waitlist...

[liquidshadow22]

if a program waitlists you, then you eventually receive an interview...would you say you have a slim chance of matching at said program? or still a chance, just not as likely as people offered interviews before you.

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[letsgomedical]

That's what I've been wondering about too. I feel like the late interview invites are from programs that had many cancellations and now they're inviting people they "waitlisted." I'm not sure if ill have a good chance of matching at those programs.

 

[Shikima]

So many applicants, not enough positions.

 

[MacDonaldTriad]

I should be careful and say that I may not speak for all programs, but my guess is that most would agree with me. You would be surprised at how little difference coming through a wait list or being interviewed right off makes. I have never head a selection committee make mention of who was and who was not wait listed. Clearly the people invited right out of the gate generally will have stronger score, letters, come from better school, etc., but this gets adjusted some by the interview process and who is to say that you were not just a point of two below some theoretical cut off point. You could easily be placed above people who were invited right away.

My suggestion is that you don’t read too much into these things and just decide if you want to go to the interview and assume you are well in the running if invited.

Let me also repeat this rant. If you plan to cancel an interview, do so a couple of weeks in advance, not a few days before you are scheduled. I had a nice conversation with an applicant that called to decline with 4 days notice. We had already lined up his day, and I was not mollified much by his assurance that we could easily just invite someone from our wait list. Since I doubt anyone could drop everything and fly out here with four days notice, the slot was wasted and someone did miss out.

 

[vistaril]

I certainly don't agree with the 'so many applicants, not enough positions' angle. maybe at a few programs, but there were are over(or around) 1000 psychiatry positions.....every year. Maybe 500-600 get filled with allopathic amgs, and certainly not all of those are going to be good psychiatrists.

You have to look at things from a PRACTICAL perspective in terms of the numbers game for most programs. Say they have 7 spots. They offer interviews to a bunch of people(obviously some people who apply get offered and change their mind), and maybe 70 people schedule. of these 70 scheduled, maybe 60 actually show. Of those 60 who actually show, the program may find 10 or so pretty intolerable once they actually meet in person. And of those 60 who show, a bunch aren't even going to rank the program in their top 10. meaning they are very very very unlikely to match there. As a result the program may very well go down into the 40s or 50s on their list(and that's of the people who actually show up for interviews, never mind all the dozens after dozens of people who applied initially at one point and didn't show, cancelled, etc)

This is a more useful way to look at things than saying "well we only have 7 slots for 400 people that applied". Yes, technically that is true. it's also fairly meaningless.

In psychiatry in general, the numbers game is very much on the side of applicants.

 

[psychattending]

Remember that one of the critical parameters is how the applicant ranks a program. This determines where the vast majority of applicants end up. A program does not, in general, want to interview a person who is going to put the program way down on their list. The program would rather interview somebody who is going to put them up higher on his/her list. The problem is that programs really do not know when an applicant is truly interested in them (e.g. will be in the applicant's top three) or is going to be much further down the list. To us what we see is a pool of applicants who on paper appear qualified to be a resident in our program and who all look more or less the same. This was not a big issue years ago when applicants applied to and visited a small # of programs - I could interview all the applicants that were probably going to perform well in my program. Now applicants apply to a large number of programs (and end up canceling a lot of their interviews once the season gets rolling) and programs get way more applications of qualified people than they can actually interview. What is happening now is that applicants cancel their interviews once they really start understanding that they do not need to be interviewing at some many places (and as their money runs out) and this is leaving a large number of open interview slots. Programs still want/need to fill these interview slots. The only way they can do this is create a waitlist of qualified people and then invite them when they have openings.

 

[MacDonaldTriad]

If I were king and could make rules, I would let applicants apply to as many as they wish, but only interview at 6 or 7. Both sides would save a lot of time and money. Since this will never happen, maybe we should just charge a fee to be interviewed. Even $20 would inhibit the disinterested. Probably irritate about everyone else. Maybe the revenue could be given to those that match and everyone would get a few hundred dollars to balance out the irritation. (Tongue and cheek comments incase this is too important to see humor).

 

[OldPsychDoc]

If I were king and could make rules, I would let applicants apply to as many as they wish, but only interview at 6 or 7. Both sides would save a lot of time and money. Since this will never happen, maybe we should just charge a fee to be interviewed. Even $20 would inhibit the disinterested. Probably irritate about everyone else. Maybe the revenue could be given to those that match and everyone would get a few hundred dollars to balance out the irritation. (Tongue and cheek comments incase this is too important to see humor).

I would use it to take my Chiefs and Coordinators out to a BIG dinner at the end of the season.
They're working their tushies off trying to make these interviews happen.

 

[OldPsychDoc]

if a program waitlists you, then you eventually receive an interview...would you say you have a slim chance of matching at said program? or still a chance, just not as likely as people offered interviews before you.

To come back to the OP--if you get an interview, it means that you are good enough. And if you show up for that interview, well, you've got a darned good chance.
We have 1257 applications today in ERAS. We'll invite 90 or so for interviews. Maybe you were #150 or so on our first sort--but it doesn't mean that you are worse than #40 ( or better than #400 for that matter ). For whatever reason, something caught our eye, and we want to meet you in person. And we hope you'll really like us, that you really DO want to do psychiatry, and that you'll actually want to train here...because honestly, it's all kind of a blindfolded dart game at a certain point.
(I'll vent more about it when it's all over, but I really wish there were an easier way to find the really good residents in this sea of sincere-sounding personal statements, OK board scores, and occasionally equivocal letters of recommendation. I suppose if I were vistaril, I'd just exclude anyone who's not a US citizen from a US allopathic school or maybe the Big 4 Caribbeans or a DO school we've heard of before...but then I'd miss out on some of the best young colleagues I've ever had the privilege of working with...)

 

[vistaril]

To come back to the OP--if you get an interview, it means that you are good enough. And if you show up for that interview, well, you've got a darned good chance.
We have 1257 applications today in ERAS. We'll invite 90 or so for interviews. Maybe you were #150 or so on our first sort--but it doesn't mean that you are worse than #40 ( or better than #400 for that matter ). For whatever reason, something caught our eye, and we want to meet you in person. And we hope you'll really like us, that you really DO want to do psychiatry, and that you'll actually want to train here...because honestly, it's all kind of a blindfolded dart game at a certain point.
(I'll vent more about it when it's all over, but I really wish there were an easier way to find the really good residents in this sea of sincere-sounding personal statements, OK board scores, and occasionally equivocal letters of recommendation. I suppose if I were vistaril, I'd just exclude anyone who's not a US citizen from a US allopathic school or maybe the Big 4 Caribbeans or a DO school we've heard of before...but then I'd miss out on some of the best young colleagues I've ever had the privilege of working with...)

I don't doubt that there are plenty of carrib students(and even carrib students not from ross or sgu) who may turn out to be good. That's just common sense. The problem is being able to accurately identify them with the limitations of the process we have in place. Board scores and grades help a good bit of course for these students, but it's still really difficult to know what it will like to be to have a person working at a place for 4 years based on an interview, letters, etc....