NRMP Releases Main Match Result and Data Report

[AnatomyGrey12]

---

Members do not see this ad.

My wife works at a large University medical center and she heard her attendings talk about major changes coming to the match process. DO leadership knows increasing DO student enrollment alone isn’t going to mean anything if residency spots aren’t available to their students, which makes me wonder if they are privy to something like a tier match system coming down the pike - where US grads match first and then foreign grads match into whatever is left over. It’s literally the only logical reason to expand DO seats right now, and explains why so few seen to be worried about it.

Or it’s for more nefarious reasons - like money. Time will tell.

Only time will tell, although one interesting thing is that AOA does actually have lots of power now if DO match rates plummet. They essentially own 30% of ACGME.

 

[ButterButter]

Meanwhile, I have a 250+ step 1 and multiple pubs and I have serious doubts that I'll get enough interviews for the field I am interested in and am in the process for setting up a research year in case I don't match.

Your first post on SDN said you got a 238 on Step 1. It also said you were an MD student before you edited it. So is it 238 or 250+?

I won't argue your points because like you said, I honestly have no idea and won't pretend to know. But, I think if you're gunning for a moderately competitive-competitive field as a DO student, you should take Step. That's just a personal opinion though, not something I'm trying to preach to people.

Preach it, girl. If you're going for a moderately competitive field, you better be taking Step 1. Or you better be cool with landing your community FM backup.

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

Your first post on SDN said you got a 238 on Step 1. It also said you were an MD student before you edited it. So is it 238 or 250+?

And from previous posts they are looking at GS, and a DO with a 250+ and pubs would be swimming in GS interviews unless they only apply to highly academic programs. I think they like to exaggerate their story to fit the narrative. DNC, however, is not exaggerating, I’ve seen their CV and it’s even more lit than they make it sound lol. I also know what field they want and their statements are all valid.

 

[TheaterOfTheme]

My wife works at a large University medical center and she heard her attendings talk about major changes coming to the match process. DO leadership knows increasing DO student enrollment alone isn’t going to mean anything if residency spots aren’t available to their students, which makes me wonder if they are privy to something like a tier match system coming down the pike - where US grads match first and then foreign grads match into whatever is left over. It’s literally the only logical reason to expand DO seats right now, and explains why so few seen to be worried about it.

Or it’s for more nefarious reasons - like money. Time will tell.

Intriguing... this is why I come to SDN. Please do inform if you hear more...

 

[Scrubb]

and the AOA / COCA insist on adding more DO schools.... blah. IMO moral to the story for the pre-meds lurking is that if you want anything other than FM, and the MCAT is the only thing holding you back from being competitive for MD schools, take a year off and do Altius or some high performing test prep and give yourself the best shot at MD schools. Don't make the mistake a lot of us did and get impatient or too prideful to say you have to re-apply.

But IM is the most matched specialty for DOs

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

But IM is the most matched specialty for DOs

FM is often hyperbolic for outpatient primary care, which is what most of those low tier community IM matchees will end up doing.

 

[W19]

I do agree with this, you have to take I to account that most of the people on here that say this really have no interest in FM. If you are looking at anything outside of outpatient primary care medicine then the best thing to do is to better the app for MD. I personally am confident in my ability to get into the field I want but it is more than a little irritating that MDs can basically waltz into the field while I have to bust my butt every single day.

The MD degree carries a lot of more weight over DO even if it is from a low tier school based on what I see happens in my class... People with 220s are matching into solid rad programs, gen surgery programs (e.g.,. University of Rochester etc...). Can't imagine the type of advantage that students from the top 20 schools have over all of us.

 

[DrfluffyMD]

I realized that ERAS number also include prior grads. I must find another source of data.

ERAS 2017 does have gen surg number of DO applicants. The 2018 data isn’t out yet. The 2017 number should be accurate

DO applicants to acgme: 391
Matched: 64
Match rate: (16%)
However, some of those people persumably went for AOA, which has 148 filled spots.

So in 2017, 212 DOs became surgeon and 64 got into an ACGME program. 391 DOs applied to ACGME gen surg (unsure how many applied to AOA). Which means at least 179 students were left unmatched to either AOA or ACGME gen surg.

I’ll replace the 2018 data (which is inaccurate) with the 2017 data above.

 

[DrfluffyMD]

One good news for DO applicant this year, however.

1142/4617 or 24.7% applicants were elligible for soap this year (either unmatched or partially matched.)

901/3590 or 25% applicants were elligible for soap last year.

This means slightly more DOs matched initial percentage wise!

 

[Stagg737]

The numbers in the ACGME elligible to soap section is the true data. Those are the people who met the requirement to soap, which means they did not withdraw from the match. Folks who matched AOA would have withdrew from the match and become not elligible.

Right, except that completely ignores the 2,000 people who matched into AOA programs which is 1/3 of the DO applicants this year. Yes, that is matched, not placed. Which is why I was saying if you want to find out how many DOs matched into their field of choice it's more complicated than just the reports we have to work with right now, because you're only looking at the NRMP data and not including AOA.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I was young, had poor guidance, and really wanted to leave the state so I rushed the MCAT and went DO. Now, as an OMS-III who is soon to start his OMS-IV year, in hindsight I made many mistakes, one of them being not taking the MD application cycle more seriously and retaking the MCAT. My April rotation was inpatient Psych where I rotated with another med student from the local MD state school. His Step 1 was a 238 and he wants to go into ENT. He has 4 pubs in the field, all from his home program. He is pretty confident that he will get a spot at his home program, which takes 3 students, traditionally from the school. Meanwhile, I have a 250+ step 1 and multiple pubs and I have serious doubts that I'll get enough interviews for the field I am interested in and am in the process for setting up a research year in case I don't match. I think many people on SDN get fixated on the dozen or so stellar matches every year but don't see the big picture that the bias is still very real and the competition is getting really, really bad, in both primary care (in terms of location preference) and specialty medicine.

I agree with all of this except the bolded. Several of the primary care fields like FM, neuro, and path are still wide open to DOs unless they're gunning for the top of the top programs. I know plenty of people with solid but not stellar apps who went for those fields and ended up at really big name hospitals (Mayo, Michigan, Cleveland Clinic, Wash U, etc). So it's not like DO students are totally limited in terms of what their realistic opportunities are yet, though some of the primary fields (like IM) and competitive specialties certainly are far more limiting for DOs.

Thanks. I did a little digging and you're right. It'll be interesting to see which direction these programs go when the merger is all said and done. Anecdotally, the old AOA programs (IM and EM) near me took more MD than DO in their first class as ACGME programs this year. A bunch of them were IMG too so I hope this doesn't become the norm.

I'm wondering if that's because DOs who went into the ACGME match this year chose not to go there and ended up in other places. EM and Gas seemed particularly DO friendly this year and the fact that so many IMGs matched into those programs suggests that they're just seen as less desirable programs as opposed to programs DOs couldn't get into. At least that's what it would intuitively look like to me.

 

[DelayedGratification]

COCA report for this Aprils meeting per SOMA

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

The other interesting piece of data is by using ERAS statistics

Looking at categorical surgery (genera surgery), ERAs combines DO and USMD and reported 2474 applicants. NRMP reports 1351 US seniors. This must mean there was 1123 DO applicants who had at one point included ACGME general surgery in their ERAS applicantion to ACGME.

Out of those candidates, it looks like 83 of them ended up securing an ACGME gen surg spot.

In comparison, there was 1783 international applicants applying to general surgery this year. 70 US IMG and 70 FMG have matched, for a total of 140 out of 1783 applicants.

The chilling conclusion is that FMG and IMG actually do better than DOs in ACGME general surgery match (140/1783, 8% versus 83/1123 or 7.4%).

If you account the AOA gen surg program, however, things look better as there are another 118 filled AOA surgery spots solely by DOs.

Ultimately 118 + 83 or 201 DOs secured a general surgery spot of some sort. Out of 1123 DO applicants, we got a 18% match rate into either ACGME or AOA surgery for all DO applicsnts who have applied to ACGME gen surg. I am not sure how to calculate how many overall DO applicants to surgery there is as some of them may have only applied AOA and vice versa. What we do know is that at least 1123 DO applicants clicked one general surgery program on ACGME and ultimately 201 DOs ended up with either AOA or ACGME categorical surgery spot, slightly less than 1 in 5.

Out of 1351 US senior applicants, 1005 US applicants matched, for a match rate of 76%

Looking at this the other way, 1314 people matched to acgme gen surg, out of which 1005 were US grads. It means DOs, US/DO seniors and IMG/FMG split the remainder of 309 spots.

Source: aacme eras data, AOA match statistics, nrmp data.

@AnatomyGrey12: this number seems low, so let me know if and where my math gone wrong.

In 2016 there were 100 DO ACGME general surgery applicants that submitted a rank list with GS on it (source: charting outcomes). Honestly to get at least one interview to GS is not very difficult for very average applicants. The last year we have data for the AOA match has GS at about 1.3 applicants per seat. So I don't know what is happening with these numbers but there is something screwy going on with the math. There is definitely not 1123 DOs applying to general surgery, if this were true then nearly 1/5th of all DOs were applying general surgery and I know with 100% certainty that is not true in the slightest.

 

[DrfluffyMD]

Right, except that completely ignores the 2,000 people who matched into AOA programs which is 1/3 of the DO applicants this year. Yes, that is matched, not placed. Which is why I was saying if you want to find out how many DOs matched into their field of choice it's more complicated than just the reports we have to work with right now, because you're only looking at the NRMP data and not including AOA

So you are saying that those 2000 people, after matching AOA, did not withdraw from ACGME and choose to commit a match violation?

Remember after you match AOA you are supposed to withdraw from ACGME match. All those people who are elligible are people who did not withdraw from the match and persumably do not hold an AOA spot.

 

[DrfluffyMD]

In 2016 there were 100 DO ACGME general surgery applicants that submitted a rank list with GS on it (source: charting outcomes). Honestly to get at least one interview to GS is not very difficult for very average applicants. The last year we have data for the AOA match has GS at about 1.3 applicants per seat. So I don't know what is happening with these numbers but there is something screwy going on with the math. There is definitely not 1123 DOs applying to general surgery, if this were true then nearly 1/5th of all DOs were applying general surgery and I know with 100% certainty that is not true in the slightest.

I realized that ERAS number also include prior grads. I must find another source of data.

ERAS 2017 does have gen surg number of DO applicants. The 2018 data isn’t out yet. The 2017 number should be accurate

DO applicants to acgme: 391
Matched: 64
Match rate: (16%)
However, some of those people persumably went for AOA, which has 148 filled spots.

So in 2017, 212 DOs became surgeon and 64 got into an ACGME program. 391 DOs applied to ACGME gen surg (unsure how many applied to AOA). Which means at least 179 students were left unmatched to either AOA or ACGME gen surg.

I’ll replace the 2018 data (which is inaccurate) with the 2017 data above.

 

[Stagg737]

So you are saying that those 2000 people, after matching AOA, did not withdraw from ACGME and choose to commit a match violation?

Remember after you match AOA you are supposed to withdraw from ACGME match. All those people who are elligible are people who did not withdraw from the match and persumably do not hold an AOA spot.

No, I'm saying you're using the math as: number of "DOs in SOAP/number of DOs in ACGME match" instead of "DOs in SOAP/total DO applicants". If your statement was "does that mean that nearly 1 in 4 DO applicants in the ACGME match didn't match into their chosen specialty at all?" it would have been the appropriate framing of the question. I was simply pointing out that by only looking at ACGME you're not accounting for the ~2,000 DO students who matched in the AOA match (which includes those who withdrew from ACGME), which means you're ignoring about 1/3 of total DO applicants.

In order to actually answer your original question of "Does that mean nearly 1 in 4 DOs didn't match their chosen specialty?", you'd have to look at the AOA match data as well and things get really convoluted. For example, many DOs applying to competitive fields in the AOA match like derm or ortho also apply to back-up specialties in the ACGME match like gas or EM. So for example, if they don't match ortho in AOA but then match into their first choice program in ACGME which is gas, then they're not matching into their chosen specialty at all, but it would look like they are because you're only looking at ACGME data. That's in addition to ignoring the AOA match data as well as those entering a pre-lim year who later enter their chosen field.

So like I said, it's complex. More complex than I think can really be accurately parsed out for now (at least I'm not going to try to do it). However, this should all be very clear in the 2020 Charting the Outcomes when the merger is complete and everyone must go through a single match. So while I'm interested in CTO 2018 to see general trends in fields, we won't be able to really start accurately pinpointing potential trends for applicant types until the 2020 CTO.

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

I realized that ERAS number also include prior grads. I must find another source of data.

ERAS 2017 does have gen surg number of DO applicants. The 2018 data isn’t out yet. The 2017 number should be accurate

DO applicants to acgme: 391
Matched: 64
Match rate: (16%)
However, some of those people persumably went for AOA, which has 148 filled spots.

So in 2017, 212 DOs became surgeon and 64 got into an ACGME program. 391 DOs applied to ACGME gen surg (unsure how many applied to AOA). Which means at least 179 students were left unmatched to either AOA or ACGME gen surg.

I’ll replace the 2018 data (which is inaccurate) with the 2017 data above.

Ah I see a disconnect here, from my understanding the former AOA programs were also applied to through ERAS, so the DO numbers that you are seeing through ERAS also include those that applied AOA GS.

 

[Whersmysternum]

This SDN "advice" that every DO OMS-II should take Step 1 is crap and really poor advice. You haven't started medical school yet so I don't expect you to be an expert on these issues but there are multiple factors and multiple angles that should go into play when/if an OMS-II decides to take Step 1 (and/or Step 2). "If you're an OMS-II, you must take Step 1" is not a "one size fits all" model. Nationally, only ~50-55% of DO students take Step 1. There is a reason for that. You will find out in 1.5 years.

And that reason is?