I saw some relatively confident and well prepared students and a bunch of other students determined to make them look good.
Students who choose to interview with programs that they haven't clerked (and have no connection to) would be well advised to call/email/or take some sort of step to familiarize them self with the program so that when they are asked - "tell us anything about this program" - they can reply with something of greater detail than a comment from the CASPR page or a recitation of the number of residents at the program and the assumption of what that must mean.
Students who are trying to make the best of an off-year and are working a preceptorship - that's a problem if that letter is bad.
If you were so fortunate as to be told at the end of an interview that you are liked / well ranked / etc - there's probably a case to be made for getting in contact after the interview and reinforcing / demonstrating some degree of commitment or interest (even if its a lie). If you've already been singing your commitment to the program / clerked there / and have stayed in contact and been told you were great all along - so be it. If that was your first interaction with the program and you didn't clerk there - you probably can't put a lot of faith in the praise/ranking/etc (hell, what does highly ranked even mean), but I suspect you still owe the program some sort of communication / email / phonecall in which you demonstrate interest. Though draining/expensive/hopefully unnecessary - there can be value to a visit between interviews and rankings.
As an aside - we had a recent thread where we discussed the value of thank you cards and a thank you card that can be read as non-commit probably has no value. If a program gives you contact information at your interview there's probably an argument to be made that you need to contact them unless it was a disaster or you don't intend to rank them.
Students - f*** the programs - play the game. Rank programs in the order of your interest - do not over-rank a program just because they said they liked you. Tell them what they want to hear and then rank accordingly.
