point about the 11 "unfilled" spots.....

[m1forever]

it was really more like 1-3.

1 was a "research track" spot that wasn't part of the normal program. 1 was a combined peds-psych spot that Im not sure they even wanted to fill, and even if they did if you don't like peds(hi!) this isn't really a true possibility. Another of the programs had no intention of filling their spot. And four of the spots were from freakin puerto rico, who had no intention of filling those four spots and they also require you to know spanish, so thats not a possibility for two reasons for most people.

The only spot that I've actually confirmed was a "real" spot that was taken was the one at Tulane......that was gone by about 2-3 yesterday. They had one opening.

So this 11 number is total nonsense.......

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[peppy]

The spot at Case was real too, but if you weren't already in Cleveland you were out of luck because the PD wanted to meet with candidates face to face.

Yeah, go figure that the year that we want to get into psych, most of the open scramble spots would be in Puerto Rico. I almost want to laugh at the absurdity of it. I never dreamed it would be this hard to just get into psych!

 

[m1forever]

The spot at Case was real too, but if you weren't already in Cleveland you were out of luck because the PD wanted to meet with candidates face to face.

Yeah, go figure that the year that we want to get into psych, most of the open scramble spots would be in Puerto Rico. I almost want to laugh at the absurdity of it. I never dreamed it would be this hard to just get into psych!

heh...I wondered why that spot was still open yesterday. makes sense now.

what was with the spots at howard? were they real or not?

As for the puerto rico spots, they werent even real....even setting aside the fact that a requirement is to be spanish speaking. They supposedly have a quota of 6, have 2 people in the program now and thats all they are going to take. If you notice yesterday they reduced their "available" slots from 4 to 1 yesterday, even though they didnt actually fill any of those slots.......wtf puerto rico needs 6 spots every year for is another mystery. I doubt they ever meet that quota and I doubt they ever plan on doing so. Doesnt matter anyways as I'd prefer to actually live in the united states....not a "territory".

 

[m1forever]

The spot at Case was real too, but if you weren't already in Cleveland you were out of luck because the PD wanted to meet with candidates face to face.

Yeah, go figure that the year that we want to get into psych, most of the open scramble spots would be in Puerto Rico. I almost want to laugh at the absurdity of it. I never dreamed it would be this hard to just get into psych!

I live in the southeast and wanted to stay in the southeast, so when I saw there were 5 open slots in the southeast on monday I was thinking "ok, this is bad, but maybe there will be a few openings at places like ecu or etsu or south alabama" or something and maybe I have an outside shot at those.......and then I saw that 80% of them were in puerto rico and just wanted to vomit......

I really dont think it was that much "harder" in some terms. Obviously in the scramble it was, but I bet when the final numbers come down the % of american students who matched will be around 96-97%, there will still be about 30%(or more) img's, etc.......

the good thing is next year we can prematch, which will be a huge plus. The downside is that maybe next year the lower tier psych programs will look at this year and ask themselves what they have to gain by prematching when there were virtually no slots left to scramble into.

 

[OldPsychDoc]

...
the good thing is next year we can prematch, which will be a huge plus. The downside is that maybe next year the lower tier psych programs will look at this year and ask themselves what they have to gain by prematching when there were virtually no slots left to scramble into.

What the programs gain by filling spots prematch is the chance to sign "known quantities"--e.g. top-level FMGs and non-traditional AMGs and DOs--into clinically-oriented programs. When we filled out our rank list, once we got to the bottom third we kept asking "would we rather have this candidate than take someone in the scramble?". I doubt that we went down nearly that far--but that's the gain for us.

 

[m1forever]

What the programs gain by filling spots prematch is the chance to sign "known quantities"--e.g. top-level FMGs and non-traditional AMGs and DOs--into clinically-oriented programs.

exactly, and there are 6 or 7 programs just in the southeast(clinically oriented non-research programs in less desirable cities) I think I would have been very happy with this year and just didn't interview at. Based on what I've heard, most all of those programs prematched at least one spot. What happened happened and I'll never be able to forgive myself for not going on those interviews and ranking those programs, but at least next year I think I'd be a decent fit for those programs and I think I would have a chance to prematch at at least one of them.