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Why didn't the specialty leaders and PDs impose interview caps? What were they doing? Why did they refuse to believe the flood of apps and interview hoarding wouldn't happen?
MD & DO co'21 Residency Panic thread
Started by kraskadva
Why didn't the specialty leaders and PDs impose interview caps? What were they doing? Why did they refuse to believe the flood of apps and interview hoarding wouldn't happen?
Like man the specialty leaders and PDs know how the match works for many years to decades and yet they intentionally allowed the mess to happen anyways and adding more rounds of SOAP rather than fixing the underlying problem
I'm starting to realize the merger was a bad idea. Maybe it started off as good but the covid/PD/specialty disaster ruined it
App caps are def a bad idea. Interview caps are necessary
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Exactly— all conventional wisdom was thrown out the window. I got these perceived long-shot programs and wonderful places that I’m thankful to interview at but some of my “certain match or relative safeties” I never even heard back from. Had I created a very conservative list that was reliant on my perceived assurance programs I would certainly be in a very different position than i am now.
but it upsets me how solid candidates got some bad advice from several schools. I know people put SDN on the doomsday boat but honestly it was spot-on and helpful to go into this cycle knowing that conceptual wisdom was not going to apply.
I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have known many you throughout the years(through your posting history) and I know you’ll all be incredible doctors.
Can’t wait for this cycle and year to come to a conclusion.
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AnatomyGrey12
No the merger was needed and is a good thing.
How? Are former AOA programs still reliable? Because if they're prioritizing MD over DO students especially with this disastrous interview hoarding problem, i'm not sure how it's helping? There needs to be clear DO friendly preference on part of programs
SDN was def spot on. I’ve had a similar experience. My biggest reaches actually offered me interviews. My sure things ignored me. SDN is usually pretty accurate albeit frequently over the top too. I guess I thought the rules don’t as heavily apply to me since I wasn’t trying to match to super competitive programs like most SDN folks tend to do.
Anecdotally the experience of my friends and I has been pretty similar to previous years with DO programs. DO program only interviewing rotators, with a few exceptions of the best DO applicants getting a few non-audition DO invites. The handful of DO programs jumping on the MD applicant train is offset by the handful of MD programs that DOs can now interview and rank on the same list as their best shots (DO audition programs). I know of a few DO programs that never interviewed non-rotators that are now because of the pandemic, and from what I’ve heard they’re inviting mostly DOs (obvi with exception as some places have def jumped on the MD board).
Could be diff for the other specialties where the majority of DO programs are tho like IM/FM
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AnatomyGrey12
There were a lot of crappy AOA programs that needed to close. The majority DO's have always trained at traditionally ACGME programs.
Also what @Scrubs101 said.
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deleted645092
I’m a DO and have gotten plenty of love from MD programs. A majority of the students don’t even know if a Program was formerly AOA if they weren’t previously familiar with it because outside of 2-3 programs that are still exclusively DO, everyone has truly merged. When I was making my application list even on the MD side there were only 3-4 programs I wanted to add that didn’t have atleast 1-2 DOs per year for the current residency classes.
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Open Letter on Interview Invite Maldistribution by the Chief Medical Education Officer of the AAMC:
"We are seeing students in the highest tier receiving a larger number of interviews per person than in past years, leaving other students – including those in the middle of the class – with fewer interviews than we would anticipate based on their qualifications."
Long story short:
1) Excellent applicants are getting a greater chunk of interviews and hoarding to a greater extent
2) Programs should rank more applicants this year due to risk of falling lower on the list
3) Applicants with more than enough interviews to match as per charting outcomes should consider dropping some after consultation with advisors
4) Consider applying prelim after consultation with advisors if your current interview number is too low to be sure
"We are seeing students in the highest tier receiving a larger number of interviews per person than in past years, leaving other students – including those in the middle of the class – with fewer interviews than we would anticipate based on their qualifications."
Long story short:
1) Excellent applicants are getting a greater chunk of interviews and hoarding to a greater extent
2) Programs should rank more applicants this year due to risk of falling lower on the list
3) Applicants with more than enough interviews to match as per charting outcomes should consider dropping some after consultation with advisors
4) Consider applying prelim after consultation with advisors if your current interview number is too low to be sure
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deleted697308
A program didn't get my RSVP and send a zoom link for the meet and greet LOL. How bad is this going to affect me? Tried to email and no response. I emailed a person on the interview list who has been at 6 of my interviews and NO RESPONSE either lol
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deleted645092
Just email the PC on Monday saying you’re following up about missing the meet and greet.
During a couple of my IIs the PC asked the group of us applicants to let her know if anyone couldn't make the meet and greet and she'd send a link for the next one they have, like it was no big deal. It seems like these programs are totally understanding about any technical hiccups this season.
haha dont stress it . no one cares.
really!!me?!
Full Member
Yes some applicants are being gunners. Did you call the PC?
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deleted697308
no phone number listed as they work from home!
Lots of reasons:
1. Technically, it would be very difficult to do. There isn't a central list / clearinghouse of interview invites, so there would be no way to enforce it (and no way to build one in the time alloted).
2. Managing mid and late cycle would be dificult. If the interview cap is 10 (a number I just made up -- feel free to replace with whatever number you like) and you've been on 8 with 2 upcoming and you get an invite from a great program, but you still want those 2 you have left also (i.e. you would have given up one of the completed ones), how would that work? Tough luck? A uniform release date would help with this, but good luck getting programs to agree to that.
3. Not all applicants are created equal. Although the average applicant might need 12 interviews, some with issues / problems might need more.
4. Couples? How would you manage that?
5. It's not clear it's legal. Limiting people's ability to apply for a job might be seen as restraint of trade.
I can't tell how dire the situation is (or is not). We have some numbers from that OB survey -- however the response rate was less than 50% so a biased sample is possible. The AAMC represents medical schools and they want their students to match, so their opinion is somewhat biased IMHO. I expect some people are going on more interviews. It's unknown whether this will really change the outcome or not - it might.
Yet, at the end of the day, all residency spots will be filled. if there are more spots in SOAP, then more will fill that way. It won't be fun, but it will be fine. Quality applicants who didn't get a spot in the match will do well in SOAP. Any change to the fill process will simply shuffle the winners and losers -- some new people might get a spot with a different set of rules, but that means that someone else will not get a spot.
I find the stories of "community programs interviewing high flying MD grads who never match there" suspect. If I ran a program that never matched USMD's, I simply wouldn't interview them at all -- COVID or not. Why would COVID change this? If a program invited all these MD's in prior years and then they ultimately all canceled, I'd think that program would learn not to bother.
We had a partial test run -- the IM fellowship match. The same argument was made -- that highly competitive Cardiology applicants would take up all the interview spots, programs would fall farther on their lists, or would have tons of open spots. That did not seem to happen. I did have one resident whom probably would fall in the "gunner" bucket, had a ridic number of interviews. Still all worked out fine in the end.
So we don't really know if this is an actual problem or not yet. Programs might already (in the past) be interviewing plenty of people such that they were filling in the top half of their list. This year, they might fall into that bottom half -- but that's not necessarily "bad".
Worst case is that there are a ton of open spots, and they will fill in SOAP. Will be ugly, but not the end of the world.
Applying to surgical subspecialty...Was also told repeatedly by different programs and at conferences that programs will lean toward matching their home students. So despite getting an interview, my chance to match at other programs will also be lower. Why are programs allowed to participate in match, charge money, and do not give candidates a fair chance to match. This cycle is crazy.
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deleted697308
Surgical subspecialties usually mainly match home students anyways. Not much difference there.
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I'm not sure this is comforting at all for a lot of hard working students that will have to SOAP because people in power somehow lacked the foresight, organization, and/or will to be proactive.
It obviously won't be the end of the world, life will go on, but it's just another example of slapping the students around because there are no consequences for doing so.
To me fellow DOs...are y'all essentially just waiting until intern year to get vaccinated? my school has no official hospital "affiliation" so we're kind of SOL. I only have aways at random hospitals coming up and I highly highly doubt they're going to vaccinate a visiting med student
What's it like for the rest of you out there?
What's it like for the rest of you out there?
Ah no...they match their SubI as well as home students w some outside students. This year is worse because subI are cancelled...
While I agree with most of what you said, I think the results of this match will be much worse for applicants than expected. The reason is that there is a surplus of 700 MD and 500 DO applicants this year alone, which is a greater increase than in any other year in the past. Normally, these applicants are absorbed by new residency spots that open up year to year, but due to COVID and the ACGME freeze, less than half of the normal amount of new residencies have been approved this year. This means a greater amount of people who eventually will not find a position either in the match or SOAP than in any other year prior.
Also, even if “quality” applicants eventually get positions in the SOAP, it is a terrible situation for derm, ortho and ENT applicants to SOAP into residencies that they never cared about and are poor fits for over others with maybe fewer qualifications but a passion for that specialty. I think it’s a lose-lose situation for all parties involved.
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Yeah I was really worried about that too. DO with no university hospital. My core site hospital started vaccinating physicians and staff this week. Students haven’t been addressed or mentioned at all. I asked the GME office which oversees us too, and the PCs there just said they didn’t know either way (yes or no) about us. I was getting panicked I wouldn’t get one until June/July from my residency.
in the meantime, another hospital system I had 2 4th year aways with at 2 different facilities emailed me that I was on their tier 1 and could report to a 3rd hospital in their system that I never rotated at but was their regional distribution site. I drove over an hour one way to get there not even knowing if they would see my role and turn me away once there but I was very motivated to try. I successfully received dose #1 yesterday.
Basically how it is for my school. They're signaling that they are trying their best to get those who want to get vaccinated, vaccinated. But it's unclear how or when that will be. Many of our fourth years are now out of state so if they do offer it I'd likely have to drive back to school to get it, twice. I signed up to get it if possible but to me it's mainly dependent on when. If they're able to get my first shot in Feb, I'll figure out a way to get there to get it. If they won't be vaccinating us until like, late April/May before graduation? I might just hold off until orientation in June.
I have to think, DO or MD or whatever, this orientation in June will include COVID vaccines/confirmation you've received it. Those who haven't should have the option to get it easily then. At least I'd think so.
Maybe I’m missing something but why would substantially more ortho, etc applicants be soaping into other specialties? If the same thing is happening with a small number of applicants holding the majority of interviews, then programs will also have the same issue where they are all ranking to match the same small group of people. That means dropping farther down the list or not filling.
A lot of people are likely going to rank bad fits rather than SOAP. And a lot of people who apply competitive specialties also apply into a backup specialty because they'd rather do something else at a location/program they like instead of SOAPing.
I think he's right that overall unmatched people post-SOAP won't be that different than prior years. But that's only looking at the most extreme of consequences. People matching to a bad fit (via either normal match or SOAP), or matching to a less preferred field, is where most of the damage will be done I think.
He said applicants to derm, ortho, etc. will be SOAPing into specialties they don't want to do and are bad fits for. I just don't see why that would be happening at a higher rate than normal.
Oh I see. I do know of someone who applied ortho + gas and is now planning to just match gas because of how much better the interview invites were. He might be saying that many surgical subspecialty applicants who fail to match their field are going to SOAP into gensurg, rads, gas etc in order to be happier with where they match.
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I'd imagine CVS, Walgreen's and Rite-Aid will be vaccinating.....so why wait, just get it from a pharmacy.....IIRC the federal govt. is footing the bill on C19 vax this season.
Gotcha. That's why I asked. Not to say you were wrong, but because I figured I must be missing something.
Is bad fit really a problem when most people who matched later admitted they like the program? Or is it because they have no choice and learned to deal with it?
Matching to a less preferred field can be a problem though
really!!me?!
Full Member
Downtime for ERAS 🥳😃 a break for programs sending me rejections!!!
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AnatomyGrey12
This mindset is so baffling to me.
Make sense to me...some surgical programs are very bad...should not be training surgeons...and in a ****ty location....that combo alone sounds enough to do something else in my opinion
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AnatomyGrey12
Not very many of those exist, particularly in ortho, and I have yet to meet an ortho applicant who would just jump ship to anesthesia because their ortho interviews weren't good enough. Most orthopods I know would say that person wasn't fit for ortho if that was how easily they were persuaded.
Maybe they liked ortho but weren’t sure if they were really the right fit and the interviews convinced them they weren’t?
I know... I feel like I didn't outwardly show my enthusiasm for my #1 program because I was just tired. I am going to try to hopefully express it better in follow-up emails.
To those saying they didn't get quality guidance on # of programs to apply to from their med schools, I agree. For our specialty they had us send a form into an advisor including the # of programs we intended to apply to. I never heard anything back, which I assumed meant the number was fine (but who knows?). I vacillated wildly up until submitting ERAS between applying to 12-20 programs and settled on 15 as a reasonable middle ground. It worked out fine, glad I didn't apply 20, but I also think 12 would have been OK too. I think I was comparing myself with a stellar MD-PhD applied who a couple years ago applied to 9 and went on 8 interviews. I checked with another MD-PhD graduating this year (who is also applying into a noncompetitive field) and he confirmed he'd applied 12 and went/planning to go to 9. I know MSTPs into noncompetitive fields is kind of a special case, but just putting these numbers out there in case they are helpful to other SDNers in future years.
Looking over the charting match outcomes in my field I was blown away by the quality of programs that wind up SOAPing spots. My #2 program SOAPed 2 spots just a couple years ago. As much as I hope not to SOAP, knowing that places like Emory, Baylor, Johns Hopkins, UC Irvine, Cincinnati, Detroit Med Center, etc. have all SOAPed residents (even without COVID) has been reassuring.
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Yeahhhhh this is a bad take
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Should have kept up with your anki reviews man. That's what truly shows dedication and grit and differentiates the intelligence of the applicant pool. 🤣
Re-reading my last post, it came across a bit heartless and I apologize for that. Busy week, not enough sleep.
Perhaps my first response should have said this instead: This isn't programs / AAMC / ERAS / NRMP willfully mistreating students. The problem is that all of these groups work independently, they all have different goals and agendas, and are unlikely to come to any agreement in a short period of time. Even within a single specialty, getting agreement is extremely difficult. IM tried to consider a universal interview offer date. Competitive programs wanted it far into November or December so they could review all of their apps holistically. Community programs wanted it ASAP so they could have more interview days. So the lack of any change / adjustment because of the circumstances wasn't really due to animus against students -- it's simply inertia. Those groups that could make decisions unilaterally (ERAS delaying applications, NRMP adding another SOAP round) did so because they could.
If there's a gas slot open in SOAP and two applicants, someone who applied Ortho and someone who applied Gas, programs can choose which they would rather have. Whether the Ortho or Gas candidate gets chosen, hard to say which is the "better" outcome. In the end, only one person gets the spot and the other doesn't.
They told us it was going to be between 5 and 9AM. Liars.
I agree that although getting a spot in SOAP vs matching ultimately leads to "a spot", the emotional path there is significantly different. And people SOAPing into a different field is also a mess. However, if this match is truly a disaster as some are suggesting, then there should be lots of qualified people still looking for rads / gas spots (i.e. people whom were always interested and have a clear app targeting that field). I'd like to think that programs would be more inclined to take them rather than rando Ortho apps, but who knows?
Perhaps my first response should have said this instead: This isn't programs / AAMC / ERAS / NRMP willfully mistreating students. The problem is that all of these groups work independently, they all have different goals and agendas, and are unlikely to come to any agreement in a short period of time. Even within a single specialty, getting agreement is extremely difficult. IM tried to consider a universal interview offer date. Competitive programs wanted it far into November or December so they could review all of their apps holistically. Community programs wanted it ASAP so they could have more interview days. So the lack of any change / adjustment because of the circumstances wasn't really due to animus against students -- it's simply inertia. Those groups that could make decisions unilaterally (ERAS delaying applications, NRMP adding another SOAP round) did so because they could.
I am not following numbers, but if this is accurate then the match is going to be more competitive regardless of COVID or interview caps.
If there's a gas slot open in SOAP and two applicants, someone who applied Ortho and someone who applied Gas, programs can choose which they would rather have. Whether the Ortho or Gas candidate gets chosen, hard to say which is the "better" outcome. In the end, only one person gets the spot and the other doesn't.
This is a really good point that I did not consider in my initial post, and I think is actually the most relevant to the discussion. It's quite possible that more people will end up matching into backup spots. They then can't apply for open spots in SOAP. At the extreme, one could imagine a situation where everyone applying ortho ranks both Ortho and a backup, everyone matches with some in their backups, and then there's an Ortho spot open in SOAP. Now you have the strange situation that someone gets an Ortho spot who didn't really want it. This is an extreme / outlier possibility -- it's very unlikely in reality. Some Ortho people will be "all in" to Ortho and plan to not match and reapply the next year. Still, it's very difficult to measure this using NRMP reports.
They told us it was going to be between 5 and 9AM. Liars.
Just finished first week of interviews, did 6 in 7 days. I felt like I was relaxing towards 4+ and able to get more conversational with interviewers, but could also see this sliding too far into informality as the season progresses. My fatigue may manifest as me trying to make interviews more interesting for me, when really I should be sticking to safe, middle of the road, practiced answers. Thankfully have the next couple weeks off before a similar but slightly lighter next month.
This kind of mentality probably hurt a lot of community programs in less to moderately competitive specialities who offered competitive applicants interview slots early in the cycle. These interviews were most likely used either for practice or went to the bottom of rank list. If the number of interviews are not increased, many mid-to-low stats candidates who may truly want to be at those programs were inadvertently robbed of an interview. At the same time, there are only so many "top" programs and I find it selfish in their part to wait way too long to release interviews, especially when everyone foresaw this problem well before applications opened. Now don't get me wrong, this is definitely specialty dependent, these "top" programs don't owe anyone anything and applicants have their faults in contributing to this problem as well (by hoarding, over-interviewing etc). However, in my speciality for instance, shifting the Radiology interview dynamics through Doximity top 15 institutions releasing interviews early is far easier to coordinate than telling hundreds of neurotic, nervous applicants not to hoard.
Asking for a friend. Applied to top competitive specialty this year and received minimal # of interviews. Possible red flag on app (bad LOR included). Thinking about throwing in another app to less competitive specialty this late in the cycle without that LOR. Worth it or should I try to take a research year, SOAP, prelim...?
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deleted645092
I’m having an existential crisis lmao; Found out from a drunk resident at my #1 that the reason I’ve been ghosted by them is because “they’ve had so many prestigious high-scoring applicants from places people hadn’t applied from before” and leadership actually fell for it. This is a literal middle of nowhere program that’s not even 5 years old, that I planned on ranking #1 because my SO is there. I’m a super competitive applicant so to be passed over as someone who has personal connections, is local, and has had leadership from other specialities reach out for me, I can only imagine the reaches this place is going for right now.
Sorry had to rant, this was really one of those “never thought it would happen to me” moments.
Sorry had to rant, this was really one of those “never thought it would happen to me” moments.
You can send them the you are my number 1...to show your interest about going there.
Had this same feeling a couple days ago. Found out from a new grad of one of my tops that admin has been supposedly putting huge pressure on the department not to take DOs. Even though the program has had entire classes of DOs in the past, now they’ll only interview them if they’ve rotated there and even then they’ll rank them low/not at all.
Makes sense since a DO buddy of mine ranked them number one, but didn’t match there and the program SOAPed that year.
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AnatomyGrey12
DO programs send people into those fellowships every year. The one affiliated with my school has put multiple people in those fellowships within the last 3 years alone. And at very well regarded places.
I’m sorry, but if someone is willing to jump ship so easy then they weren’t ever really that great of a fit for ortho to begin with. Every orthopod I know would agree.
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