Jaded Soul said:
That's not against the match rules?
Technically, no. It's completely within the rules for a program to voluntarily offer information to an applicant regarding their ranking with the program, although generally discouraged. The caveat is that this is not considered to be a binding contract. Therefore, the applicant must not assume that this is a guarantee of a spot. If the program chooses to change their mind, they may still do so, so you must not rely too heavily on promises like this.
Conversely, it is acceptable for you, the applicant, to tell a program how you are ranking it, although this too is discouraged. Many programs know better than to take such information to heart. If you decide to tell a program that you are ranking them #1, just be aware that they might misconstrue that information as an attempt to find out where you rank, which is against the NRMP rules.
With that in mind, what IS against the rules is anyone soliciting information about where they are ranked. A PD can't ask you where you plan to rank them. An applicant can't try to weasel info out of a PD about where they stand with them. That DOES constitute an NRMP violation.
One of the attendings I worked with last year put it this way: Everyone is lying to everyone else during match season. There are lot of hints and innuendos being thrown around by both PDs and applicants, and most of them are meaningless. There are even quite a few bald faced liars out there. Don't believe anything you hear. As soon as you realize that 90% of what you are being told is probably B.S., then everything is cool.