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Generally you have to fax programs your personal statement and letters, so if you applied to Medicine, and your personal statement is for Medicine, and all your letters are for Medicine... then it might raise a few red flags at ob/gyn or neuro programs. If that's your intention, you might want to start revising the PS and getting new letters now.
 
diosa428 said:
Generally you have to fax programs your personal statement and letters, so if you applied to Medicine, and your personal statement is for Medicine, and all your letters are for Medicine... then it might raise a few red flags at ob/gyn or neuro programs. If that's your intention, you might want to start revising the PS and getting new letters now.
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I believe that ERAS is now used to share documents instead of the fax machine for the most part. But yes it probably pays to revise your PS. However bear in mind that the scramble is like closing time at a bar -- people who want to hook up are going to try and grab the best of whose left, and will overlook a lot. So if you have good credentials compared to who's left I doubt a medicine PS is going to make or break you. If you don't, a new letter which is passionate about OB won't matter much either.
 
smg42 said:
so regardless, if you scramble into an advanced program- how are you supposed to secure a prelim spot to fill the prerequesite if we can only scramble into one category?
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You can scramble into both an advanced and prelim spot, technically.

What's difficult is pulling it off. Things go quickly, so it's hard to do both at the same time.

In general, the advanced spots are much more competitive so if you don't get one of those quickly, they'll be gone. But good prelim spots will also go quickly. Not so good prelim spots, well....
 
My husband would like to stay where we are for his prelim year and then do an advanced program in Neuro or PM&R.

Here's something he hasn't been able to get an answer on from his department:

University A has both categorical and an advanced programs. If he ranks the advanced program of University A number one (with the attendant prelim list) and then the categorical program of the same University A number two and he doesn't get the prelim year at any of his choices, will the match algorithm be smart enough to put him in the categorical program (ranked 2) rather than leaving him in the advanced program (ranked 1) with a scramble for the prelim year?

Any help would be appreciated.
 
dotdash said:
My husband would like to stay where we are for his prelim year and then do an advanced program in Neuro or PM&R.

Here's something he hasn't been able to get an answer on from his department:

University A has both categorical and an advanced programs. If he ranks the advanced program of University A number one (with the attendant prelim list) and then the categorical program of the same University A number two and he doesn't get the prelim year at any of his choices, will the match algorithm be smart enough to put him in the categorical program (ranked 2) rather than leaving him in the advanced program (ranked 1) with a scramble for the prelim year?

Any help would be appreciated.
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I could be wrong, but I don't think it will. The algorithm will assume you want the advanced spot status if you list it first and match into it. Thus he might want to list the categorical first, or risk having to scramble for a prelim. But most prelims aren't nearly as competitive as advanced programs, so if he listed enough in a supplemental list, it's a pretty safe bet to say that if he is a good enough applicant to land an advanced spot, he will be a good enough applicant to land one of his prelim choices.
 
A program director...

I just realized what your icon meant. Flying Spaghetti Monster. My little brother has that listed as his religion on Facebook. Haha. Funny.

Before I gave birth to my daughter he told me he prayed to FSM and that His noodly goodness would protect us during labor.
 
smg42 said:
thanks for the advice.

well, hopefully luck will be on my side.

as it stands, my ROL is quite short (5 programs)...

i'm not willing to rank lower tiered programs...I figure i'd have better chances at scrambling into better programs. Is that poor thinking on my part?
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Yes, that's poor thinking. What ends up in the scramble are, for the most part, less desirable or more malignant programs that nobody wanted to rank in the first place. There are obviously exceptions to this rule but it works well to a first approximation and the "good" programs that have a slot or two open in the Scramble will be gone in the first 30 minutes or so. You may be the person that gets that spot but statistically speaking, you won't be.

The rule of the ROL is that you only leave off programs if you would rather not have a position next year than match into that particular program. If your ROL is 10-ish programs (assuming you're not going for neurosurg or integrated plastics), you're probably fine leaving off a bunch of places. If, OTOH, your list is short (like yours), you're playing with fire by only listing 5 places, esp if you're going for something even somewhat competitive (Gas, EM).
 
smg42 said:
Well- I'm still not sure.

I reviewed the past 3 years' unfilled lists- and I was so surprised to see emory, tulane and even duke open for medicine.

I realize that odds are against me- but. I don't know. I just cant commit to these rinky-dink community programs with no fellowships offered.
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I agree with gutonc here. You can't know ahead of time what will fall through to the scramble, but my gut tells me it's going to be a more competitive than usual year in a lot of fields. A lot of programs which ended up having to pull folks out of the scramble interview and rank more people in subsequent years to avoid that same result in subsequent years. And even in "a" seat falls through to the scramble, do you have any idea how fierce the competition is from everybody else in the scramble to snag each spot? Your odds are much worse than to get the interview at those places in the first place. So if you didn't, you probably won't get your shot.

Think of the scramble as closing time at the bar. You won't find the love of your life there -- the goal is simply to not go home alone.
 
smg42 said:
Well- I'm still not sure.

I reviewed the past 3 years' unfilled lists- and I was so surprised to see emory, tulane and even duke open for medicine.

I realize that odds are against me- but. I don't know. I just cant commit to these rinky-dink community programs with no fellowships offered.
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Wait...earlier in the thread you talked about Prelim+Advanced programs. What the hell are you applying to? Cat IM or Rads+Prelim? If whatever you scramble into is a backup won't you be trying from July 1 to find an open advanced spot for next year?

Yes, you're right, good programs don't fill every now and then. But looking over those lists, you'll probably notice that you're talking about maybe 10 categorical IM spots in really good programs throughout the country. Again, you are WAY more likely to not get one of those places in the Scramble than to be one of the 10 (of 10K) people to score one. If you're cool with those odds (even if you're only competing w/ 1000 or 100 other people) then go nuts.
 
smg42 said:
Well- I'm still not sure.

I reviewed the past 3 years' unfilled lists- and I was so surprised to see emory, tulane and even duke open for medicine.

I realize that odds are against me- but. I don't know. I just cant commit to these rinky-dink community programs with no fellowships offered.
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1. Programs that don't match one year often work very hard to make sure that it doesn't happen again. I know that Duke (medicine) and UCSF (anesthesia) are busting butts this year to make sure that they match their spots. Still, every year, a handful of good programs do end up with scramble spots.

2. I asked a lot of questions to a lot of people, IRL and on SDN, regarding whether match chances can improve after a year of research. Suicide matching, where you rank only one or two programs, seems to be very frowned upon. Everyone I met or talked to who took a year off told me that they were not interviewed by the same tier of programs and were rarely interviewed by the same school. This led me to feel that its better to match this year than risk having a worse interview season next year. I do share your trepidation about ending up at a less-than-stellar program, but think very carefully about what it would mean to not match.
 
Law2Doc said:
Think of the scramble as closing time at the bar. You won't find the love of your life there -- the goal is simply to not go home alone.
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Well said, sir. Well said. 🙂
 
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