Match Horror Stories

[Crosnmafingers]

Any of you/your friends not match last year? How many interviews did the unsuccessful attend?

Granted, this process is complete chaos and somewhat random, but I just wanted to get a sense of where to comfortably draw a line in the sand. I'm slated to go on 10 interviews so far... I could go more, if necessary -- I just wanted to know if it would be at all worthwhile.

Your candor is appreciated and I'm really sorry if I come off as arrogant. I really am scared about this whole process, as are most of us applying this year. The lack of information out there (i.e. not knowing how many is enough) adds to the fear... So help

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[NOSTLMO]

In terms of matching, I heard of one person who only went on 8 interviews and matched, one that did about 10 and didn't match, and one that did 15 and matched. So I think it's rather arbitrary. Personally I would err on the side of caution and do a few extra interviews if feasible. But one could argue that if you have multiple interviews to the point that you need to reject invitations, then there's a lot of interest and you should be fine in theory.

 

[cardsboy08]

I heard the "general rule" is 10 programs to interview/match. I'm doing 11-12 because I don't know what I want ... I cancelled 2 and have 11 so far and am waiting on a couple of others to finalize my decisions.

The n of 5 people I've heard of not matching (1 person where I go to residency, 4 in other places) all had about 4-6 interview offers (including the home institution), ranked them all, and didn't match. Ie rejecting interviews to get down to 10 is better than hoping for interviews to get up to 10 and likely portends a higher likelihood of matching.

The concern can come when those 10 programs are the top 10 programs across the country having seen a few of your posts. You'd expect that the lists of people interviewing at each of these programs are very similar with a few differences here and there (ie, expect to see your co-interviewees at MGH, BWH, Hopkins, Duke, etc). For somebody who got a mix of rejections and interviews at the top places, I'd think a few more mid-tier institutions would be useful (eg, half the top 10 rejected you and the other half gave invitations so your invites are more spread out). For somebody who got interviews at all the top institutions, I'd expect that the likelihood of not matching is extremely low.

That is unless you come across REALLY REALLY REALLY poorly on EVERY interview, which I highly doubt.

If you really want to, you can pad your list with a couple of not-quite-upper-tier places for the sake of making sure you match somewhere (maybe based on a location you wouldn't mind with a quality program), but I think the likelihood of not matching would be extremely low with 10 interviews (especially after having turned down several).

 

[Crosnmafingers]

I heard the "general rule" is 10 programs to interview/match. I'm doing 11-12 because I don't know what I want ... I cancelled 2 and have 11 so far and am waiting on a couple of others to finalize my decisions.

The n of 5 people I've heard of not matching (1 person where I go to residency, 4 in other places) all had about 4-6 interview offers (including the home institution), ranked them all, and didn't match. Ie rejecting interviews to get down to 10 is better than hoping for interviews to get up to 10 and likely portends a higher likelihood of matching.

The concern can come when those 10 programs are the top 10 programs across the country having seen a few of your posts. You'd expect that the lists of people interviewing at each of these programs are very similar with a few differences here and there (ie, expect to see your co-interviewees at MGH, BWH, Hopkins, Duke, etc). For somebody who got a mix of rejections and interviews at the top places, I'd think a few more mid-tier institutions would be useful (eg, half the top 10 rejected you and the other half gave invitations so your invites are more spread out). For somebody who got interviews at all the top institutions, I'd expect that the likelihood of not matching is extremely low.

That is unless you come across REALLY REALLY REALLY poorly on EVERY interview, which I highly doubt.

If you really want to, you can pad your list with a couple of not-quite-upper-tier places for the sake of making sure you match somewhere (maybe based on a location you wouldn't mind with a quality program), but I think the likelihood of not matching would be extremely low with 10 interviews (especially after having turned down several).

Thanks guys. Excellent points above. What I'm probably going to end up doing is keeping the 10 I have pencilled in (I've already turned down 2 others) and waiting until about the 2nd week of March after I should have heard from the 4 other places that haven't gotten back to me. If I get 1 or 2 more out of that group, they'll likely displace some of the first 10...but I think I'm going to keep the total at 10 (for financial and sanity reasons). Per Cardsboy's point, I'm really happy that 7 out of these programs would be considered marquis/top programs in the country; they all interview the 40-60 best applicants (with little variability -- so, a very homogenous applicant pool) and rank to match 6-12 of them. If I do come off like a complete jacka$$ in every single interview, well then I deserve my fate...but if not, even with Murphy's law, I should be able to match at one of those. I do feel that I need to interview at 3 other not-so-top programs (at least) to make myself feel better about my chances...if not actually making matching more likely.

I'm not sure what the exact right thing is to do, but reading your posts does help the thought process...so thanks

 

[cardsboy08]

Thanks guys. Excellent points above. What I'm probably going to end up doing is keeping the 10 I have pencilled in (I've already turned down 2 others) and waiting until about the 2nd week of March after I should have heard from the 4 other places that haven't gotten back to me. If I get 1 or 2 more out of that group, they'll likely displace some of the first 10...but I think I'm going to keep the total at 10 (for financial and sanity reasons). Per Cardsboy's point, I'm really happy that 7 out of these programs would be considered marquis/top programs in the country; they all interview the 40-60 best applicants (with little variability -- so, a very homogenous applicant pool) and rank to match 6-12 of them. If I do come off like a complete jacka$$ in every single interview, well then I deserve my fate...but if not, even with Murphy's law, I should be able to match at one of those. I do feel that I need to interview at 3 other not-so-top programs (at least) to make myself feel better about my chances...if not actually making matching more likely.

I'm not sure what the exact right thing is to do, but reading your posts does help the thought process...so thanks

Yeah, those financial and sanity reasons can become really big, especially towards the end. I went to one interview so far and came out of it thinking "I have to do this at least 9 more times??"