Derm getting less competitive?

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theeastsky

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According to the NRMP match results 2013, among 37 PGY-1 positions only 21 were filled by US seniors (55.3%) and there were 316 matched US seniors for 362 of PGY-2 positions (85.6%).😱

I thought the field is getting competitive every year.

can anyone explain this?
 
theeastsky said:
According to the NRMP match results 2013, among 37 PGY-1 positions only 21 were filled by US seniors (55.3%) and there were 316 matched US seniors for 362 of PGY-2 positions (85.6%).😱

I thought the field is getting competitive every year.

can anyone explain this?
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Yeah, that is interesting. Were there positions in the SOAP for Derm? Also, I read somewhere that a number of Derm positions were added nationally in the past couple of years. Is that true? Do you know how many total Derm spots there are? (399, according ot the math above?)

thanx
 
theeastsky said:
According to the NRMP match results 2013, among 37 PGY-1 positions only 21 were filled by US seniors (55.3%) and there were 316 matched US seniors for 362 of PGY-2 positions (85.6%).😱

I thought the field is getting competitive every year.

can anyone explain this?
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If someone has to explain this to you, then you are probably not going to get the board scores you need for derm, but I'll do it anyway.

A student who fails to match, does a year of research in derm, and then matches the following year is _____ a US senior.

Spoiler alert, the answer is "not."
 
Most likely but still last year there was just a single non US-senior who matched PGY1.
Textbookversion said:
If someone has to explain this to you, then you are probably not going to get the board scores you need for derm, but I'll do it anyway.

A student who fails to match, does a year of research in derm, and then matches the following year is _____ a US senior.

Spoiler alert, the answer is "not."
Click to expand...
 
US seniors filled 316/362 PGY-2 spots in 2013, which is 87.3%. In 2012, US seniors filled 288/329 PGY-2 spots= 87.5%. In 2011, US seniors filled 283/339 PGY-2 positions = 83.5%. 2010, US snrs filled 83.1% PGY-2. This data by no means supports dermatology decreasing in competitiveness.

I think that all of us who successfully matched this year would agree that it is hard to imagine this specialty as being any more competitive than it already is.
 
you need to consider percentage of applicants matched (out of the total U.S. seniors applying to dermatology, how many of those were able to obtain a position?) and not percentage of seats filled by US seniors to assess competitiveness.
 
dermpom said:
I think that all of us who successfully matched this year would agree that it is hard to imagine this specialty as being any more competitive than it already is.
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No joke, it was pretty brutal. A few of my classmates who had lower grades and boards then I do and applied to competitive things like rads, ophtho, ENT all got way more interviews with much fewer programs applied to. The rads guys in particular all matched at top tier, big name places. Don't be fooled by things like # of unfilled programs, % filled by US seniors, or even % of US seniors matched since it is such a self-selected group to begin with. Look at the NRMP statistics for matched applicants and you'll see that in the last few years derm have been as competitive as ever.
 
To reiterate what others said, the fact that 86% of PGY-2 positions were filled by US seniors means nothing if the remaining 14% were filled by those who just completed a derm research fellowship or (like several people I met while interviewing) were currently residents in very competitive programs of another specialty, but who decided they wanted to switch into derm late and were really awesome applicants.

While a high rate of non-US seniors is often translated as an indicator of being non-competitive (because the spots are instead filled with IMGs and DOs), it is meaningless (or may actually signal, in effect, the exact opposite) if high non-US senior fill rate is simply because it takes some US students additional years of research or clinical work to get into a field they find highly desirable.

A statistic of possibly more useful consideration: for the 369 PGY-2 spots offered, 442 US seniors applied and 316 of those US seniors matched. 316/442 = 71%. From this, you could roughly estimate ~29% of US seniors applying for derm did not match. This does not take into account the overlap that may exist with those students who also applied and were accepted for PGY-1 derm spots, but even if you factor this in and use the most conservative estimate, it only shifts the unmatched US senior rate down by a few percentage points. And as others have pointed out, these people who don't match are of a significantly different caliber than the typical unmatched applicant found in some other fields. Lastly, of students who apply to multiple specialties (derm + IM) and therefore are counted twice in the # of applicants field but can obviously only match into one field, nearly all preferentially ranked most derm programs over most programs in the other specialty. In other words, of those who ranked derm plus [any other field], most likely didn't NOT match into derm because it was there second choice specialty or because they were using it as a backup option.
 
N-Surge said:
Don't let #'s be the the only criteria you look at when considering this most wonderful area of medicine. =)
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Agreed - and don't take my twisting of numbers as a reason to not pursue the magical land of derm. However, I would use them to recognize the need and motivate your(lazy)self to do even more than you think is necessary when it comes to building your application. I cringe a little when I hear of people rocking step 1, comparing it to the average score of matched applicants, and assuming that they are going to be showered in acceptance letters personally delivered by the future ghost of Jean Bolognia.
 
N-Surge said:
It is true, numbers cannot be completely ignored either. Although when I interviewed applicants this year, us residents weren't given the scores at my program.
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I'm thankful I didn't run up against this too often. This seems downright unfair - without the cognitive bias granted by the halo effect, people probably would have actually focused on all my negative personality traits and the overall hedonistic nature of my "outside interests." Having these objective measures that don't actually translate into being a good provider might be needed, both as a shield and as a security blanket, for some of us. Don't take those away - it's just too cruel.


Fo' realzies though, I wonder how much of an impact it actually on the interview process. Maybe it's just me, but when I see an applicant that has lower board scores but is interviewing at strong programs, it almost works in their favor (in my mind). I find myself assuming he/she must be an otherwise awesome person and have a ton of other stuff sweet stuff going for them. Even though I recognize that I do it and am able to rationalize against it, it's still a hard feeling to shake.
 
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Alembic12 said:
I found this on the WUSTL site and thought it was interesting. It seems to show a slight rise in percent of U.S. seniors who match into Derm.

http://residency.wustl.edu/Choosing/SpecDesc/Pages/Dermatology.aspx


It might just be showing an increase in self-selection, though, right?
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Dude, that site is ******ed. It also says that the competition for plastics last year was "intermediate," which is obviously ridiculous. I wouldn't trust any of the data on that one.
 
Those numbers are straight up wrong - there's little benefit to looking at the ******ed misinterpretations of a career counselor at WUSTL when you can look directly at the actual statistics that are posted and available to everyone for free. Not that you were wrong for trusting a professional website put out by a reputable school, but it goes to show how people are able to make ridiculous claims (FM is now more competitive than rad onc!!!) because they can't do basic math or don't know what they're talking about. As per several posts above, the match rate for US seniors that applied this cycle was somewhere closer to 70%, definitely nowhere near the inaccurate numbers listed on that site. I'm not sure how someone didn't realize the numbers were off when found that only 6 US seniors in the entire country went unmatched for derm - should have been a triple digit number.
 
Which is a contorted and inaccurate way of presenting the information... They make the point of saying,

"*Competitiveness is based on the percentage of U.S. seniors who match in each specialty."

And the Table shows "% US Seniors Matched"

But under the information for the 'Source', the webpage NOW states "NRMP data based on US seniors who ranked a single specialty."

Before the statistics table, the webpage itself even says, "Most U.S. seniors applying for dermatology training programs also chose to apply to training programs in another specialty (or specialties)."

There's a ton of reasons why what they are saying is stupid - won't go into most of these, other than to say that presenting the information to their students as "% U.S. Seniors matched" = 93% is simply unhelpful and misleading. If the majority of people applying to derm apply to multiple specialties, then this "93%" statistic has no relevance to the majority of people since it concerns an entirely different population, and therefore isn't something they should base their decision on. If a specialty is very difficult to get into, causing most people to also apply to several backups, so only a select minority of confident (and likely over-qualified) candidates apply to only derm programs, why would you look at the 93% success rate of this self-selected minority of students as the indicator for how "easy" it is for most people to match? I'm pretty sure the *~30% of US seniors who applied and didn't get in (on page 5) would disagree with that being a valid notion to go by.


*Notice how when I said "% of US seniors who applied and didn't match", I didn't need to use an * to explain what it actually meant, since I wasn't trying to say "*% of US Senior Subgroup who only applied to dermatology and didn't match"; which makes this post-script ironic, because I just did need to explain it...
 
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Rev - quick additional note. I totally agree with your point that the numbers they listed weren't some statistics they just made up out of nowhere - but before the new addition of the extra disclaimer about the numbers being for "US seniors who ranked a single specialty", what the graph reported to be representing and what it actually represented where very different things. Even with this new clarification on the website, I'd argue that where they chose to take these numbers from is nonsensical and doesn't have much bearing for those medical students who are trying to get an accurate picture of the chances really are when applying.
 
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