gutonc
07-26-2012, 08:16 PM
Zero IVs invites here too.
Just out of curiousity. If anyone knows or has an idea of the process, how do programs select 20 or so people out of 400+ applicants?
Do programs really look at all applicants that apply to the program? Seems like it would be very time consuming.
If they dont look at all 400+ applicants, is it luck of the draw if they even look at your application?
There seem to be competing forces here. Programs are very busy so how could they look at all applicants vs being fair to everyone that applies to the program.
It kind of blows my mind that after just a couple short years, people forget everything they knew about the Match. It works exactly the same way for fellowship that it does for residency. While the number of apps (and interviews and spots) may be fewer, so are the number of people available to review the apps. A medium-sized IM program may have 3-5 people primarily reviewing apps but a medium-sized fellowship program probably has only one, maybe 2 people to do the job. So, just like in the residency match, fellowships rely on filters to cut the number down to a decent size. After that, they'll often do a quick once-over of the remaining apps to thin the herd again, followed by a more extensive review of the apps. So now, where it started out at 400 apps for 4 spots, the filters have narrowed it down to 200 and the brief eval brought it down to 100 which is a reasonable number to closely review for the 30-40 interview spots you have for those 4 spots.
Also do middle tier and top programs both invite the academic all stars for interviews? From a logistical perspective wouldnt it be more efficient if top programs invited top applicants and mid tier programs interviewd mid tier applicants.
what do you guys think? Should mid tier programs not interview academic all stars for an interview since they will likely go to a top program?
So, first of all, programs can do whatever they want within the bounds of employment law and the Match agreement. There's no moral or legal imperative for programs to accept (or reject) any particular "tier" of candidate. You can't predict the choices any particular applicant will make and the goal of a program is to get the best fellows to come there.
That said, I was at a mid-tier program (and interviewed at both higher and lower tier programs than the one I matched at) and we would routinely interview a handful (10-20% of interview spots) superstar candidates, usually those with connections to the area or the institution. The rest of the spots were split between solid mid-tier folks (the majority, let's say 50-80%) and a few stragglers on the south end of the stats game, again, usually with some sort of connection to the area or program.
