Transitional Year: Statistics That Boggle The Mind

[Llenroc]

I'm thinking about going into PM&R, and for most programs I would need a Transitional year or a preliminary medicine year. Now, I'd much rather do a Transitional year, but with my average (218) board score, I don't know how competetive I will be against dermatologists and radiologists with brains the size of beach balls and research papers coming out of every orifice. I want to be pragmatic.

Now I was looking at some stats for Transitional year, and they seem to be very confusing.

Mean USMLE Step 1 Score for matched U.S. applicants: 229

Whoa, pretty high right?

Number of U.S. applicants: 260
Number of foreign applicants: 78
Number of positions in match: 1017

But that doesn't look so bad! That's like 3 seats for each applicant?!?!

However:

U.S. applicants who get a position: 78%
Foreign grads who get a position: 35%



That just makes no sense at all. Are all these people applying to Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and one or two other programs? How is it that it's so hard to get a position in Transitional year, but at the same time 65% OF THE POSITIONS GO UNFILLED!

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[(nicedream)]

I'm thinking about going into PM&R, and for most programs I would need a Transitional year or a preliminary medicine year. Now, I'd much rather do a Transitional year, but with my average (218) board score, I don't know how competetive I will be against dermatologists and radiologists with brains the size of beach balls and research papers coming out of every orifice. I want to be pragmatic.

Now I was looking at some stats for Transitional year, and they seem to be very confusing.

Mean USMLE Step 1 Score for matched U.S. applicants: 229

Whoa, pretty high right?

Number of U.S. applicants: 260
Number of foreign applicants: 78
Number of positions in match: 1017

But that doesn't look so bad! That's like 3 seats for each applicant?!?!

However:

U.S. applicants who get a position: 78%
Foreign grads who get a position: 35%



That just makes no sense at all. Are all these people applying to Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and one or two other programs? How is it that it's so hard to get a position in Transitional year, but at the same time 65% OF THE POSITIONS GO UNFILLED!

All the people that wind up matching into categorical programs (most people other than rads, anesth, derm etc.) are counted as "unmatched" - since they technically ranked some transitional years that they would have gone to had they not matched to a categorical. So, most that wind up doing transitionals are those that are going into those competitive specialties, giving a higher avg board score. I don't think transitionals are competitive, it's just that most that do them are going into competitive residencies.

 

[Llenroc]

Tell me the truth doc, what are my chances?

 

[Mirror Form]

Getting into a nice transitional internship in a good city can be extremely competitive. However, there are plenty of crumby transitional programs out there as well.

 

[Llenroc]

Crumby is good.