How does your schools Match work

[kopitar]

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when and how does your second year students get matched (lottery, letters, etc) for rotations. how many went unmatched last year, was there a lot of suicide picks. what are your thoughts on your site options? ready go

 

[Rollo]

Using the word "match" for 2nd years picking rotations is kinda odd.

Anyway, at PCOM you rank 12 different rotation orders and they do a lottery where you get your top pick, if there is space, otherwise they move down your rank until you match into an empty spot.

Then within our rotation groups, we do a points/draft system to pick rotation sites. We rank the sites within each core rotation and on draft day, we meet as a group and go through everyone's picks. This system actually works pretty well because majority of people in my group got their top 5 choices for almost all of their core rotations. I also know several people from other groups who reported the same results.

I'm pretty happy with the choices that PCOM offers as far as rotation sites go. Only critical thing I'd have to add is that they have lot of rural sites that are too far that I don't care to rotate through.

But like I said before, the draft system works pretty well that I didn't even come close to getting a rotation site that was considered "rural" by any stretch of imagination.

 

[DocEspana]

when and how does your second year students get matched (lottery, letters, etc) for rotations. how many went unmatched last year, was there a lot of suicide picks. what are your thoughts on your site options? ready go

As was said before, the word 'match' is used for the 4th year to PGY1 residency match. Probably should refer to the 2nd year selections as the 'rotations selection' or 'clerkship selection'

At TouroCOM NY we have grids laid out where each hospital (or combination of hospitals that are near each other and as such can work as one 'site') has multiple lines below it. Each horizontal line represents a different set of rotations you can do at that hospital (or hospital group), each with slightly different order of rotations.

You get a lottery number and that is the order you pick your horizontal line. We are encouraged to mentally select the 3 or 4 we like most at our ideal school and 2 we like most at a second site so that when we get called its pretty much a given, unless we have the lowest number out there, that at least one of the spots we like will still be available. We have a decent number of extra slots so there is no occasion where someone doesn't have a spot. Your suggestion that people dont 'match' is off because everyone gets a spot in 3rd year at every school. 3rd year is part of the required curriculum, every med school makes sure everyone is given a good spot.

We have a teeny bit of rotations in TX (2?) right on fort hood for the students who do military training down there and 7-10 spots in upstate NY (binghamton and Utica) for people who want to go more rural. But those 9-12 spots are 100% voluntary as they are well in the 'excess spots', so zero people could elect to go there and no one would have to. The remainder of our spots are all very close to the school being in the surrounding boroughs or north jersey. The drive to any of these places from the school is about 30-40 minutes at the very max.

 

[DbDan]

AZCOM assigns your 3rd year rotation assignments at acceptance. I start next year and already know my 3rd year rotation site will be the Los Angeles area. I believe they give you the order of your rotations and your locations during first or second year and give you the opportunity to trade with other students although I'm not entirely sure. This is the first year they began doing this.

 

[JaggerPlate]

AZCOM assigns your 3rd year rotation assignments at acceptance. I start next year and already know my 3rd year rotation site will be the Los Angeles area. I believe they give you the order of your rotations and your locations during first or second year and give you the opportunity to trade with other students although I'm not entirely sure. This is the first year they began doing this.

That's actually cool. I interviewed there last season, and it was definitely not the way it was done at that time.

 

[Bacchus]

AZCOM assigns your 3rd year rotation assignments at acceptance. I start next year and already know my 3rd year rotation site will be the Los Angeles area. I believe they give you the order of your rotations and your locations during first or second year and give you the opportunity to trade with other students although I'm not entirely sure. This is the first year they began doing this.

This sounds awful. What basis do they use to decide where you go? Hometown, undergrad, parents' location?

It seems you have no say besides in the trade process. I thought our lottery would be tortuous but it turned out extremely well for most people at my school.

 

[JaggerPlate]

This sounds awful. What basis do they use to decide where you go? Hometown, undergrad, parents' location?

It seems you have no say besides in the trade process. I thought our lottery would be tortuous but it turned out extremely well for most people at my school.

I think it's an improvement over the previous system though. When I interviewed there, there were spots in AZ and OH, and you were assigned and had no real say in where you were going (from how I understood it). So I think knowing where you'll go when you're accepted and also the spots closer to AZ (CA) are an improvement.

 

[DocEspana]

This sounds awful. What basis do they use to decide where you go? Hometown, undergrad, parents' location?

It seems you have no say besides in the trade process. I thought our lottery would be tortuous but it turned out extremely well for most people at my school.

I'm with bacchus here. I'm about to pick my site. While the idea of my order of selection being driven by lottery unnerves me, I would be much more bothered by the idea of being pre-assigned a spot. I forgot if you said, but can you trade spots? What about the whole 3rd year?

I know I came into my school wanting one particular rotation site and loved it all of year one. Come year two I began researching them all and switched plans dramatically to a opposite type of hospital (or rather a 3 hospital system). and just recently after really thinking about what each one had to offer i realized that the best one to offer the initial training i'd really need is a third site i never considered before.

While being pre-assigned a site would take all this stress of picking off of my mind, it would also bother me much more because I'd have no real say in selecting the site best for me since each one has its own virtues and shortcomings.And since my understanding of what is best for me chnaged so much as I learned more and more about what I'd actually enjoy as a physician, selecting before school starts wouldn't be a good option for me.

The difference between my system and yours might lie in the fact that all our hospitals are right in NYC, so there are no huge geographic changes that any of the sites require. Unless you opt to do it upstate, everyone does 3rd year in the same area 1-2 happened in. So it becomes a big debate over which area has the best education for you rather than which *area* you want to be in, given they're all in the same area.

 

[megathunder]

This sounds awful. What basis do they use to decide where you go? Hometown, undergrad, parents' location?

It seems you have no say besides in the trade process. I thought our lottery would be tortuous but it turned out extremely well for most people at my school.

You send them your top-3 sites upon acceptance, then they assign you. So YOU are choosing where you end up. It's a good system.

 

[Rollo]

You send them your top-3 sites upon acceptance, then they assign you. So YOU are choosing where you end up. It's a good system.

Not sure how good a system is when it asks you to rank sites 2 years before. A lot can happen in 2 years and people's preferences can certainly change. I suppose you can trade sites with somebody (right?) but that isn't really fair because you might not be able to find a trade so you're stuck with a decision that you made 2 years ago.

A better system would be it lets you rank sites in the middle to late of your second year.

 

[Dissected]

We have a lottery. We submit our choices and the department runs the lottery a ton of times until it "maximizes" people's top picks. It's kind of a crapshoot for people that want to get out of Iowa because there are so few spots at good hospitals in Mich/Ohio. The process is pretty fair, although I'm not convinced it is completely objective. Some shady stuff went down this year.

 

[megathunder]

Not sure how good a system is when it asks you to rank sites 2 years before. A lot can happen in 2 years and people's preferences can certainly change. I suppose you can trade sites with somebody (right?) but that isn't really fair because you might not be able to find a trade so you're stuck with a decision that you made 2 years ago.

A better system would be it lets you rank sites in the middle to late of your second year.

Yes a lot can change, but knowing that I would be able to come back to my home state to do rotations (and not have to participate in some crapshoot lottery 2 years in the future) was a positive pull for me toward the school. I think that was their intention. And it's surely better than what some of the posts above were stipulating about just throwing people into a place with no consent.

 

[Rollo]

Yes a lot can change, but knowing that I would be able to come back to my home state to do rotations (and not have to participate in some crapshoot lottery 2 years in the future) was a positive pull for me toward the school. I think that was their intention. And it's surely better than what some of the posts above were stipulating about just throwing people into a place with no consent.

Certainly in your case, it's a great system.

But what about those who don't know where they want to be 2 years from now? And they would rather wait and check out the surrounding area first before wanting to commit?

I guess the students applying to the school will self-select themselves towards the category of somebody like you who know where they want to be for their last 2 years. Others who can't, well I guess they should go somewhere else.

 

[MedStudentWanna]

The process is pretty fair, although I'm not convinced it is completely objective. Some shady stuff went down this year.

Like what?

 

[DbDan]

Not sure how good a system is when it asks you to rank sites 2 years before. A lot can happen in 2 years and people's preferences can certainly change. I suppose you can trade sites with somebody (right?) but that isn't really fair because you might not be able to find a trade so you're stuck with a decision that you made 2 years ago.

A better system would be it lets you rank sites in the middle to late of your second year.

Obviously alot can happen in two years but for me it was the fact that I could return to CA for my 3rd year guaranteed, rather than possibly be sent somewhere far away that I really didn't want to be, that lead me to favoring this system. Affiliated hospitals are not likely to change drastically in an area if the school has an established relationship with them so I didn't hold that as a factor. Plus, there are alot of good hospitals in Southern California + its close to family, friends, etc.

Additionally, if someone gets an unfavorable spot that they really can't stand 2nd year, they are forced to go, what other option is there? If they get it now, before matriculation and submitting a deposit, they can use that as something to weigh against other schools that they've been accepted to.

I didn't mind it, most people that I've seen on here have not had anything negative to say about it thus far. Let me check back in 2 years from now and see if anyone is upset about it at that point. So far though, its been a positive for most.