PGY1 & PGY2 Residency

[acslater99]

Hello,

Do program directors for residencies look at institution prestige as a factor in getting matched with them? For example, if someone has fairly close gpa, leadership, work experience, research, etc. Would that PD view the institution of both applicants to determine which he/she wants in their program?

Thanks.

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[Seriously Serious]

I cannot speak for RPD's, but there is no way it is a general consensus. I matched to a PGY1/2 program, and my COP is barely top 50. The candidates I interviewed with were from similar programs.

 

[Pharmacy is a Scam]

Hello,

Do program directors for residencies look at institution prestige as a factor in getting matched with them? For example, if someone has fairly close gpa, leadership, work experience, research, etc. Would that PD view the institution of both applicants to determine which he/she wants in their program?

Thanks.

No they don't, they go with students from programs that they know (in most cases students from local SOPs or if the site has a history of taking students from a non-local school and they tend to perform well on rotations etc).

Only time "prestige" would matter is if there were multiple interviewees that came from out of state schools that the program is not familiar with - in that case they'll probably google search school rankings and go with the higher ranked school.

Of course, what I say above could be very misleading. Pharmacy is not and has not been a merit-based profession so "what school you went to" doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things because a PharmD is a PharmD. Consumers will pay top dollar to go see a good doctor or hire a good lawyer but they could care less about who their pharmacist is (if they even know the name of their pharmacist) so credentials don't matter in this field. Keep that in mind.

 

[Hels2007]

In my experience, no one cares about ratings. It's whether you have heard about the school, what's your previous experience with that school's graduates, and also geography. Someone from the same school or the same state will usually get the 'fudge factor' work in their favor.

 

[lord999]

In a couple of cases, there is alumni bias in favor of like grads. In my day, there were two schools (one in Nebraska and one in Pennsylvania) that directors looked twice at their candidates, but only new schools are scrutinized harder. The negative vote is when your school is in geographic proximity and students don't rotate there. That was the case for VA and my alma mater, and I would have never matched there irrespective of my stats due to that poor relationship. A good thing too, that's arguably the worst VA in the system. The pharmacy director there was actually terminated from an Administrative Investigation Board.