the program elected not to participate in SOAP (i.e., a legitimate open spot). In these cases the programs are forbidden from communicating with anyone about the spot until the SOAP is over. You should email the program directors of these spots asap and establish communication once SOAP is over as they may interview people remotely and fill these spots within 24 hours.

Good luck!
 
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Unmatched senior here trying to SOAP. There were no PGY1 spots open, they were all unfunded categoricals (e.g. a spot in case someone comes in with military funding or something). There were 5 open PGY-2 positions at 4 places, all in the midwest. I'm not sure what my plan is if I don't get one of the positions. I'm open to suggestions, if anyone knows any good opportunities.
 
Unmatched senior here trying to SOAP. There were no PGY1 spots open, they were all unfunded categoricals (e.g. a spot in case someone comes in with military funding or something). There were 5 open PGY-2 positions at 4 places, all in the midwest. I'm not sure what my plan is if I don't get one of the positions. I'm open to suggestions, if anyone knows any good opportunities.
Assuming a decent application with good grades, letters, some research etc, do your internship and try to get a spot out of the match during intern year although I believe that's changed and now everything goes through the nrmp.

Either way, there is much less competition for those spots since ms4s haven't completed internship to be eligible for them.
 
Assuming a decent application with good grades, letters, some research etc, do your internship and try to get a spot out of the match during intern year although I believe that's changed and now everything goes through the nrmp.

Either way, there is much less competition for those spots since ms4s haven't completed internship to be eligible for them.

Yes, I think that's what my plan will be. I just got an interview, so hopefully that will transition into an offer tomorrow.
 
Wonder how many applicants are fighting for those 5 spots. Is there any data on how many actual applicants went unmatched?

I thought I heard this was a smaller applicant class.
 
If/when I have an offer in hand, I'll release any available stats and which programs had unfilled slots.

Would love to know this but make sure you are allowed to do so. May be confidential until NRMP release it.
 
For anyone who hasn't found their way to "the spreadsheet":



It's got tabs for match results and identity-free "match data" if you care to share. This will let us all find out where our interview trail buddies end up and help future applicants gain more insight into their competitiveness.

GOOD LUCK!
 
Hrm I was trying to post the link without displaying the actual sheets in this post... If anyone knows how to do that, go for it.
 
Re Match stats and odds of matching for future applicants, I wonder if it's worthwhile also considering the number of spots a given applicant has a shot at over the interview season. In other words, an interview a MDACC is worth 7 interviews at a program with only 1 spot. Certainly, its not that simple, but I feel like one could have more confidence in matching with 6 interviews at places with 3 spots each than 12 at places with 1...
 
Re Match stats and odds of matching for future applicants, I wonder if it's worthwhile also considering the number of spots a given applicant has a shot at over the interview season. In other words, an interview a MDACC is worth 7 interviews at a program with only 1 spot. Certainly, its not that simple, but I feel like one could have more confidence in matching with 6 interviews at places with 3 spots each than 12 at places with 1...

Unfortunately it doesn't work that way (MD Anderson being an exception since they interview less than 30 people total.) Generally programs interview 10-15 people per one spot they offer. Obviously there is some variation in that, MD Anderson being on one extreme and Mayo in Florida being the other (My year they interviewed around 40 for 1 spot.) So in general, you can feel more confident on an absolute basis based on the number of spots you interview for, irrespective of how many institutions that is. However, all the data we have is based on number of institutions ranks, so the general advice to interview at 12 or more places still stands.
 
Do we know which programs were in the SOAP this year?

Yes that is public by this point. If you participated on this year's match and have access to the NRMP website, under the "my reports" tab there is a PDF titled "Main Match Program Results 2015". The contents of this PDF are accessible to every candidate that participated on the match this year. There were 5 unfilled spots in radiation oncology this year according to this PDF and they were as follows:

University of Minnesota: 1 spot
University of Nebraska: 1 spot
University of Cincinnati: 1 spot
Wayne State Detroit: 2 spots.
 
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