aProgramDirector: Technical Question

[burgodelia]

Dear Program Director,

I am an IMG applying to the IM match this year. I am a student of a reputable overseas institution and I applied to programs that are familiar with alumni from my school. I have competitive scores, good letters, awards, and a good application in general.

The thing is most of these programs I applied to usually either take one candidate from my school (or they used to pre-match one or more). For the sake of the question, let us assume they will take one candidate. Other people from my institution are also applying for the match this year. One candidate is particularly competitive.

The question is: How do PDs rank their candidates to take into consideration their medical school of origin? For example, if we both got interviews at University of A, University of B, and University of C and they all wanted to take one of us and he is consistently more competitive than me and ranked higher, will I be the next consecutive rank or will I be far below? Meaning will they rank us 20, 21 or 20, 40??? Because obviously the first combination means a more secure match for me.

Thank you

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[NotAProgDirector]

Dear Program Director,

I am an IMG applying to the IM match this year. I am a student of a reputable overseas institution and I applied to programs that are familiar with alumni from my school. I have competitive scores, good letters, awards, and a good application in general.

The thing is most of these programs I applied to usually either take one candidate from my school (or they used to pre-match one or more). For the sake of the question, let us assume they will take one candidate. Other people from my institution are also applying for the match this year. One candidate is particularly competitive.

The question is: How do PDs rank their candidates to take into consideration their medical school of origin? For example, if we both got interviews at University of A, University of B, and University of C and they all wanted to take one of us and he is consistently more competitive than me and ranked higher, will I be the next consecutive rank or will I be far below? Meaning will they rank us 20, 21 or 20, 40??? Because obviously the first combination means a more secure match for me.

Thank you

I have good news and bad news. First, the BAD news:

There's no answer.

Maybe they will decide to only rank one candidate from your school. In that case, you might not get ranked at all.

Maybe they won't care as much about "Competitive" and look for "a good fit" In that case, maybe this other person is a dud when interviewing. Then, you'd be ranked.

Maybe they put all of their IMG's down at the bottom of their list, and neither of you will have a good chance of matching.

Bottom line: You have no idea how they will rank you. Other than doing your best at the interview, there is nothing you can do about it.

The GOOD news:

All of the above doesn't matter at all, assuming you stay in the match. You simply rank programs in the order that you want them, IGNORING whether you think you'll be competitive there. The match will place you in the best spot you can get. Nothing other than ranking programs in your desired order can yield a better result. If you do not match, you would not have matched no matter what order your list was in.

Bottom line: Read the above 10 times. Focus on what you can control: your interview. Ignore the rest.

Note that if you get offers outside the match, then you have a tough decision. Whether to take an inferior guaranteed outside the match spot, or stay in the match trying to get a better spot but risking getting nothing, is another unanswerable question -- but one that's much more painful to contemplate. "do 'ya fee lucky, punk?

 

[burgodelia]

Now I just feel bad about the interviews I didn't go to...

But just to be clear: There is no mechanism that PDs use to guarantee a certain quota from a certain school? Their own medical school for example?

 

[Raryn]

Now I just feel bad about the interviews I didn't go to...

But just to be clear: There is no mechanism that PDs use to guarantee a certain quota from a certain school? Their own medical school for example?

No.

They put in a rank list of every single candidate they're considering, in the order they're considering them. There's no way to set up different quotas for people from different groups (medical schools, gender balances, whatever the heck else you want to subdivide people into).

 

[burgodelia]

OK. Thanks for your insight.