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Charting outcomes: http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Charting-Outcomes-in-the-Match-2018-Seniors.pdf
Page 50 (of pdf) for DR
Page 104 (of pdf) for IR
Looking at IR you'll see everyone is applying to 2+ specialties (except literally 2 people), and I have to believe the 2nd specialty they are ranking is DR (with plan to do IR fellowship).
However this really mucks up the DR data because when somebody matches to IR they technically "fail" to match to DR (thus it looks like a 260 genius couldn't match DR). Please correct me if I am wrong here.
So how does on correctly interpret these charting outcomes of DR? Should I assume DR is actually less competitive than it appears here due IR matches technically failing to match to DR or assume it is actually more competitive as IR applicants are strong and are competing for DR spots?
I'm not smart enough to get a 250+, but like most people I want location+specialty of choice so I'd like to try and figure out what is going on here!
Radiology isn't particularly competitive. Not like say, Ortho. There's a lot of programs out there that aren't super picky and in recent years have even gone unmatched due to people not wanting to go there.Possibly nothing. For pretty much all the competitive specialties, there are way more great applicants than there are spots. Most are "good enough" to get a spot but just had bad luck or lacked something minor in comparison to other applicants. Making a good impression on aways and making connections will go a long way.
Well sure. But if you have borderline stats and are near the bottom of your class, applying only to desirable large cities is dumb. Even if you're a stellar candidate, you should apply reasonably broadly (doesn't have to be dozens of programs, but maybe go on 9 or 10 interviews compared to 4 or 5).I feel like if we consider DR in a desirable large city then it would probably be considered decently competitive right?
Depends on the IM programs you're comparing it to, but yes, there's more "bad" IM programs than there are DR ones.Oh whoops, I misread - I thought we were talking about IR. But DR is still a bit more competitive than average, no? Less than ortho but more than IM. At least that's what I've been hearing from classmates applying DR.
Makes you wonder what the 250+ scores are doing to not match DR.......
Rad Onc is probably on its way to being like pathology in term of competitiveness and I don't think it will take more than 5 yrs...Depends on the IM programs you're comparing it to, but yes, there's more "bad" IM programs than there are DR ones.
Regardless though, Radiology has a long tail of less competitive programs - this is quite unlike a lot of other fields that would typically be considered "competitive". DR is moderately competitive to get *a* spot, on par with Ob/Gyn and General surgery - not nearly approaching Derm, Ortho, ENT, Neurosurg, Rad Onc, etc.
The average step 1 score for people that matched in rads is 10 points higher than general surgery, so saying they're on par is not exactly true.Depends on the IM programs you're comparing it to, but yes, there's more "bad" IM programs than there are DR ones.
Regardless though, Radiology has a long tail of less competitive programs - this is quite unlike a lot of other fields that would typically be considered "competitive". DR is moderately competitive to get *a* spot, on par with Ob/Gyn and General surgery - not nearly approaching Derm, Ortho, ENT, Neurosurg, Rad Onc, etc.
Rad Onc is probably on its way to being like pathology in term of competitiveness and I don't think it will take more than 5 yrs...
The average step 1 score for people that matched in rads is 10 points higher than general surgery, so saying they're on par is not exactly true.
Agreed with your last part in that there's probably a bit of self-selection in that if you got a 200 on step, you're less likely to apply, and more likely to go into one of the less competitive specialtiesI have no dogs in this fight, but I'll point out a few things:
In 2018, there were 194 US seniors who applied for 215 rad onc positions (adding PGY1+2 spots together). That is, very close to more US graduates alone want to do it than spots exist.
There were 1351 US seniors who applied for 1319 categorical general surgery programs. Now, looking at Charting Outcomes, there were only 1115 who ranked Gen Surg #1 - but that's still 0.88 applicants who rank it above all else for every spot.
For DR, it's harder to say, because there's PGY1 and PGY2 spots and a lot of people apply to IR as well. There were a total of 125+944=1069 DR spots - and somewhere around 1000 applicants (assuming everyone interested applied to at least a single PGY2 spot). That's not a bad ratio - close to 1 - but 253 of those 1000 US applicants ended up matching IR. After taking that into consideration, there's far more DR spots than there are US applicants interested in it - the best ratio you can consider is somewhere 0.7 applicants per spot. This is lower than general surgery. Lower than ob/gyn. Lower than EM. Hell, lower than psych. It puts rads as more competitive than Anesthesia which - but still below every other field that's not a core primary care field (IM, FM, peds), neurology, or pathology.
Part of it is self-selection so you can argue about it a bit, but *shrug*. A few years ago DR had a lower match rate in total than any other field (that is, a significant number of the programs were going unmatched because they were too picky and no one wanted to join them) - it's gotten better, but it's still middling at best.