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Good luck, folks!
A brilliant colleague of mine ended up in phase II. Matched to a terrific site, went on to an incredible fellowship and now works with me in a highly ranked pediatric AMC. Don't feel like it is a reflection of your skills or knowledge. Sometimes, it just comes down to luck. You all got this!
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Hello all. I’ve only gotten one interview so far at the westchester institute. Of course I’m worried so I’m wondering if anyone knows how long it may take for sites to review and get back to us with this quick turnaround? I also saw on the application site that they don’t necessarily need to notify if we are not invited
I received one interview also. I think we can receive interviews until 3/17 because 3/18 is the rank deadline.
ForensicPsychFightClub
Full Member
Phase 2 is a little bit different of a beast. As you’ve noted, sites do not have to notify you if they choose not to interview you, so it can feel a bit like ghosting. At the same time, interviews can happen all the way up to the rank deadline - a cohort mate had one the night before ranks were due. Sometimes sites will also do rolling interview ‘buckets,’ or rounds. Basically they interview a certain number of people, and if they feel their rank list is not full enough to have a good chance of being filled during the match, they will send out more interview invites. That said, the bulk of these sites will send out invites by the end of next week as they are also on a time crunch for coordinating interviews before match day.
There is a lot of uncertainty, but it ain’t over until the rank deadline/match day. That’s not even counting PMVS/“Phase 3” which is still a viable option as well. As mentioned above I have had mentors that not only matched in Phase 2, I had one who had to do the match two whole years and matched in Phase 2 for the second year. They were all wonderful mentors and highly respected. After you match, no one cares what phase it is in or how long it took - they will only care if you got good training.
There is a lot of uncertainty, but it ain’t over until the rank deadline/match day. That’s not even counting PMVS/“Phase 3” which is still a viable option as well. As mentioned above I have had mentors that not only matched in Phase 2, I had one who had to do the match two whole years and matched in Phase 2 for the second year. They were all wonderful mentors and highly respected. After you match, no one cares what phase it is in or how long it took - they will only care if you got good training.
I make my students review the amazing sites in prior match 2 ever year before going up
There are reasons good people and good places are there.
Good luck folks
There are reasons good people and good places are there.
Good luck folks
Did you get any feedback from your program, peers, or anyone else about why you may not have matched round 1?
Some of the feedback i got was that there were hundreds more applications than there were sites and my program is accelerated so it may have been that others had more experience.
Eh, this gets mentioned frequently as an explanation, but I don't find it very convincing.
This is much more likely the culprit(s). If you don't have sufficient experience, it's going to be hard to match anywhere.
It's not. Even at the last hospital I worked at, which I would say was an average not very competitive site, at least a third of the applications we received were in no way competitive. Some of those were just people who lacked experience and needed another year of grad school experience, and some were simply very poor fits and obviously only applied geographically.
Yep, that has been my sense from reviewing applications and interviewing applicants as well.
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I interviewed at Wisconsin this week and believe they have completed all their interviews. Sorry - wishing you the best!!
Yeah, even in the heyday of the manufactured internship crisis, if you had an average or better application (good hours, experiences, letters), applied to places that were a good fit, applied geographically, and didn't go to a program that is likely broadly blacklisted, you were almost assured a match.
Edit: You also had to not show your Axis II on interviews and be wildly inappropriate. Seen that happen a good number of times.
I was told I have plenty of experience it may have been the amount of grad years. As well as there not being enough sites.
One of my classmates came back from an interview and told us about an applicant who kept calling all the interviewing providers "dude" during the group interview portion and was dressed in jeans and tennis shoes. Yeah, I can't say I recommend those kinds of behaviors... 😆
This also reminds me of doing interviews for my graduate program. Applicants could typically present themselves well during the interviews, but when it came to the social gatherings there were too many times where applicants drank too much, made comments about the appearance of faculty members, began talking over others, etc. These social gatherings were not intended to be evaluative but ended up being so in many cases.
There was one applicant to our lab that my advisor invited for an interview 3 years in a row(!) because they had a phenomenal research record. They were also getting many other interviews each year but never any offers. I imagine it is because they acted similarly in other interviews as they did ours (drinking too much, acting inappropriately, talking down to others, etc.).
Training faculty: "The social gatherings are not evaluative. It is just a time to relax and get to know us and your prospective peers"
Candidates:
Training faculty: "The social gatherings are not evaluative. It is just a time to relax and get to know us and your prospective peers"
Candidates:
To be fair, it's not evaluative for the vast majority of applicants. But for those occasionally behaviorally inappropriate applicants....I don't really feel that bad for them.
I'm mostly kidding. When I went on internship interviews, I treated all portions of the experience as evaluative because they could be and also they were for those with...ahem...poor self-regulation.
Faculty interviews are AWFUL for this--they are usual about 2.5 days long, everything is evaluative, and you are never alone, from the rides to and from the airport, to drives to campus, to meals.
I could see that. I was a student rep on the hiring committee and I don't remember anything from non-job talk/interview stuff ever being brought up. But, we usually had pretty good response to job postings, so those we brought into interview were usually on the very short list, and we were probably trying to sell ourselves more than the other way around.
I also didn't match in phase 1 despite 11 interviews, I would say 8 of those were pretty competitive sites so clearly I am not as good of an interviewer since I was told at that point the interview is what matters most. Truthfully I have never gotten the feedback I interview bad so I am still a bit confused. I got competitive interview offers in phase 2 but only applied to 4 sites because if I have to unrestrict myself geographically and not see my husband and kids, I would only do it for a site that is a good fit. I trained fairly generalist (which in hindsight might have hurt me but I still see it as a strength, plus I got interview offers so I can't imagine it's that...) I have both a really good amount of adult and child hours, great letters of recommendation, a year long inpatient pediatric experience (where I ultimately want to end up), first author pubs, come from a good program which has a great reputation at least in my area (not sure if beyond). On paper I am competitive, apparently.
I tried to get some feedback from sites in terms of interviews (thinking it must surely be that if I don't match with 11 sites), but have only been able to get some feedback. One site said that one of the interviewers ranked me very high while the other did not for a reason they do not even remember, which pulled my score down. One said I was not confident enough and seemed anxious. I tried to work a bit on interviews for phase 2 but was frankly feel so knocked down and self conscious that I do not think any of the 4 went well, so I have little hope if I didn't match with 11 interviews to match with 4 while not having been able to meaningfully improve my interview performance..the thought of having to do this all over again next year with no guarantee, while having to apply all over and probably not see my family during the week is so upsetting to me. This all sucks and I feel for everyone in this position.
I tried to get some feedback from sites in terms of interviews (thinking it must surely be that if I don't match with 11 sites), but have only been able to get some feedback. One site said that one of the interviewers ranked me very high while the other did not for a reason they do not even remember, which pulled my score down. One said I was not confident enough and seemed anxious. I tried to work a bit on interviews for phase 2 but was frankly feel so knocked down and self conscious that I do not think any of the 4 went well, so I have little hope if I didn't match with 11 interviews to match with 4 while not having been able to meaningfully improve my interview performance..the thought of having to do this all over again next year with no guarantee, while having to apply all over and probably not see my family during the week is so upsetting to me. This all sucks and I feel for everyone in this position.
Tough to know without actually seeing things, but do you have a good narrative in your application about what you want to do, and how those sites will help you get there? About specific experiences and populations you want to work with? Being "too general" can be something that can lower someone, depending on the site.
Yes I think so, at least I got very good feedback on my materials from my program faculty and supervisors, and at least for the ones that I felt were a good fit I thought I brought that across in the interview. For my safeties probably more on paper but less so in person, as in they could probably tell it was not a good fit. But I am perhaps too vague about it in interviews generally... I am clearly not a good judge of how I interview since I felt they all went well. I am going to ask for more feedback after phase 2 and hope to gain some more clarity.
Did you limit yourself geographically? Especially to one city?
Yes, I had to sadly. Figured I'd be fine with the amount of interviews, but looks like I will have to highly unrestrict myself for next year if I don't match in phase 2 and figure out how to make that work.
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Ah, this is likely the real culprit, especially if it was restricted to somewhere like NYC. It's not enough to be merely competitive in these markets, you really need to be in the top echelon given how many applications many of these sites get purely based on people looking for geographic preference. There's a reason geographic restriction is called the "kiss of death" in grad and internship apps, it's usually the #1 predictor of not getting offers/matching.
Yes I am restricted because of my family sadly in NYC. However I got 11 interviews so one would think I would have matched based on stats which makes me think it’s about my interviewing too, however I still believe that the geographic restriction played into it as I wasn’t able to apply to only sites that I felt were a good fit. I will surely apply more broadly next cycle but sadly that will come at the cost of me not seeing my children and spouse during the week. Or maybe by a miracle I match close to home next time around. I plan to get more feedback so I can hopefully strengthen my candidacy for next time, as I’ve only ranked two sites in phase 2 and do not feel particularly hopeful about that working out.
Really depends on the site, applicants, and spots to interview ratio. For example, we had a couple neuro spots, but interviewed around 30-40 a year. We almost never matched out of our top 10 rankings. So, while most of the applicants were good, the spots usually went to the very top applicants. If some of those sites were not great fits, your application may have been good enough to interview, but those with better fit were likely in the top ranked group. So, the geographic restriction still likely played an outsized role. It is worth soliciting feedback, but be prepared for vague answers, in a litigious society, many sites are hesitant to offer extremely detailed feedback. For example, some sites have a blacklist, but they're never going to publicly admit that.
The **** does this spam have to do with the APPIC match?
