Who doesn't match?

[sabsaf123]

piggy backing off of my last thread...what types of students don't match? Some of the recent threads discussing how all specialties are becoming competitive have me a bit concerned that I'll have a hard time getting into FM. Most ppl seem to say that fm, psych, pmr, and peds are considered "non competitive" which means that although it takes great effort to be a solid fm doc it isn't competitive to get into an fm residency. With the coming residency shortage how will this change in the next 5 years?

Will DO students in the 15th percentile not become doctors?

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[AMEHigh]

piggy backing off of my last thread...what types of students don't match? Some of the recent threads discussing how all specialties are becoming competitive have me a bit concerned that I'll have a hard time getting into FM. Most ppl seem to say that fm, psych, pmr, and peds are considered "non competitive" which means that although it takes great effort to be a solid fm doc it isn't competitive to get into an fm residency. With the coming residency shortage how will this change in the next 5 years?

Will DO students in the 15th percentile not become doctors?

What do you mean the coming residency shortage?

There is going to continue to be more open residency spots than American graduates for the coming years.

Residency matching can definitely be a crap shoot (spots don't always go to the person with the highest scores, students go unmatched who have been promised spots, etc) but I do think that DOs have a slight advantage in matching to any FM program is relatively possible for every DO if you're willing to go to any program.

I can't give exact numbers but there are definitely DO family programs that go unmatched with more than 1 spot open each year. So if the goal is to just match, then one shouldn't have a problem as a DO. I don't think this will drastically change with the conversion to acgme status.

 

[AlteredScale]

As of now, I believe the match rate of DOs in the nrmp/acgme is 85-90% (based on nrmp match stats). Almost every DO school will get to a 100% placement (that means the rest who ended up not matching via acgme found a place for at minimum, a One year transitional year). At my school, maybe 1-3 will take an additional year at the school to reapply.

With the merge headed in its hard to tell how those numbers will fluctuate because we haven't seen just how many AOA programs will survive the cut heading into ACGME (or GME now).


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[atomheart]

The students who fail to match are those that do not plan accordingly for the field they want to go into. Beyond this I'm sure there are some people who just didn't match despite doing everything correctly.

You should make an assumption when starting medical school that all fields will be competitive when you graduate if you perform extremely poorly in school and have no social skills. Nobody owes you anything.

 

[hallowmann]

Unless you're talking failing multiple classes, multiple board failures, etc, then the people who don't match at all are for the most part people who didn't plan appropriately. This includes people who only applied to competitive fields and/or programs without backups, people who didn't rank many programs on their ROL, people whi decided to only go on a handful of interviews, people who restricted their applications to only one relatively small regional area, etc.

To be clear not all of those people don't match, but for people without the huge red flags I mentioned earlier, those are the most common reasons. You need to plan and you need backups. Also, as far as board failures go, I've even seen multiple FM programs that say things like "no more than 2 board failures" or even "we prefer people without more than 1 board failure per step", etc. In other words, 1 board failure might not even be a deal breaker if all else is great.

By the way, for our school its the people in the bottom 5% or with no social skills that struggle to match. That said, it really varies. Being in the bottom quartile in MS1 doesn't mean you'll absolutely fail boards or get bad clinical grades.

Don't worry about this right now, focus on studying. Deal with it when the time comes. Don't forget also that for now scrambling and SOAPing is still possible.

 

[deleted731525]

As of now, I believe the match rate of DOs in the nrmp/acgme is 85-90% (based on nrmp match stats). Almost every DO school will get to a 100% placement (that means the rest who ended up not matching via acgme found a place for at minimum, a One year transitional year). At my school, maybe 1-3 will take an additional year at the school to reapply.

With the merge headed in its hard to tell how those numbers will fluctuate because we haven't seen just how many AOA programs will survive the cut heading into ACGME (or GME now).


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I thought it was 80% for 2016. http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Advance-Data-Tables-2016_Final.pdf Though like you said, virtual 100% placement after SOAP

 

[hallowmann]

I thought it was 80% for 2016. http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Advance-Data-Tables-2016_Final.pdf Though like you said, virtual 100% placement after SOAP

That shows the merged match rate of all DOs. It includes both seniors and graduates. It's reasonable to suspect that the true ACGME match rate for DO seniors is closer to 85%.

Total DO senior match rate (both AOA and ACGME) is probably around 85-90%, with most of the rest scrambling or SOAPing. It's impossible to get the exact numbers with the current data we have.

 

[deleted731525]

That shows the merged match rate of all DOs. It includes both seniors and graduates. It's reasonable to suspect that the true ACGME match rate for DO seniors is closer to 85%.

Total DO senior match rate (both AOA and ACGME) is probably around 85-90%, with most of the rest scrambling or SOAPing. It's impossible to get the exact numbers with the current data we have.

What I wonder is how many of the 15-20% who dont match ACGME could have matched AOA in their specialty of choice. Is it possible that the match rate for DO seniors can approach the 93% of US MD seniors after the combined match?

 

[hallowmann]

What I wonder is how many of the 15-20% who dont match ACGME could have matched AOA in their specialty of choice. Is it possible that the match rate for DO seniors can approach the 93% of US MD seniors after the combined match?

Honestly, I think that's unlikely. As a population DOs are less competitive than MDs, and there are simply more programs that are willing to take US MDs than there are programs that are willing to take DOs. 85-90% vs. 94% seems reasonable to me given this.

Now, obviously I may be wrong. Maybe the DO match rates will be similar to MDs, with the only appreciable difference being the competitiveness of the fields they get (DOs matching more to less competitive fields) and the number of residency apps that they send out (DOs sending out more apps than MDs), but I don't think we can really make that argument.

 

[WeeBay]

Contrary to what everybody says, the only people I know of who didn't match all have some pretty glaring issues, none of which are academic. We are talking about people who are overly arrogant, obnoxious and general douche bags.

I don't think I know anybody who doesn't have a residency position though. Everybody can scramble.

 

[HooliganSnail]

piggy backing off of my last thread...what types of students don't match? Some of the recent threads discussing how all specialties are becoming competitive have me a bit concerned that I'll have a hard time getting into FM. Most ppl seem to say that fm, psych, pmr, and peds are considered "non competitive" which means that although it takes great effort to be a solid fm doc it isn't competitive to get into an fm residency. With the coming residency shortage how will this change in the next 5 years?

Will DO students in the 15th percentile not become doctors?

The biggest differential between those who matched and those who did not match was length of rank order list.

Candidates who did not match had a much shorter ROL.

The end all question when deciding whether to apply to a program or rank one is "would I rather NOT match then go to this program", if they answer is not yes, then they should be on your ROL somewhere.

 

[EmergDoc2B]

I think those who are not realistic with their circumstances (Grades, rank, board scores, red flags as mentioned previously) and shoot for competitive specialties or residencies only are the ones left scratching their heads after the match. If youre in the bottom 15% most likely your boards are not stellar (80-99 percentile) and you struggled in class and possibly clinical years. Be a realist and you'll match.

 

[SLC]

I think those who are not realistic with their circumstances (Grades, rank, board scores, red flags as mentioned previously) and shoot for competitive specialties or residencies only are the ones left scratching their heads after the match. If youre in the bottom 15% most likely your boards are not stellar (80-99 percentile) and you struggled in class and possibly clinical years. Be a realist and you'll match.

I was top quartile, had good board scores, never struggled in class. Good rotation grades and good evaluations. Honored all shelf exams. Applied FM, ranked 9 and didn't match.

I think I should have gone on more interviews, but scores and qualifications wise I don't think there were red-flags.

I will say that with the exception of 2 programs on my ROL, all were at the upper end of competitiveness for FM (meaning lots of applicants and they were programs that were probably on top of most everyone's lists that interviewed there).

In the SOAP, I had no trouble matching into a top FM program that fortuitously had a spot open. And I had many other offers too; but that doesn't change the fact that I didn't match.

So I think it's important to be realistic, but also important (as was said earlier) to have a long enough list. As a DO I'd say 12-13 minimum.

 

[EmergDoc2B]

Thank you for the insight. Ill definitely be adding residencies to my list. Happy to hear things worked out for the best. I cant imagine the stress.

 

[TheaterOfTheme]

I was top quartile, had good board scores, never struggled in class. Good rotation grades and good evaluations. Honored all shelf exams. Applied FM, ranked 9 and didn't match.

I think I should have gone on more interviews, but scores and qualifications wise I don't think there were red-flags.

I will say that with the exception of 2 programs on my ROL, all were at the upper end of competitiveness for FM (meaning lots of applicants and they were programs that were probably on top of most everyone's lists that interviewed there).

In the SOAP, I had no trouble matching into a top FM program that fortuitously had a spot open. And I had many other offers too; but that doesn't change the fact that I didn't match.

So I think it's important to be realistic, but also important (as was said earlier) to have a long enough list. As a DO I'd say 12-13 minimum.

Are you implying there is a large amount of luck invovled?

 

[TheaterOfTheme]

Don't worry about this right now, focus on studying. Deal with it when the time comes. Don't forget also that for now scrambling and SOAPing is still possible.

Will scrambling not be possible in the future?

 

[hallowmann]

Are you implying there is a large amount of luck invovled?

There is always "luck" involved. You can modify your chances, but no one knows everything and it could even be something as simple as your app hitting them at the point in time where they need more interviewees or the luck of someone they ranked above you matching elsewhere leaving a spot for you. Its always to some degree luck, just like with med school admissions.

Will scrambling not be possible in the future?

Yes and no. There will always be some programs that don't participate in the match or don't fill in the SOAP (or don't even participate in the SOAP), so in a way "pre-matching" and scrambling will probably always exist on some very small scale. That said, there will be no "scrambling" in the way there is now with hundreds of AOA spots. When the match combines (some point after all programs are ACGME accredited), those programs will either fill in the match, fill in the SOAP, or be left over for scrambling, but like I said it will be on a much smaller scale.