Consistency in match numbers

[Texas Doc]

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As a premed that’s been on the interview trail, I’ve noticed that most med schools seem to have fairly consistent match numbers (i.e. about the same number going into primary care, derm, ortho, etc.) each year. What causes the apparent consistency? It looks like the numbers would vary more from year to year. Have I just not looked at a large enough sample or is there some underlying controlling force that makes these numbers fairly consistent from year to year?

 

[Bertelman]

I haven't necessarily found that to be the case at my school (in TX). Sure, similar numbers go into many of the specialties, but every year there seems to be 2-3 vogue specialties that draw an inordinate amount of people. I have no explanation for this. I think it often has something to do with inspirational faculty that give a certain lecture, or that students work with on the wards. Despite receiving advice to the contrary very early in medical school, I believe some students still choose their specialty based on great respect or admiration for a certain physician they know.

 

[Faebinder]

Absolutely.... students choose their specialty based on how much respect/attitude/behavior their school program and teachers show the specialty.

Since the academic physicians don't change dramatically, then the same attitude will continue and so expect the same annual influence on people.

 

[Texas Doc]

I was suspicious that the match outcome, within certain parameters, might be predetermined by the system for various reasons.

Like, we need to match at least 40% into primary care to look good for federal grants, or if we match fifteen into derm other programs might retaliate by not taking our students as residents.

So, then theoretically, if the top twenty students at a particular school all wanted to go into derm or ortho, that shouldn’t create a problem?

 

[Dr. V]

No, there is no backlash for putting too many of your class into X field. One year my med school put a HUGE number of people into Derm (huge for derm that is). They were about 4 years ahead of our class and they were still talking about how that class single handedly took up X percentage of all the derm spots etc.

In my class we had 13 out of 54 go into General Surgery.

Normally our med school has over 60%, usually closer to 70% go into Primary Care. Since our med schools mission is to produce primary care physicians our class put a signifinant crimp in that as I think only about 40% actually went into primary care. The med school administrators were happy we all matched well, but they were hoping that more of us would have picked primary care, that was obvious. However, it didn't matter to the match.

Of course there is some natural stratification in that board scores determine who matches where as well. Many a med student had to match into a different field because they didn't do well on their steps/grades.

Programs do get reputations based on what kind of interns their school produces and that also effects the match. If your school has a reputation for producing good, hard working residents then that school will match better than a school with the reputation of producing lazy/coddled interns etc. That part does happen, but that's simply residency programs and their experience with interns from a med school, it's not retribution for "matching too many" etc.