Dang guys, what's with the hostility? FWIW, they aren't wrong. While, yes, the magic number is obtained from retrospective data, we obviously use it prospectively hence people pushing to get to the 12 interview mark.
So if the "magic number" is the number of places one needs to rank to have a 100% chance at matching, then based on the most recent match data (see page 57
http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Charting-Outcomes-US-Allopathic-Seniors-2016.pdf), the magic number is indeed 15.
At the same time, it looks like you still have a 97-98% probability of matching with 12 ranks. So basically what I'm insinuating is that it's 6 in one hand, half a dozen in the other.
Sent from my iPhone using
SDN mobile