I was curious whether program directors usually rank everyone they interview? Some programs I have interviewed with interview over 100 applicants so it seems illogical to rank all 100.. thoughts?
Do residency program directors rank all interviewees?
- Thread starter dobray
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No but they rank the majority of them. A few people will interview very poorly or more likely will be inappropriate (mean to a secretary, weird in person, etc) during the interview day.
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No. There are plenty of people who look good on paper but look like jerks in person. Those never git ranked. We did rank most people though.
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My residency program use to only rank 3 for 3 spots until we got burned one year so now we rank about 7 out of 80 something applications.
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What's the strategy behind this?
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Those who commit get ranked, if you verbally committed, the program would honor their commitment and would rank you 1-3, but would also expect you to honor your committment.
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Sounds pretty stupid. So they'd rather scramble someone than take someone who "didn't commit" in the case that one of those who "committed" didn't actually do so. Seems like a great way to completely waste all the money, effort and energy expended to bring in the other 70 people to interview.
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The said program doesn't interview anyone, just lines them up with board scores and crosses off people they didn't like, then starts to offer up spots to people from the top. This only applies to those who rotate, if you didn't rotate, you don't make the list. As the interview season progresses, people decline their spot so they move down that list. That's how they have done historically and got burned the last two years, wonder if they plan to rank more people this year and will actually call everyone they rank. Program director is a stand up guy and honors his commitment and expects you to honors yours, if you got a call from them, you're in.
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I still don't see how the program has anything to lose by ranking 10 more people. In fact, they have something to lose if they don't. It'd kind of be akin to going in Who Wants to be a Millionaire and when Regis explains "You have three life-lines," you immediately respond, "**** you, I won't need them!"
Last year a friend applied to one if those really competitive specialties with very few spots. He didn't match and then in the scramble applied to his #1 and got the spot. Now, obviously they took him in the scramble. WTF didn't they rank him?
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I think only Buckeye(oh) can answer that as to why his program has done that in the past, apparently this year will be different according to his post in this thread.
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I think some really selective programs know there will be some pretty good applicants left over to scramble. They rank only who they really want and take a chance that they may have to pick from the top scramble applicants. They may have liked this guy but hopes for someone better. Since no one better is available-- better the devil you know than the one you don't. Just a possibility.
