The Real Story of Anesthesiology Competitiveness

Let this be the end all of Anesthesiology Competitiveness hype threads...

3 simple Graphs all you need:

Image 1:



Image 2:



Image 3:



Image 1= In 2008 1020 US seniors matched 61 Didn't (Want a good breakdown by step 1/step 2/AOA/Contiguous Ranks/ect: http://www.nrmp.org/data/chartingoutcomes2007.pdf). The More programs you rank, the better the chance.

Image 2= If you match, on average 85% chance it will be one of your top 3 ranks (60% your 1st pic). This is for the match in general, it may be slightly different for anesthesia specifically.

Image 3= The hidden story.... Because the "perpetual myth" of Anesthesia's competitiveness, applicants apply to a large amount of programs. Programs know this so they send out large amounts of invites to make sure they fill their program. This is a vicious cycle. Image 3 shows that an anesthesia program on average has to rank 7 people to fill 1 spot. This means that if a program has 10 spots, it "on average" fills by the 70th ranked applicant! So you can be ranked #69 on that programs list and you would statistically speaking, match there. Notice anesthesia has one of the highest ratios.

(Wish I saw a post like this last year, so let it be a gift to you 2010ers and beyond)

Excellent post.

I never know how much stock to put into these things. I frankly do not see anesthesiology as competitive...you graduate from a US medical school, you do anesthesiology. The spots at MGH and Penn are of course tough to get, but then again they're that way in Peds and Family Med too, I'm sure.

Look at figure 3. It does nothing for me. While anesthesia looks like they are "less competitive" perhaps, I doubt we'd all believe that prelim surgery is the single most competitive specialty. Or be convinced that PM&R is more competitive than Rad Onc, ENT, or Ortho, as figure 3 might imply if you were not aware that the number of applicants to each program has as much to do with these numbers as its actual "competitiveness" does...

dc

makes it easy to understand for the visual learners.

love it 😍

RxBoy said:

The hidden story.... Because the "perpetual myth" of Anesthesia's competitiveness, applicants apply to a large amount of programs. Programs know this so they send out large amounts of invites to make sure they fill their program. This is a vicious cycle. Image 3 shows that an anesthesia program on average has to rank 7 people to fill 1 spot. This means that if a program has 10 spots, it "on average" fills by the 70th ranked applicant! So you can be ranked #69 on that programs list and you would statistically speaking, match there. Notice anesthesia has one of the highest ratios.

(Wish I saw a post like this last year, so let it be a gift to you 2010ers and beyond)

Click to expand...

Thanks for the post Rx Boy, this ought to to be made into a sticky so that future classes may benefit.

Funny how Anes has the second highest ratio, right behind Medicine! Seems pretty obvious that this is because anesthesia has the highest "paranoia" factor. I am at a mid- top tier program and my chair told me they usually wind up going into the 60s and 70s on their rank list.
I know I went on way too many interviews all because of the "its getting sooooo competitive" talk. It kinda pisses me off that the airline/hotel/taxi industries benefited heavily off of my paranoia. 😡

first off, great post, thanks for taking the time to put it out and analyze it. obviously all statistics can be viewed differently but this paints a decent picture albeit for American Medical Graduates.
Im an IMG and while its hard for me to get a great feel for where I stand, i think with great board scores and good LOR's (and of course research if you can get some; which I do) I feel fairly confident I can match into at least a decent program. Bring on match 2010!

PS - thanks again for sharing the info and your time, hopefully you guys stay active in this forum as attendings as well, we need more posters like you

bigdan said:

I never know how much stock to put into these things. I frankly do not see anesthesiology as competitive...you graduate from a US medical school, you do anesthesiology. The spots at MGH and Penn are of course tough to get, but then again they're that way in Peds and Family Med too, I'm sure.

Look at figure 3. It does nothing for me. While anesthesia looks like they are "less competitive" perhaps, I doubt we'd all believe that prelim surgery is the single most competitive specialty. Or be convinced that PM&R is more competitive than Rad Onc, ENT, or Ortho, as figure 3 might imply if you were not aware that the number of applicants to each program has as much to do with these numbers as its actual "competitiveness" does...

dc

Click to expand...

You're drawing the wrong conclusions. That figure is not a direct correlation between competitiveness of student and residency. Its as its stated, how far down a rank list a program has to go to match. Its supply and demand. The greater amount of programs ranked by applicants, the greater the number. Bigger numbers simply means applicants rank too many programs. The closer the number is to 1, the more perfect the match. It has nothing to do with competitiveness of students among specialties, only competitiveness of student within that specialty. Someone who applies to PM&R would never apply to Derm. Just think of it this way, the smaller the number the more in favor of programs. The greater the number, the more in favor of the applicants.

Prelim surgery applicants only interview at 2 or 3 places because they know they'll probably match wherever they interview. PM&R same story. Whats the point of going on 15 PM&R interviews if you are pretty sure you'll match with 5? Same goes for programs, whats the point of Derm program sending 100 interviews to fill 5 spots when they can fill with 40? Anesthesia programs don't have that luxury.

Anesthesia on the other hand has to interview a vast amount of applicants to make sure they fill. This figure simply shows that anesthesia residents over apply.

Anesthesia is typically regarded as the "cool" specialty, with laid-back, relaxed individuals.

Why do we get so wrapped up in the hype?

Because we could not EVER imagine doing IM, surg etc. The fear of not matching and working in a clinic compels us to overexert.

Bertelman said:

Anesthesia is typically regarded as the "cool" specialty, with laid-back, relaxed individuals.

Why do we get so wrapped up in the hype?

Because we could not EVER imagine doing IM, surg etc. The fear of not matching and working in a clinic compels us to overexert.

Click to expand...

Now that right there is the damn truth.

Bertelman said:

Anesthesia is typically regarded as the "cool" specialty, with laid-back, relaxed individuals.

Why do we get so wrapped up in the hype?

Because we could not EVER imagine doing IM, surg etc. The fear of not matching and working in a clinic compels us to overexert.

Click to expand...

hence why intern year makes us cringe.

Similar data was presented in the PM&R forum a while back. The column to pay attention to is "percent unmatched." About 5 times as many plastic surgery and derm applicants go unmatched compared to anethesiology applicants. You also have to distinguish between an applicant getting their first rank versus getting in anywhere.