You must have had some red flags though. Or bombed the interviews?! What did you apply to?
Nope. Seriously I did not. I applied to general surgery. When I SOAPed, I was approached by a PD that I had interviewed with and offered prelim slots there along with apologies for "not ranking you high enough".
The program director at my current residency reviewed my app with me multiple times and essentially told me not to change anything, it was already in top shape.
She can answer for herself (she has posted about it before) but when I hear these anecdotes I feel sorry for the person, primarily. Then I wonder just how top heavy the list was?
Not that top heavy. My interviews were more top heavy than my list, but I couldn't control that. I applied to 60 programs, including many community programs. Offered 16 interview invites, including 5-6 community programs. Granted, I did prioritize academic places for the 3 interviews I was forced to miss (only went on 13), so I ranked only 4 community programs, but still...not all of my academic programs were 'top-heavy' either. I had some solid mid-tier places that just didn't work out.
I'm not trying to be doomsday - my case was bad luck combined with some stupid ego-driven yield protection combined with probably me not selling my interest to some of the 'lower tier' programs. And it worked out alright - I ended up at one of the best programs in the country for my prelim. And on the other end of the spectrum, my friend had only 3 interviews, a LOR with a red flag in it (questioned their punctuality), and decent scores/grades...matched their top choice in the country, an amazing program. Even in the 'logical' Match, a few people roll 2s or 12s at the end of the day.
I'm just saying that while it's easy to begrudge those who have 'sure thing' applications and hold on to many interviews, it's not unreasonable for them to be running scared, too. This process is bananas, and it hits everyone hard. Nobody wants to be the 2% who fall through the cracks, and trust me it hurts even more to be that when there is ANYthing you could have done to improve your odds of a good match, or any match at all. Take every interview you get and don't let people call you greedy for it.
And for the love of god, PDs, stop worrying about how far down your rank list you dip. It undermines the system.