is psych really the new radiology?

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
I would die happy if psych became competitive, but it will not happen in my life time. All that is happening is that we will have 50 stellar AOA impressive people on our lists above our matches and then the next 50 will look like previous years and most of you will be fine. I think I’m fairly good at detecting when people are disinterested. I know I can tell when I’m disinterested, most of the time it only takes the first five to eight minutes. It is very hard to interview a full day if you know you don’t want to match at a place. Hopefully people do one or maybe two of these an can the rest.
 
Regarding the applicants looking to match psych as a 3rd choice, won't it be apparent from their elective rotations? I'm not sure a programs preference here but would programs rather have someone with a 230 with 4x surgery electives who didn't do anymore psych than the minimum or someone with a 210 that spent most of their 4th year in psych rotations and preparing to be a psychiatrist?
 
Anecdotally:

Me: "I'm applying to psychiatry. How many programs should I apply to?"
PGY-1s and PGY-2s: "Oh, you only need to apply to like 10. Apply to 15 to be safe, but you'll be cancelling interviews."

Me: "I'm applying to psychiatry. How many programs should I apply to?"
Psych Clerkship Director: "Probably only around 15, but apply to 20 to be safe."

Me: "I'm applying to psychiatry. How many programs should I apply to?"
Dean for Student Affairs: "Oh, at least 30. Better safe than sorry! You don't want to not match do you?" [Goes on to tell horror stories about students who didn't match.]

Ended up applying to 26, but am now realizing could have cut that in half and will probably end up cancelling at least one or two interviews.
 
Me: "I'm applying to psychiatry. How many programs should I apply to?"
Dean for Student Affairs: "Oh, at least 30. Better safe than sorry! You don't want to not match do you?" [Goes on to tell horror stories about students who didn't match.]

Ended up applying to 26, but am now realizing could have cut that in half and will probably end up cancelling at least one or two interviews.

Student affairs offices are absolutely driving up the # of apps because it looks bad for them to have unmatched students. At this point I still have fewer interviews than I was expecting so I'm certainly glad that I didn't apply to fewer places. (which is really how this cycle just builds on itself). Maybe things will change and the interview season will be more dynamic in nov/dec/jan and I'll feel dumb about it in the long run but right now I don't. Although I'd tend to think that the people who were scared enough to apply to multiple specialties and 50+ programs are probably going to go on all the interviews anyways.
 
Last edited:
Regarding the applicants looking to match psych as a 3rd choice, won't it be apparent from their elective rotations? I'm not sure a programs preference here but would programs rather have someone with a 230 with 4x surgery electives who didn't do anymore psych than the minimum or someone with a 210 that spent most of their 4th year in psych rotations and preparing to be a psychiatrist?

The latter is exactly what I am looking for.
 
Anecdotally:

Me: "I'm applying to psychiatry. How many programs should I apply to?"
PGY-1s and PGY-2s: "Oh, you only need to apply to like 10. Apply to 15 to be safe, but you'll be cancelling interviews."

Me: "I'm applying to psychiatry. How many programs should I apply to?"
Psych Clerkship Director: "Probably only around 15, but apply to 20 to be safe."

Me: "I'm applying to psychiatry. How many programs should I apply to?"
Dean for Student Affairs: "Oh, at least 30. Better safe than sorry! You don't want to not match do you?" [Goes on to tell horror stories about students who didn't match.]

Ended up applying to 26, but am now realizing could have cut that in half and will probably end up cancelling at least one or two interviews.


I'm in the same boat. Dean of students at my school recommended I apply to 30-40 because my stats are exactly average for psych, told me if I was a little more competitive maybe I could get away with 20-30. Applied to 36, realizing it was an absolute waste of money and now I'm wasting other people's time and can't figure out which schools I am even interested in.
 
We forgive you, and you are in good company obviously. Do what everyone else used to do and think geography and move out from there. You must have some ideas about where you like to live. There are a lot of differences between programs, but most do a good job at training you.
 
Regarding the applicants looking to match psych as a 3rd choice, won't it be apparent from their elective rotations? I'm not sure a programs preference here but would programs rather have someone with a 230 with 4x surgery electives who didn't do anymore psych than the minimum or someone with a 210 that spent most of their 4th year in psych rotations and preparing to be a psychiatrist?

I hope not. I'm in residency but spent most of my 4th year doing non psych rotations I thought would be valuable for future breadth of education. Cardio, PMR, oncology, sleep medicine, correctional medicine, geriatrics, then the school's mandatory sub Is of medicine (FM) and surgery (neurosurg) and a month of EM. I have all my life to do psych. And all of those rotations had their fair share of psych patients. But seeing how those specialties work and their perspectives was invaluable.
 
I hope not. I'm in residency but spent most of my 4th year doing non psych rotations I thought would be valuable for future breadth of education. Cardio, PMR, oncology, sleep medicine, correctional medicine, geriatrics, then the school's mandatory sub Is of medicine (FM) and surgery (neurosurg) and a month of EM. I have all my life to do psych. And all of those rotations had their fair share of psych patients. But seeing how those specialties work and their perspectives was invaluable.

And this is why the job of a program director becomes ever so hard. Does Martha Stewart make an application sifter to clear the chaff from the wheat?
 
From a brand name med school, decent scores, applied to 10 programs, and I felt that was too many... just some perspective.

I know I'm hitting this late, but I was told similar things when I applied to ~15 programs by my mentor. He said that in actuality I probably wouldn't go to 10-12 interviews regardless of the number of invites I received - which ended up being spot on the money. I was also from a "name brand" school, had a decent but not outstanding step 1, and had decent but not outstanding clinical grades - basically HP across the board with no Hs or Ps. I had strong letters and while I didn't have "clear evidence" of an interest in psych - i.e., not involved in psychiatric ECs, etc. - I think my PS was genuine enough to make my interest in the field clear.

I think that coming from a US allopathic school and being just a middle-of-the-road medical student will put you in a great position to match if not secure invitations or even match at great programs. Just look at the NRMP Charting Outcomes data. It really hasn't changed all that much - at least not in a way that's significantly different from trends across the board for most specialties.
 
I think that coming from a US allopathic school and being just a middle-of-the-road medical student will put you in a great position to match if not secure invitations or even match at great programs. Just look at the NRMP Charting Outcomes data. It really hasn't changed all that much - at least not in a way that's significantly different from trends across the board for most specialties.

The thing is that talking to a lot of these people right now they'll tell you they aren't getting the response they expected - so something is different about this year. Speaking with friends who graduated and moved to psych residencies in several locations last year, their PDs have mentioned getting double the # of applications this year. Maybe it will all sift out and there is some reason for this that will leave the NMRP data unchanged, but it's still likely to affect this year's applicants.

I personally think the yes/no question on matching is unlikely to change much, but people may not get the programs they want and that there will probably quite a few good programs that end up soaping spots when they've all interviewed the same 200 people and 50 of those are actually interested in another specialty.
 
The thing is that talking to a lot of these people right now they'll tell you they aren't getting the response they expected - so something is different about this year. Speaking with friends who graduated and moved to psych residencies in several locations last year, their PDs have mentioned getting double the # of applications this year. Maybe it will all sift out and there is some reason for this that will leave the NMRP data unchanged, but it's still likely to affect this year's applicants.

I personally think the yes/no question on matching is unlikely to change much, but people may not get the programs they want and that there will probably quite a few good programs that end up soaping spots when they've all interviewed the same 200 people and 50 of those are actually interested in another specialty.

It's October 10th. I think it's a tad early to be making predeterminations on "how things are going" at this point.
 
It's October 10th. I think it's a tad early to be making predeterminations on "how things are going" at this point.

Hope you're right. But someone crunched the numbers on previous invite threads and in the past 80% of the reported invites on sdn (so obviously not really generalizable) had gone out by oct 10th.
 
Last edited:
Hope you're right. But someone crunched the numbers on previous invite threads and in the past 80% of the reported invites on sdn (so obviously not really generalizable) had gone out by oct 10th.

There was a trend towards later inviting last year vs. the year before, and my own personal observation is that the schools that I applied to are tending to invite later this year than last year...
 
It is SO hard to tell whether an applicant is just shotgunning every possible program, or if they're hoping for just a residency--any residency.

I'm not sure if I'm reading this properly, but is there a difference?
 
Anecdotally:

Me: "I'm applying to psychiatry. How many programs should I apply to?"
PGY-1s and PGY-2s: "Oh, you only need to apply to like 10. Apply to 15 to be safe, but you'll be cancelling interviews."

The residents at my school said the same thing. If I had listened, I'd only have 1-2 interviews right now.
 
The residents at my school said the same thing. If I had listened, I'd only have 1-2 interviews right now.
Fresh from IPS: "You should apply to 10, 20, 30 programs (depending on your circumstances). If you're so insecure that you think you need to apply to more than 30 residencies, take the money you were planning to spend on additional residency applications and is it for therapy." How very psychiatric of the speaker 🙂

I'm still 2 years away from applying (and wish best of luck to this year's applicants) but re: interview invites trickling in slowly this year: with an increased number of applications, I would hope PDs take their sweet time to thoroughly review applications and send invites later rather than quickly sort all applicants by Step scores and send out invites based on scores.
 
Seriously it's not even been two weeks since your applications have been complete and people are whining that they don't have interviews. The top programs often do not send out interviews until the MSPE. We are still sending out invites to impressive people. It's still early. If you applied to more programs it would not likely have increased how many interviews you got now, and just delayed how long you have to wait to hear by creating even more dross to shift through.

(That said, I appreciate the anxiety, somewhat, as I only had 4 interviews this time when I applied [though back in my day applications were submitted sep 1 and MSPE nov 1] and recall thinking about applying to medicine prelim programs and starting such a thread! This process is enough to drive anyone crazy)

but my unsympathetic advice (we are all trained by radical behaviorists) is: "quit your whining chill the f*ck out!" if it's good enough for our patients it's good enough for you
 
Any chance we can get back to the topic of this thread?

(Everyone just take some deep breaths. It's only October. Most invites lay ahead of you, not behind you. Remember, my dream school invited me in January.)
 
I appreciate the (what I think are) attempts to calm everyone down, but when you have PDs saying this year is different, and multiple people pointing out that like 80+% of invites had gone out by oct 10th last year it's hard to be that comforted by it.
 
I appreciate the (what I think are) attempts to calm everyone down, but when you have PDs saying this year is different, and multiple people pointing out that like 80+% of invites had gone out by oct 10th last year it's hard to be that comforted by it.

Same thing was said last year, like word for word. You'll look back at this thread and chuckle next year.
 
I appreciate the (what I think are) attempts to calm everyone down, but when you have PDs saying this year is different, and multiple people pointing out that like 80+% of invites had gone out by oct 10th last year it's hard to be that comforted by it.

I was the only person who said that and it was composite stats for the past two years... And I based the numbers on *SDN* posts on the interview invite thread. My point was that interviews are coming... I later pointed out that there was a trend towards later invites last year.

Here are more reasons why these threads likely make it look like interviews go out ealry:

1) Sometimes people don't post dates, especially if there was already one date posted. This means that when programs mass invite, its probably under represented in my stats.
2) applicant burn out: as the season wears on and people start interviewing they have less time to post on SDN.
3) applicant stress relief: once those interviews roll in, people stop worrying and checking SDN.
4) applicant embarrassment. After posting about how your 270, AOA and first author nature paper aren't good enough for psych, you're embarrassed when you have 20 invites.

I think everyone can agree for the time being that the reality of the situation is that radiology is in fact the new psychiatry. And once most/all IR spots go to direct match next year... Diagnostic radiology will be the new family med.
 
It seems like people have become irrational about the # of programs they have to apply to match... and I think SDN has also contributed to that... I was talking to one guy at my school who also is my neighbor and he told me that he applied to 90 FM programs and most of them are community programs. I understand my school is a low tier US MD school, but there is no reason for someone to act irrational like that when your step 1 is in the high 220 and your step 2 is in the low 240, and you have no red flags at all in your application.

The guy already has 19 interview invites and he said he going to all of them... I even asked him if he will cancel future interview invites and he said no...
 
It seems like people have become irrational about the # of programs they have to apply to match... and I think SDN has also contributed to that... I was talking to one guy at my school who also is my neighbor and he told me that he applied to 90 FM programs and most of them are community programs. I understand my school is a low tier US MD school, but there is no reason for someone to act irrational like that when your step 1 is in the high 220 and your step 2 is in the low 240, and you have no red flags at all in your application.

The guy already has 19 interview invites and he said he going to all of them... I even asked him if he will cancel future interview invites and he said no...

To be fair... I know a lot of friends who said things like this last year about non-mid competitive specialties who realized how exhausting interviews were after about 10. I think it's easy to overestimate your interview stamina in early-mid october.
 
To be fair... I know a lot of friends who said things like this last year about non-mid competitive specialties who realized how exhausting interviews were after about 10. I think it's easy to overestimate your interview stamina in early-mid october.
Maybe he will realize that it's exhausting to go to 30+ interviews, but I think the guy was serious because he is so paranoid about not being matched... I was told that 1o invites is a safe # for non competitive specialties. Maybe things have changed in the last 2 years...
 
Last edited:
It could be argued that it may take even less interviews to match in some specialties. People can interview at 30 places, but they can only take one spot. If most programs are now going twice as far down their lists because we all have the same people on our lists, maybe 4 or 5 are plenty. It may be possible to be at the bottom of 4 or 5 lists, but probably not.
Face it, as people apply more, some are going to get more interviews, and some people will therefore get less. The overall chances probably have not changed that much.
 
It's also the case that psych has increased the number of total slots available in the match substantially over the past few years (1097 in 2011 to 1353 in 2015). In fact, the %US senior md match was higher in 2011 (58%) than it was in 2015 (57%), although it was as low as 52% in 2014. Since 2011, most major specialties see a range in US senior % match of ~7% with no clear trend.

The possible exceptions are anesthesia trending down from 80% to 73%, IM from 57% to 49% (with a *ton* of added slots), OB up from 74% to 80%...

And the real kicker: Radiology going 79%, 76%, 74%, 69% to 58%.

Basically, radiology as a specialty is tanking for applicants. Psych has basically kept pace with the increased number of slots over the past few years. The real question is... OB??? (Personally, I kinda loved OB)...
WTF...
 
Again, the "(1097 in 2011 to 1353 in 2015)" was an artifact of the "all in" policy and probably doesn't represent any real change in # of psych spots.
 
Someone earlier mentioned that having electives in psychiatry helps...how do programs know if we have electives? Most of my electives are in my fourth year and that is not included in the MSPE. Also, most of my electives were away rotations, should i stay away from mentioning those to other programs so that they dont think that Im not interested in them?
 
Someone earlier mentioned that having electives in psychiatry helps...how do programs know if we have electives? Most of my electives are in my fourth year and that is not included in the MSPE. Also, most of my electives were away rotations, should i stay away from mentioning those to other programs so that they dont think that Im not interested in them?

I'm not sure where it got mentioned above (or by whom) and I'm feeling too lazy to scroll up, but I've never heard of doing psych electives as a particularly important part of anyone's application. The only caveat I can think of is if you do electives at a particular place you want to match at because the electives could help you meet people and make a good impression. You're right -- most of 4th year stuff isn't on your MSPE. Of course I've also never heard of people applying to psychiatry as a backup specialty aside from IMGs who apply to all psych and FM programs in the country or whatever.
 
I think that given the massive raw numbers of applications, and knowing that a substantial number of them are using psychiatry as a backup or as one of many perceived options for an IMG to get any US residency, the electives--completed or scheduled on an official transcript--do give us one more thread of evidence that the candidate is truly interested in psychiatry. It's not the final word, but it is a data point when we have little or no actual knowledge of the applicant.
 
Thanks for validating the fact that we have little actual knowledge. I read a post that complained that programs where invisible not to long ago. We are about as open a book as you can get unless you can send in a 60 minutes team.
 
Data as of 10/15/2015
https://www.aamc.org/services/eras/stats/


Seems like the last two years the number of US applicants has increased by 200 each year.

2014: 1161
2015: 1353
2016: 1541

IMGs:
2014: 2657
2015: 2774
2016: 2761

Total spots: 1374 or something like that?

I was hoping to get some last minute cancellation interviews but seeing as how this season has been going and the increase in applicants...IDK.
 
Data as of 10/15/2015
https://www.aamc.org/services/eras/stats/


Seems like the last two years the number of US applicants has increased by 200 each year.

2014: 1161
2015: 1353
2016: 1541

IMGs:
2014: 2657
2015: 2774
2016: 2761

Total spots: 1374 or something like that?

I was hoping to get some last minute cancellation interviews but seeing as how this season has been going and the increase in applicants...IDK.
Considering there were only 1,353 categorical psychiatry positions, 1,541 US applicants and 2,761 IMGs makes it look pretty competitive...
 
So like is those extra 200 people solely Psychiatry? Could be EM or Ortho kids?
 
a few things: this includes osteopathic applicants (and canadian although admittedly a small and thus irrelevant group), and also people who may never interview or rank programs in psychiatry. we can tell this by how far these numbers are off from the NRMP numbers. This year 880 US seniors applied in the match whereas for that same year, 1134 people apparently applied to psychiatry residencies on ERAS. Also the % of US students vs IMGs matching into psychiatry has stayed about the same and was less last year than in 2011.

Is there a larger number of people applying for psychiatry? absolutely. does this number reflect "the secret is out" as has been claimed? no it appears to be multifactorial. while it is possible some more people are choosing psychiatry because it has become a bit more desirable the numbers suggest that 1/4 of these people don't apply into these programs, and the fact that the % of IMGs matching into psychiatry has remained roughly the same suggests that the quality of the increased applications who ultimately are choosing psychiatry is overall poor.

this may explain why programs and applicants experience things as "more competitive" as no doubt there has been a significant increase in applications. many of these are not genuine, and many others are not up to scratch however. the good news then is the sky is not falling.
 
I believe psych will be more competitive than FM, PM&R and even IM to some extent in the next match and on... Just being a US student won't cut it anymore..
 
I have noticed a lot more people interested in psych in my class.... Lets see what the next 'charting the outcomes' will say!

I would suggest perhaps perusing this thread and others on the same theme on this forum recently, especially the discussion of random variation in small samples (i.e. the number of people in a given class interested in a particular field). The idea of noise and statistical power is a useful one and can help you avoid many silly conclusions that might be drawn otherwise from inadequate data.
 
I would suggest perhaps perusing this thread and others on the same theme on this forum recently, especially the discussion of random variation in small samples (i.e. the number of people in a given class interested in a particular field). The idea of noise and statistical power is a useful one and

What you said. As someone who switched from Rads --> PMR, I can guarantee that Psych is not and never will be like Rads for countless reasons. While Rads has had some rough times, the main reason Rads has become less competitive is because it is a grueling specialty that made bank and it's been cut so many times it's not even funny, to the point that having to go through 6+ years of grueling training for the current starting salaries is sometimes hard to stomach, not to mention that the decreased reimbursements have caused many not to retire, leading to less jobs. Psych is in no way comparable to Rads, so please let's not be silly. If someone loves psych, great apply to it. Trying to make it "better" than what is it or how competitive a field is to make one feel better is outright absurd. Second, as you point out, competitiveness has to be gauged appropriately. "More people in my class interested in x, y, or z" is not a statistical method to anything, and as a future physician, that poster seems clueless. You certainly don't gauge a field's competitiveness by how many people in one's class are interested in the field.

Second overapplying is a common current phenomenon that occurs across fields, so people applying to more spots does not mean it's more competitive, it means people are more paranoid of not matching because of INCREASED APPLICANTS. If I were to simply go by my program's applications, we have close to 1000 applications for less than 6 spots.

Third, suggesting that someone believes that "Psych is more competitive than FM, PMR, IM in the next match" - again is silly. Psych is one of the easiest fields to match into. Nothing wrong with that, it's just the way it is. It's far easier to match into Psych than IM or PMR. With PMR in particular, given that there are less than 400 spots nationwide, and that we fill consistently with pretty much no spots available throughout the country for multiple years, I can safely say that it will be far easier to match into Psych than PMR, and also IM. IM is far more competitive than what that poster is making it out to be, particularly at top programs.

The reality is that the competitiveness of fields has remained relatively stable for a longgggg time, including Psych. Non-match paranoia is rampant and people are applying to more spots across the board. Rads has had a rough bumpy road for a few years, but let's not become delusional here.

Psych is a fine and necessary specialty, but again, pretending that it's somehow become the end all be all makes no sense and it makes people who make such statement look bad.
 
I have noticed a lot more people interested in psych in my class.... Lets see what the next 'charting the outcomes' will say!

I agree that while anecdotal, I too have observed among medical student friends a struggle to get interviews (particularly for IMG). I know a SGU guy, 230/235 with only 4 IVs (and he has done 4 months of psych electives + 3 Psych LORS). I mean its almost thanksgiving and he hasn't hit 5 IVs with those stats...I dunno.

But yes, all will be answered come April 2016 with NRMP outcomes.
 
It could be argued that it may take even less interviews to match in some specialties. People can interview at 30 places, but they can only take one spot. If most programs are now going twice as far down their lists because we all have the same people on our lists, maybe 4 or 5 are plenty. It may be possible to be at the bottom of 4 or 5 lists, but probably not.
Face it, as people apply more, some are going to get more interviews, and some people will therefore get less. The overall chances probably have not changed that much.

This makes sense to me. But I add I am damn glad I applied 2 years ago when my decidedly average app yielded 18 or 19 interviews out of 25 apps - I shudder to think what I would have in hand this year, at least based on SDN anecdotes.

And it makes sense that for people using Psych as a backup, when they rank programs - say they have 10 Ortho programs ranked 1 to 10 - followed by a couple of Psych or whatever - the likelihood they end up in Psych is extremely low.

FWIW I never heard anybody on the trail admit they were at psych interviews as a backup to another specialty - either people hid it very well, or it wasn't all that common then compared to now.
 
This makes sense to me. But I add I am damn glad I applied 2 years ago when my decidedly average app yielded 18 or 19 interviews out of 25 apps - I shudder to think what I would have in hand this year, at least based on SDN anecdotes.

And it makes sense that for people using Psych as a backup, when they rank programs - say they have 10 Ortho programs ranked 1 to 10 - followed by a couple of Psych or whatever - the likelihood they end up in Psych is extremely low.

FWIW I never heard anybody on the trail admit they were at psych interviews as a backup to another specialty - either people hid it very well, or it wasn't all that common then compared to now.

At a previous interview I overheard one of the applicants mention they were applying psych and derm and of the psych applications had received interviews to >80% of the programs they applied to.
 
At a previous interview I overheard one of the applicants mention they were applying psych and derm and of the psych applications had received interviews to >80% of the programs they applied to.
I met a couple derm and one urology applicant going psych as backup during interviews. Didn't probe too deeply obviously, but one of the derm applicants said s/he got interviews at several top-tier psych programs. I think its true, that psych is up and coming as the new "backup" specialty for competitive fields, moving away from IM/FM as it was in the past. My guess is lifestyle is a big part of that.
 
I met a couple derm and one urology applicant going psych as backup during interviews. Didn't probe too deeply obviously, but one of the derm applicants said s/he got interviews at several top-tier psych programs. I think its true, that psych is up and coming as the new "backup" specialty for competitive fields, moving away from IM/FM as it was in the past. My guess is lifestyle is a big part of that.
Not great for the field. Would be nice if there were more transparency in the application process.
 
The whole match system is a mess in the first place. People should be able to interview and be offered a position just like any other job.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Top