I'm just curious about which stats are reliable/valuable in looking up programs on frieda. I've heard a couple times in passing that the work hours listed can vary quite a bit and faculty stats can be fudged. Any thoughts on what to trust?
-
CycleTrack and SDN are teaming up to make medical school admissions more transparent and accessible! Read the announcement to learn how we’re supporting the future of CycleTrack’s free application-tracking tools .
How reliable is Freida?
Started by Napoleon1801
Get help with your application
Use all the free resources available to you from SDN: articles, guides, expert advising, forums discussions, and school research.
I'm not so sure about the work hours. I have no idea how they calculate it, and it varies so much rotation to rotation anyway that it really is irrelevant. The best way to figure it out is to talk to residents at the program at an interview.
I looked it at for my program. Some things you can probably trust (and they are accurate for here), those would include # of spots/year, dates interviews are conducted, # of interviews, salary, vacation weeks.
The # of faculty is probably accurate, but for every program this number is going to be unrevealing, because every program will count pure researchers in the department even though you will never encounter them.
As for the work hours, like I said, it is rather pointless to pay attention to the number listed on Frieda. It also says health insurance is "fully paid by institution" which is inaccurate. They pay a lot of it, but not all of it.
I guess I would basically take things with a grain of salt. Use it as a rough guideline to the truth, especially for things that can be fudged.
I looked it at for my program. Some things you can probably trust (and they are accurate for here), those would include # of spots/year, dates interviews are conducted, # of interviews, salary, vacation weeks.
The # of faculty is probably accurate, but for every program this number is going to be unrevealing, because every program will count pure researchers in the department even though you will never encounter them.
As for the work hours, like I said, it is rather pointless to pay attention to the number listed on Frieda. It also says health insurance is "fully paid by institution" which is inaccurate. They pay a lot of it, but not all of it.
I guess I would basically take things with a grain of salt. Use it as a rough guideline to the truth, especially for things that can be fudged.
It's not just whether or not they're being honest. A lot of that info is completely out of date. Our program's Frieda info is incorrect (to our disadvantage) and when I told our PD he had no idea. He said he thought an assistant he had years ago had put that info on there.
