I think I am mostly doing fine, though it's always at the back of my head (Will I match? Where?) and I have occasional fantasies and fears pop up, of course. At this point, though, I think I have really gotten to the point where I am ok with any outcome. I just want to know what it is so I can move on with my life and be active again, one way or another. (Then I wrote the rest of this post and realized I cope with stress by gathering information, so....yeah. Sorry for information overload, it's how I keep sane-ish.
)
As for your other question, I saw a statistic (
http://www.appic.org/Match/MatchStatistics/MatchStatistics2013PhaseI.aspx) that sites that ranked 8.2 applicants per spot were more likely to match. The other number (for non-matching sites) was 3.2 applicants per spot. Average was 7.5. Another interesting statistic was that each applicant was ranked by an average of 5.0 programs, but applicants ranked on average 7.1. On average 8.6 applicants ranked a given position, so that suggests ranking ~8 for each position would assure you catch the ones interested enough to match. But the best way to determine is to look at standardized rankings. If the site has 3 spots, then at #20, you'd be in standardized rank #7 - 2% of applicants who matched were in that rank. So possible? Definitely. Likely? Not tremendously. Obviously your best shot is to be in standardized rank #1 (say, in your example, they ranked you #1, 2 or 3; 35% of applicants who matched were in that spot). But a fairly significant number of applicants who matched were in lower standardized ranks, too. (26% in standardized #2, 17% in #3, 11% in #4, 5% in #5.)
I am right there with you - no place I interviewed at interviews fewer than 10 applicants per spot, even though that is only a fraction of their applicants. It's scary to feel that level of competition, especially knowing how hard it was for me to make the distinctions in my rank order list - imagine if you had 60 sites to order. I feel like the difference between my #1 and my #8, for example, was fairly small. I imagine the sites feel the same way. All I can do is trust that it will work out well. And hope that if I don't match, one of the sites I love will be shocked, re-interview me next year and rank me #1.
