Question about why Transitional Years are so competitive

[zf24]

I am an M1 with almost no knowledge of how residency works. I am interested in applying for a dermatology residency, and I am trying to educate myself on the process.

Based on the data, it looks like applying first to a transitional year, followed by a PGY2 Derm, results in only ~20% of total applicants making it through and placing:

Transitional (1054/3193=33%) × DermPGY2 (424/676=63%) = 21% placing in dermatology PGY2

This is absurdly low, and I find it hard to believe that applying for a Transitional year is 3x as hard as getting into a plastic surgery integrated residency.

My hypothesis is that transitional years are safety residencies for people directly applying to extremely competitive residencies. Some students get into their reach residency, and therefore not all accepted applicants matriculate to the transitional year, giving the impression of greater competitiveness.

Am I correct? I cannot find good data on this, and want to understand my chances at placing into a dermatology residency before I commit to it.

About me if you feel like discussing my chances: Nontrad white hetero male, M1 Carle UIUC, 2 patent 2 papers, fulbright, masters in Biomedical eng, currently in a lab on hypermobile ehlers danlos syndrome (review and wetlab papers forthcoming), working on device capstone project with M4s, have a guatemala skin cancer travel summer research project lined up.

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[NotAProgDirector]

Two problems with your math:

First, to multiply two proportions together to get the combined result, they must be independent. Since the more competitive candidates get derm spots, they also are more likely to get TY's or other spots.

But more importantly, the PGY-1 year for derm can be a TY, IM, or prelim surgery. There are many more prelim IM spots, and derm candidates have little trouble getting those.

In general, a TY is seen as an easier PGY-1 (although this depends heavily on the program). Hence the competition is somewhat stronger.

The bottleneck is the derm PGY-2 spot. It would be almost unheard of for a derm candidate to get a PGY=2 derm spot, and not be able to get some PGY-1 spot.