AOA and Anesthesia

[SigmaChadwick]

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Good afternoon,

I'm seeking insight into the relevance of AOA membership when applying to top-tier Anesthesiology residency programs. Specifically, I’m wondering how much weight AOA carries in the selection process. Additionally, if my medical school does not have an AOA chapter, will residency program directors be aware of this, and will it be taken into account during the evaluation process?

 

[Gern Blansten]

AOA is a simple way for a program director to know early on that a person is academically at the top of their class, even when the school uses a pass fail grading system. Not being in doesn’t necessarily hurt you but being in AOA is like a large banner that tells the PDs you are a strong academic candidate.
Gold Humanism Honor Society is another big one. It’s chosen by your faculty and classmates. So, it’s a way for PDs to know that you are likely a good human being and well liked. The two groups occasionally overlap with someone being selected for both honors. It is not as common as one would think that the two overlap.
New medical schools don’t have an AOA chapter for the first few years. I always knew that new schools would not have that AOA chapter with the added distinction. I assume most know this but don’t know for sure that everyone has that knowledge.

 

[Katheudontas parateroumen]

Congrats and good job. I was senior AOA. I don’t think it was ever mentioned on my interviews personally. However now as core faculty, I would certainly look at that as a honorable distinction. Probably my own bias haha. I’m sure it helps given the whole Step 1 is P/F nowadays.

Yes it is generally known that newer schools don’t have AOA. Not sure how long it takes though.

 

[Gern Blansten]

When reading an application, membership in AOA is singled out early in the application as the program sees it. As stated, it is a way to confirm someone is in the top quartile of their class and likely an academically strong candidate long before the Dean's letter comes out and at a time when there are fewer and fewer ways to distinguish the top students from the bottom ones. Most schools are pass fail, as are the USMLE scores for step I and soon step II. So, even though the grades are pass fail, someone in the dean's office knows who is excelling so that they are able to select candidates for AOA distinction.
The schools want pass fail so that they can get residency spots for their low performers, who can hide behind pass fail scoring. It used to be that many schools would tell you the student's exact class rank. Then they went to only telling you quartiles, then they went to their secret code language with various superlative words that distinguished which students were in various quartiles or quintiles and they were different for each school (that was painful). Now, most are just pass fail. But the school knows who is good and who isn't. They just don't want anyone else to know so they can pass of their lowest student as a middle of the road candidate for residency.
The Dean's offices get graded by what percent off their students match into residency programs. If you are a lower tier school, that entire 4th quartile can be tough to place when there are more students vying for positions than there are positions to be filled.

 

[Sugammadank]

AOA is like any other box that you tick on your application - it is helpful but it will not make or break your application. Like you said, some schools don't even offer it so it doesn't make sense to knock down the applications of students without an AOA chapter.

This is my bias speaking but my medical school's AOA membership wasn't based on academic performance. It went to those who sucked up the hardest to the admin so I don't put much stock into it.