Charting Outcomes Data - Eight interviews guarantee match

[rouleaux82]

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Hi everyone, first time poster. I was taking a look at the new charting outcomes data 2007 and on page 46 it shows that of the US applicants who received interviews and ranked 8 contiguous (all IM) programs, 339 out of 340 matched.

Even more surprising...of those that ranked only one program, 106 out of 119 individuals matched. Am I interpreting this correctly?

Does that mean as long as one receives at least 8 interviews they are virtually guaranteed a match? I am aware that this data doesn't indicate at what rank most applicants matched.

Here is a link:

http://www.nrmp.org/data/chartingoutcomes2007.pdf

 

[orientedtoself]

rouleaux,
the more programs you rank, the more likely you are to match.

ranking eight programs doesn't guarantee that you will match. nothing is guaranteed in the match. however, medicine is a buyer's market and as you mentioned, almost everyone who ranks that many programs will match.

you have to be a good enough applicant to get eight interviews in order to rank eight programs. people who have good enough of an application to get eight interviews match somewhere.

 

[rouleaux82]

Thank you for the reply, i understand that the match process is not certain and ranking more programs increases the liklihood of a match.

But I was more curious as to how to look at the data. I am not too concerned with my stats or matching, but I found it odd that those with only ONE ranked program on the ROL had a 89% match success. Doesn't that seem very high? Anyone else out there who can let me know if I am reading it correctly?

Come on, there must be some stats majors out there....

http://medicine.osu.edu/sitetool/sites/pdfs/studentaffairspublic/AAMC_NRMP_2007.pdf

 

[NotAProgDirector]

This is mostly correct.

However, look carefully at the title of the graph:

NUMBER OF CONTIGUOUS RANKS WITHIN PREFERRED SPECIALTY
Internal Medicine

So, these data include people who only ranked one IM program, and those who only listed one contiguous IM program (i.e. Listed IM - EM - IM etc). However, the number of people who did this is very low - Chart 5 shows that for those that matched into IM, 97% ranked only IM programs. This means that 97% of these 119 people only ranked a single IM program.

This is consistant with Chart 14 which shows that for all specialties, the chance of a US senior matching if they only rank a single program is 80%. As IM is one of the less competitive fields, I would expect it's rate to be higher.

 

[rouleaux82]

That was explained well, thank you!