Radiology 2012 applicants

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SGuttenberg said:
Earlier someone posted about no 260+ step 1 people not matching, well I think if it happens it's going to be me. I got >260 but have only 3 top 25s (applied to 12 of them) and tons of rejections. Out of sixty some programs applied to I only had 20 interviews.

Step scores are a screen only. I'm sure there are some 240s step 1s at mgh and ucsf. I don't think anybody will care if you have a 268 vs. 248 if you're a major stud otherwise.
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You have 20 interviews and you're worried about not matching? I'm confused.
 
SGuttenberg said:
Earlier someone posted about no 260+ step 1 people not matching, well I think if it happens it's going to be me. I got >260 but have only 3 top 25s (applied to 12 of them) and tons of rejections. Out of sixty some programs applied to I only had 20 interviews.

Step scores are a screen only. I'm sure there are some 240s step 1s at mgh and ucsf. I don't think anybody will care if you have a 268 vs. 248 if you're a major stud otherwise.
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You have 20 interviews and most are outside of the top 25. Why exactly are you worried? A 25% success rate on the top 25 isn't bad.

I applied to 20 of the top 25 and got 5 of them. Still waiting on 3 programs.

I applied to 45 programs and only have 13 interviews. I'm not concerned about not matching. Once you get to 12+ you're good
 
SGuttenberg said:
Earlier someone posted about no 260+ step 1 people not matching, well I think if it happens it's going to be me. I got >260 but have only 3 top 25s (applied to 12 of them) and tons of rejections. Out of sixty some programs applied to I only had 20 interviews.

Step scores are a screen only. I'm sure there are some 240s step 1s at mgh and ucsf. I don't think anybody will care if you have a 268 vs. 248 if you're a major stud otherwise.
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You'll be fine. Why are you worried?
 
MIR rejection received today.

I figured I wasn't getting an invite bc they sent them out so long ago. May not have gone anyway.
 
UCLA brought the hammer today. 👎thumbdown👎thumbdown👎thumbdown👎thumbdown👎
 
Well I figure I'll match SOMEWHERE, but it would just suck to fall to #14 or something. (I canceled 4, doing 16). I just figured if only 25% of programs give me interviews, probably only 25% of the programs would rank me high enough to match or something and the rest would put me in the "backup" half of their rank lists. Maybe that is a faulty assumption. I sometimes get the feeling by watching interactions that programs have a rank list in their minds before interview day and they just cross off the weirdos and bump up the social butterflies a few notches. As an example a regional program loved me, a distant more prestigious program was pretty cool on me. Both were fairly obvious about it. The other programs I had no clue what they thought of me. Did a program tell any of you guys out front they wanted you? (ie, we love your app, come back and take a second look, i think you'd be a good fit here, etc.) Really I just wanted to clear up the misconception that high board scores = successful matching.
 
SGuttenberg said:
Well I figure I'll match SOMEWHERE, but it would just suck to fall to #14 or something. (I canceled 4, doing 16). I just figured if only 25% of programs give me interviews, probably only 25% of the programs would rank me high enough to match or something and the rest would put me in the "backup" half of their rank lists. Maybe that is a faulty assumption. I sometimes get the feeling by watching interactions that programs have a rank list in their minds before interview day and they just cross off the weirdos and bump up the social butterflies a few notches. As an example a regional program loved me, a distant more prestigious program was pretty cool on me. Both were fairly obvious about it. The other programs I had no clue what they thought of me. Did a program tell any of you guys out front they wanted you? (ie, we love your app, come back and take a second look, i think you'd be a good fit here, etc.) Really I just wanted to clear up the misconception that high board scores = successful matching.
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Even in a competitive specialty like rads most people don't fall anywhere near that low on their ROL. Of course you hear the horror stories but the data and from talking to residents those are few and far between.

I wouldn't read too much into a program being "cool on you". That may be just how they operate.

Drizz mentioned it previously but many of the top programs are interviewing the same group of applicants so I expect many top programs to go lower on their ROL than they would like (except maybe for programs like UCSF which most people seem to rank #1)

Check this thread out - http://www.auntminnie.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=290826

Many times the big name programs are not at the top of the lists. There are the applicants that have numerous big name programs so some fall lower and there are applicants that have non top 25 programs ahead of the big name programs for whatever reason.
 
I have 14 interviews lined up, so if the rest are rejections, I wouldn't mind. ).
 
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badasshairday said:
MIR rejection received. I have 14 interviews lined up, so if the rest are rejections, I wouldn't mind. I got UC Irvine rejection on Black Friday, lol. The only one I am now hoping for is UCSD (long shot, so whatever).
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Man the competition for these Cali programs is just brutal.

Only waiting on UCSD (little hope since 0/3 so far) and BWH (got MGH so I guess I have a decent shot).

Hoping to get off the Penn and Colorado waitlists but no idea how likely those are. May go on other waitlist interviews if they fit in well with my schedule
 
Based on word of mouth, what do you think is the average rank list number that people end up matching at in rads? Or, instead of the mean, what would the mode be? #3 or 4?
 
At my school, 90% of applicants over the last 10 years in rads matched into their top 3. That being said, the programs they matched into were almost always a subset of 5 (MIR, Mayo, NW, Wisconsin, MCW) which is fine, it just reflects regional ties.
 
drizzt3117 said:
The top 4 CA programs are unusually research heavy. I'm told like Penn that UCLA gives 1/2-1 academic days/wk for residents and they expect results. SD is similarly research oriented. One interesting thing I heard from a resident was that programs separate candidates into "clinical" and "research" applicants, and different programs value each type differently. JHU, BWH, and MGH are very clinical programs in all fields, (although they have strong research as well, they emphasize residents' clinical responsibilities over scholarly activity) so that might play a role.
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I'm sure it does, I was just hoping the rest of my app plus my ties would overcome that. I knew coming from a low tier school w/o research would make it a longshot but I was hoping to get at least 1 of them like your cousin did last year in a similar situation.

I also was just commenting on the CA programs in general. Strong applicants getting rejected from places like USC, Davis, and Irvine, Cedars only interviewing 50 people, etc.
 
badasshairday said:
Yup, it seems like UCSF, Stanford, UCLA, UCSD are super research oriented. I don't stand a chance. I mean I like research to a certain extent, but have not published multiple papers... not even close.

I'm happy with my west coast interviews thus far: Santa Barbara Cottage, UC Davis, Loma Linda, Cedars, Kaiser LA, Harbor.

Then I have strong university programs in other regions including Colorado, Arizona, UNC, UT-Houston, MCW, and Chicago area. In addition I have several community programs that are strong and in great locations I would love to spend 4 years at.
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Yeah, I'm def complaining about first world problems right now. I can't be upset with USC, Davis, Irvine, Cedars, Loma Linda and Harbor in CA. And def can't be upset with NYU, MGH, or Hopkins.

This forum is just an appropriate place to vent frustrations with people who understand. Others would just be like "you have great interviews" and I would just say "shut up and let me bitch and get it out of my system so I can move on"
 
SageFrancis said:
Based on word of mouth, what do you think is the average rank list number that people end up matching at in rads? Or, instead of the mean, what would the mode be? #3 or 4?
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Based on word of mouth and the AM forums, most people seemed to match in their top 4 the past couple years. We had some ballers go unmatched/well into the teens on their rank list a couple years ago at our school, though.
 
Man, surgery programs are much more harsh than rads ones in their communications. The people on the AM rejection thread would have lost their **** over the email I just got, thankfully from a program i got an interview at.

"Dear applicant,

All interview invites have been sent out. If you haven't received an interview invite, you won't be getting one. Have a nice day.

Sincerely,

The PD"
 
drizzt3117 said:
A number of programs have been pretty obviously interested (multiple calls/emails from pd/chair etc)

As far as being cool, how were they obvious about it? I'm sure a lot of programs have been less interested, but how did they behave to make you think that?
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On the other hand, I have no gotten any calls or e-mails but sometimes during the interview I would be told how well I would fit in, or how "stellar" my cv is or super interested about some aspect of my application. I'm not a super baller though, only slightly baller. :laugh:
 
killinsound said:
On the other hand, I have no gotten any calls or e-mails but sometimes during the interview I would be told how well I would fit in, or how "stellar" my cv is or super interested about some aspect of my application. I'm not a super baller though, only slightly baller. :laugh:
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Same here but I've only been on 2 interviews so who knows
 
badasshairday said:
drizz is an extra baller though. Plus he tailored his app to research heavy programs. I mean what top research program wouldn't want a baller who put out like 30 publications during med school.
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jeez and i thought i was a research-y applicant. 30 papers during med school? impressive.
 
drizzt3117 said:
Yes, this is the whole concept of yield protect. Why would a program rank you highly if they don't think you're going to go there? It's just a waste of their time. This is the whole reason of all of the post-interview communication and potentially, for second looks.
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I've got to say, this is completely the wrong approach for a program to take to the match. I know some of them do it, but quite frankly, it's stupid. Any candidate who ranks a program should be happy to match there, where the program falls on his/her list is just gravy.

The optimal strategy for the match for both programs and applicants is to create a rank list in order of preference without any regard to the level of interest of the other party.

It does not waste any time to rank an uninterested applicant (interviewing is another story). It does diminish rank order list bragging rights, but what really counts there isn't the actual number, but what programs applicants are passing over to get to that program. Taking very interested lower tier applicants is gaming the system for a meaningless statistic.

We all like to be wanted, but seriously, this strategy is silly.
 
It's all good. You have every reason to be upset. We all worked hard and are being separated based on criteria that are often somewhat out of our hands or based on a large degree of luck.

I'm up to 17 interviews currently and it's tough for me to cancel any more than I already have because I feel like I'm in the aforementioned "easy slide" situation. I did better than expected with "reach" schools and so I need 16-18 just to have a good pool of schools that I would categorize as "safety."

Fortunately, I scheduled things well (8 November, 9 December, 10 January, with no more than 3 interviews in any single week) and have three months entirely free for interviewing, so 17-18 rads + 10 Prelim/TY is actually feasible. But what a colossal undertaking the scheduling was.
 
drizzt3117 said:
That's how the match is supposed to work. That being said, it's not how it actually works.

Put it this way, a top program is going to interview ~70 people for 12 spots. People from their own program who are close to their resident profiles are almost certainly going to get an interview. Why? Not only because they know them better, and for political reasons, but also bc these candidates have the highest % chance to rank them highly. Let's say the top 10 programs interview 60 of the top 200 candidates (for variability's sake, my guess is it'll be more like 60 of the top 100) with 10 interview slots saved for internal applicants and rotators. My guess is at least 30 of these people will have interviews at all of the top 10 or close to it. Let's say this program is ranked #10. Their yield from this group of 30 is probably less than 10%, let's say they get 2. The next 30, maybe they get twice as many, or 4. That leaves half their spots for the 10 internal candidates or people rotating. If they simply worked the match the way you claim, that's a good way to not fill your class. Idk if this example makes sense, but you should get the idea from a PDs perspective. I've had the fortune to have a little more than a glimpse behind the curtain of how a program match list is made.
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I wasn't talking about interview selection - applicant preference matters for that obviously.

Of the people a program interviews, however, there's no reason not to rank all of the acceptable applicants that have been interviewed, and of those to rank by merit without respect to the apparent level of applicant interest.

If a program only interviews people with little interest in going there of course they are screwed, but as far as the actual match algorithm goes, ranking interviewees based upon their interest rather than their respective value to the program is a faulty strategy.
 
drizzt3117 said:
I'm not talking about interview selection. I'm talking about post-interview ranking. If a program were simply to ignore applicant preferences and rank accordingly, unless they are UCSF and can assume everyone will rank them #1, they run the risk of not filling their class.
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+1. On several of my rads interviews, the PD has explicitly told me, "just let us know" and "please keep in touch as the season progresses". They're clearly asking for me to update them as to how I plan to rank their program, and make no mistake about it, how they rank me will depend on how I rank them.

Which brings me to my question for gallery: how do you guys plan on telling programs 2-4 that you really like them, without telling them they're programs 2-4? Or do you even plan on telling them? I'm not sure what to do here in this regard. I have no clear cut number 1 either, which complicates matters.
 
drizzt3117 said:
I'm not talking about interview selection. I'm talking about post-interview ranking. If a program were simply to ignore applicant preferences and rank accordingly, unless they are UCSF and can assume everyone will rank them #1, they run the risk of not filling their class.
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If a program ignores applicant preference they will go down further on their list but still fill (if they interviewed the right people)

Say a program interviews 80 people and say 10 people rank it #1 (group A), 10 others rank it in their top 3 (group B) and 60 are too baller for the program and have it very low (group C).

If there are 10 spots the program will fill regardless of what the order is of the 3 groups.

The order is not about filling but about getting the best balance of strong applicants who also want to be there.

As a PD you would not want a residency class full of people who didn't want to be there.

Let's be real, most rads applicants will interview at at least a few programs they really don't want to go to but they see them as a better alternative than going unmatched and reapplying.
 
jahbrony said:
+1. On several of my rads interviews, the PD has explicitly told me, "just let us know" and "please keep in touch as the season progresses". They're clearly asking for me to update them as to how I plan to rank their program, and make no mistake about it, how they rank me will depend on how I rank them.

Which brings me to my question for gallery: how do you guys plan on telling programs 2-4 that you really like them, without telling them they're programs 2-4? Or do you even plan on telling them? I'm not sure what to do here in this regard. I have no clear cut number 1 either, which complicates matters.
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I mean, in that situation I'd pretty much treat them all as if they were #1 without explicitly stating it (doing second look if available, etc). Would you be essentially equally happy matching at all four programs?
 
drizzt3117 said:
I mean, very good programs didn't fill last year (UVA vascular pathway, notably) These ranking conundrums do help explain some of the decisions programs make regarding interviews, but you're also correct in saying that it helps ensure that the people they get really want to go there.
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But how many people typically interview for the Vascular pathway?

My point is that as long as program interviews enough applicants who actually want to go there it doesn't matter where they ultimately rank these applicants for filling purposes only.

Programs risk going unfilled only when they don't interview enough folks or only interview the strongest applicants when they aren't an elite program by desirability standards
 
So how common are these second looks? Do lots of programs offer them?
I was just planning on telling #1 they are my #1 then other few my "top 3" or "ranked highly"
 
DrBowtie said:
So how common are these second looks? Do lots of programs offer them?
I was just planning on telling #1 they are my #1 then other few my "top 3" or "ranked highly"
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I wouldn't tell someone they're in your "top 3" or "top 5" unless they're a program that wouldn't otherwise think you'd rank them that highly. Someone hearing they're in your "top 5" is just going to assume you're ranking them #5.
 
drizzt3117 said:
I wouldn't tell someone they're in your "top 3" or "top 5" unless they're a program that wouldn't otherwise think you'd rank them that highly. Someone hearing they're in your "top 5" is just going to assume you're ranking them #5.
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To be honest though, based upon what you're saying you only tell your #1 anything, then just flatter and avoid any variation of ranking highly?

If a program doesn't get the you're #1 email, they will know they aren't. Is telling someone they are #2 or #3 really worse than "ranked highly" (which could mean 2-10 for some people)?
 
Help please. Somebody give me motivation to study for CK. I take it next week but can't motivate myself, lol. Arrgh! I hate this thing. I should have just taken it a month ago. Can't wait to get this monkey off my back.
 
Radiculous said:
It's all good. You have every reason to be upset. We all worked hard and are being separated based on criteria that are often somewhat out of our hands or based on a large degree of luck.

I'm up to 17 interviews currently and it's tough for me to cancel any more than I already have because I feel like I'm in the aforementioned "easy slide" situation. I did better than expected with "reach" schools and so I need 16-18 just to have a good pool of schools that I would categorize as "safety."

Fortunately, I scheduled things well (8 November, 9 December, 10 January, with no more than 3 interviews in any single week) and have three months entirely free for interviewing, so 17-18 rads + 10 Prelim/TY is actually feasible. But what a colossal undertaking the scheduling was.
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That's pretty ambitious but with no more than 3 a week and the winter break it's doable. Your exhaustion will also depend on how many cross country trips you have. Jet lag is a bitch.

17 interviews isn't unreasonable though especially if you have programs that are too similar to make decisions on w/o an interview and location isn't key
 
badasshairday said:
Just say you ranked them highly. Saying top 3 or 5 or whatever, like drizz pointedout, is going to make them think you ranked them number 3 or 5 respectively and that some other program is your number 1.
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As stated, most people explicitly say #1 is #1 so anything else is considered to be non #1 rankings. Saying #2 or #3 is concrete versus the "ranked highly" which can mean pretty much any number not #1. I'm sure people tell their last ROL place they are ranked highly.
 
DrBowtie said:
As stated, most people explicitly say #1 is #1 so anything else is considered to be non #1 rankings. Saying #2 or #3 is concrete versus the "ranked highly" which can mean pretty much any number not #1. I'm sure people tell their last ROL place they are ranked highly.
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Yeah, I'm trying to avoid that in my thank yous and just focus on the what the program has to offer that make it a great/ideal place to train. I'd be FOS to say I'm going to rank you very highly when it's so early in the season
 
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