hemeoncfellow2026
New Member
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
Hematology/Oncology 2026-2027 Application Cycle
Started by hemeoncfellow2026
Get help with your application
Use all the free resources available to you from SDN: articles, guides, expert advising, forums discussions, and school research.
hemeonchopeful24
New Member
@gutonc Wow I've been reading your posts for years, it's crazy to be participating in a thread with you now haha.
I've heard from some mentors/PDs that some programs will filter by step 1 score and some programs do a holistic review. Are there any programs that notably do this?
Additionally, I know there's only one year of data about signaling, but does a signal override a step 1 filter? I wish we had some more guidance on better signaling strategy. I'm erring on the side of safer/geo-local programs rather than programs I'd love to go to but don't want to waste a signal at. That being said, there was a recent poster at ASCO that interviewed PDs, and the consensus towards signaling seems to be positive.
From the AAMC, this is the data for Heme-Onc for anyone else applying/are curious.
I've heard from some mentors/PDs that some programs will filter by step 1 score and some programs do a holistic review. Are there any programs that notably do this?
Additionally, I know there's only one year of data about signaling, but does a signal override a step 1 filter? I wish we had some more guidance on better signaling strategy. I'm erring on the side of safer/geo-local programs rather than programs I'd love to go to but don't want to waste a signal at. That being said, there was a recent poster at ASCO that interviewed PDs, and the consensus towards signaling seems to be positive.
From the AAMC, this is the data for Heme-Onc for anyone else applying/are curious.
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
I'm so far out of the game that I can't answer that even for the program I used to work for. That said, these are not tea leaves you can read. So you should ignore it completely.
Signaling was a terrible solution to a real problem. Don't get me started. I understand why they did it instead of the obvious rational choice (limit apps to a certain number per applicant)...$$$$. So instead of giving up a few thousand dollars in free money from desperate applicants, they chose a convoluted system with opaque meanings that nobody really understands.
The chart from the abstract you linked to kind of tells a different story. It basically says that applicants who met program requirements would get interviews regardless of signaling, those who nearly met requirements might get interviews and those who didn't meet requirements wouldn't get interviews. The use of signals seemed to have limited impact (by my reading, but again, I wasn't trying to get a publication out of it to put on my fellowship application so maybe I'm not the right person to comment).
As usual, I’d like to remind applicants that we all are aware of the spreadsheet and that it is a rather humorous mix of half truths and well-meaning but wrong assessments.
For signaling - it’s very unlikely to get an interview without a signal. We as did multiple other programs did not end up interviewing anyone who did not signal us. Use them wisely.
Best of luck to everyone.
For signaling - it’s very unlikely to get an interview without a signal. We as did multiple other programs did not end up interviewing anyone who did not signal us. Use them wisely.
Best of luck to everyone.
Hi everyone, was hoping to get some feedback regarding a recent publication. I've read that publications outside of the top oncology journals don't account for much. I recently published a first author manuscript in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, & Prevention. It's a project I built from the ground up and is extremely meaningful to me. I also ran all of the statistics on my own after learning how to use SAS. How would PD's view this paper? Of course, it won't be my only project during residency but it surely will be the most meaningful one to me. Thank you.
Having gone through the process about the years ago I would think PDs would have an extremely favorable view of any first author manuscript especially one you learned a new skill for.
Of course the way to truly find out is to go through the match
Good luck I'm sure you'll do great!
It definitely counts for something. Non predatory publisher and IF 3.7 is nothing to sneeze at! Congrats and good luck.
