Hey guys,
I think Radiology is still competitive, it's just that their match strategy has changed. The reason I say this is because the competitive residencies (such as Radiology) are now waiting for people who failed to match at the super competitive specialties to fill in their spots.
I was taken in 1st round by a great rads program during the SOAP after getting interviewed by 12 of the 20 Rads programs I applied to during SOAP and it was evident that they were expecting people like me.
As a Urology applicant who failed to match this year, I can tell you the competition was FIERCE for Uro. I had 20+ interviews (13 to the top 30 and 10 in the mid tier) and I didn't get in. My stats and CV were decent 255+ on steps, 5 pubs, 5 abstracts, 5 posters with national awards (first author on 50% of the research pubs, all Urology). There were many others in my situation who basically got unlucky. By the way, the actual match rate was closer to 48%, the 60% is for those who got ranked. Truly a deathmatch. Even so, many rads programs I interviewed at told me that they would rank me in their top 5, meaning to me that there were many well qualified people and radiology program directors were prepared for people like us to trickle through.
That being said, radiology is a great field and I am very fortunate to have landed into it. The outlook for DR is not good, and it will most likely never recover, but the fact is Interventional Radiology is becoming more vogue as we progress through this era of minimally invasive operations. Most surgical specialties have gravitated towards the davinci to enhance their minimally invasive appeal to patients and IR stands upon the apex of this movement. I think as long as the fellowships for radiology remain in high demand the field will continue to recruit excellent people. That's my 2 cents.
