So I had to post here to figure out what the heck is going on. I applied to orthopedic programs (89 total), and I received back only 7 interviews. Here's my stats:
Texas Medical school:
-Senior AOA
-Step1: 251
-Step2: 255
-Course Grades: Honors in most rotations, high pass in all others, then covid changed it to P/F grading
-Research: 3x Publications on Pubmed (all orthopedic topics, 2x head authors), plenty of posters/oral presentations with 1 best surgery poster award
-Previous Work: 1 year as a scribe in a level 2 trauma ER prior to med school
-Dean's Letter/MSPE: Absolutely glowing. Multiple different faculty at different points stated "best student I've ever had", "works at the level of an intern...well beyond his peers", "amazing with patients and family", etc.
-LoR: 3x Great from what I was told. 1 from my highly respected program chairman, 1 from an ortho surgeon whose research is well respected nation-wide (also did an AI on his service), and 1 from an AI rotation. Both AI LoRs were glowing I've been told by interviewers.
-Awards: Award for Excellence in Surgery, An award from local nonprofit clinic for excellent service to my community, best surgery poster award
-Extracurriculars: I founded my own student organization that became very successful and has even begun the process of being given a dedicated physical space on campus because of the popularity and impact.
So what the heck is going on? I've been looking around, and it seems hard to find people discussing the disparities of interviews in competitive subspecialties since COVID caused so many people to apply so broadly. I had kept my cool because every faculty, interviewer I've spoken to, and my peers have told me "you are an excellent candidate. Don't worry". Compared to other ortho applicants at my school and others I've spoken to, it seems a lot of applicants only have 3-5 interviews, so I felt I had done well with my lot.
Yet when I crunch the numbers of interviewees and the number of positions available, I statistically only have a 50% chance to match. And at that, if I only consider the programs I really would like to end up at, that drops to 28%.
I am becoming seriously concerned and was wondering if anyone else has heard of similar situations or the major disparities of interviews in this COVID match year. Who is getting all the interviews? Were programs really lazy/unconcerned enough to have given all their interview positions to broadly applying applicants who they would normally never match? If that's the case, SOAP is going to be insane.