Radiology 2012 applicants

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I am planning on sending correspondence only to the place I intend to rank #1. Anything less could be taken as an offense (we're "only" in your top 3?). Nobody wants to be the bronze medal.

I may send nonspecific correspondence to my #2/#3 or whatever elucidating how much I would be thrilled to match at their program and why I feel I am a great fit, but even that is superfluous and could be construed negatively if they read through it and don't see an explicit "rank #1" statement.
 
So far so good. I am making two cross country trips and each trip I've managed to group together two interviews, for precisely that reason plus the expense of it. January is just crazy.

Best of luck to you and the remainder of the "cali pack" on UCSD, it's a gorgeous place and an amazing program, and unless the dates line up just right I wouldn't be able to go even if I got an invite unless I was willing to make yet another cross country trip sandwiched between a hectic schedule. C'est la vie.
 
You do realize this strategy works in the applicants favor, right? If you show a program you are truly interested, and they supposedly rank you higher because of it, that sounds like a good deal to me.

johnnydrama said:
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.
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Radiculous said:
So far so good. I am making two cross country trips and each trip I've managed to group together two interviews, for precisely that reason plus the expense of it. January is just crazy.

Best of luck to you and the remainder of the "cali pack" on UCSD, it's a gorgeous place and an amazing program, and unless the dates line up just right I wouldn't be able to go even if I got an invite unless I was willing to make yet another cross country trip sandwiched between a hectic schedule. C'est la vie.
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Thanks. If I'm fortunate enough to get BWH and UCSD my January is going to be pretty busy as well. I'm already starting to regret setting up Vegas for NYE + the Fiesta Bowl during that break but I'll have a few days to rest before interviews start back up.

Radiculous said:
"Dr. TLM, WHAT ARE MY CHANCES"
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That's pretty much what I was getting at haha
 
Radiculous said:
I am planning on sending correspondence only to the place I intend to rank #1. Anything less could be taken as an offense (we're "only" in your top 3?). Nobody wants to be the bronze medal.

I may send nonspecific correspondence to my #2/#3 or whatever elucidating how much I would be thrilled to match at their program and why I feel I am a great fit, but even that is superfluous and could be construed negatively if they read through it and don't see an explicit "rank #1" statement.
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In your case I'm not sure it'll matter regardless, but I think a PD would assume you're not interested if they don't hear ANYTHING prior to the rank lists being released.
 
Disagree. Unless you're telling a program "you're my #1," they are liable to assume that you are not ranking them #1. Lack of an "I love you" letter could mean any number of things, but I think a nonspecific letter of interest before rank list time doesn't do much and may hurt as much as help.

What were you planning on doing specifically?
 
Just got UCLA! Was not expecting given previous invites already sent.
 
I think second looks can also hurt you more than help you and aren't going to affect much in the way of the rank list.

Other than thank you e-mails to your interviewers and the PC and the "you are #1" arrow in the quiver I really think the rest of it is superfluous.
 
On another unrelated note, we've made 5 pages of posts in 2 days. Volume is starting to increase!
 
drizzt3117 said:
Some programs are more into 2nd looks than others. How could it hurt you? Assuming you're not socially awkward and aren't going to say something ridiculous or get drunk during the interview dinner, going to a second look only shows you're more interested in the program. Spending money and time to fly somewhere to revisit a program can only be construed positively unless you feel your social skills are so unreliable that you're more likely than not to make a faux pas.
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Some view frequent calls/e-mails and second looks as unnecessary or annoying. I guess some programs care, but I bet the top programs that will be populating the top of our rank lists basically just choose who they want. And it just takes a single unintentionally weird comment, a fairly or unfairly perceived lack of enthusiasm on your "second look" day, or one annoying faculty member who makes a comment to sink you. Whereas your chances are unlikely to be appreciably helped at a top program that, once again, just takes who they want.
 
drizzt3117 said:
On another unrelated note, we've made 5 pages of posts in 2 days. Volume is starting to increase!
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The volume has been ridiculous already.

The 2011 and 2010 applicant threads have 198 posts combined. We are going to break 2000 at some point
 
Surgery's a little different. They want second looks, letters from all surgeons, multiple sub-Is, other things. With radiology, seems dumb. A reading room is a reading room is a reading room. What can we not possibly glean from the interview day that we can from a second tour?
 
Radiculous said:
Surgery's a little different. They want second looks, letters from all surgeons, multiple sub-Is, other things. With radiology, seems dumb. A reading room is a reading room is a reading room. What can we not possibly glean from the interview day that we can from a second tour?
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I agree with you to a certain degree, but the same can be said for surgery, all ORs are the same. I am going to do 2nd looks mainly because I feel like I'm going to have a hard time deciding how I'm going to make my list, more than anything else.
 
came across the socially awkward radiologist abt a month ago......have no idea how he passed interviews
 
2012mdc said:
The volume has been ridiculous already.

The 2011 and 2010 applicant threads have 198 posts combined. We are going to break 2000 at some point
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+1 post count.

I really should be studying for CK. I need to take a cold turkey break from SDN for a couple of days. ... I keep on coming back for more!

Alright. No more posting or checking SDN for the next 24 hours.....
 
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killinsound said:
Yeah... sounds like this most recent release was research oriented (rationalizing)
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It sounded like it from the ERAS message.

BTW, for those of you who got UCLA before today, wasn't that a non-ERAS message?
 
badasshairday said:
+1 post count.

I really should be studying for CK. I need to take a cold turkey break from SDN for a couple of days. This thread is more addictive than crack... I keep on coming back for more!

Alright. No more posting or checking SDN for the next 24 hours.....
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You're not releasing your score so you just need to pass, right? I wouldn't worry about ck at all, if that's the case. I just don't want a big drop from my step 1 b/c I have to release it.
 
Radiculous said:
was ERAS with interview broker
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Interview broker is great when you're near a computer but it can suck when you're not.

I tried to use it on my phone and it was garbage, had to scramble to find the nearest computer.

It's great to have a confirmed date right away though
 
At RSNA now and although the main session are really interesting, between sessions I'm somewhat bored. It's not like I'm in the market for a $2 million CT scanner from Siemens. :laugh:
 
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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Nope, they don't, unless they choose to rank only a small fraction of the applicants they interview. Just like with applicants, programs SHOULD rank everyone they interview unless they think they could do better in the scramble than accept that person. (If your only metric is quality of match results, this strategy is appropriate for every program, from UCSF to Harlem Hospital, it's only when programs start caring about how far down on their lists they go that things get unnecessarily messy).

I know this isn't what all of the programs do, but their failure to do so is either hubris or an incomplete understanding of the match algorithm.
 
KublaiKhan said:
You do realize this strategy works in the applicants favor, right? If you show a program you are truly interested, and they supposedly rank you higher because of it, that sounds like a good deal to me.
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Haha, yes, I know, but irrationality bugs me. 😛
 
This makes sense at the level of interview selection. As in programs will deliberately make an effort to invite people that they think will go there. Top programs not in Rochester or whatever will just interview the people with the most impressive applications for the most part. Most other programs have to use regional ties, whatever to construct an interview list.

But at the level of ranking, I firmly believe that programs rank in the order of who they want. It doesn't benefit them to behave in any other manner. If #1 through #10 are people they have little chance of getting for whatever reason, so be it -- but it doesn't harm them (other than pride) to try. Individual PDs or selection committees may irrationally buy into "i'll rank you #1 pinky swear" crap because it inflates ego to not go far on the rank list, but I think most programs don't really care. The more likely reason that programs may be receptive to "I'll rank you #1" e-mails with well-articulated explanations of why is that they want residents who fit well with the program and will be happy and not cause problems, which is more likely if prospective residents have ties binding to the area or other reasons that would cause them to be thankful, maximally productive worker bees for the gift of being at program X.

Send a "rank you #1" e-mail, follow-up with thank yous to all your interviewers and the PC for courtesy, then go out and live your life. The gamesmanship beyond that point is of little benefit and can seriously backfire if you are perceived as annoying, desperate, sycophantic or some combination of these.
 
johnnydrama said:
Haha, yes, I know, but irrationality bugs me. 😛
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It's not irrational, it's perfectly rational. As I said before, this is all game theory. The tenet of game theory is that IN THE ABSENCE OF COMMUNICATION people will act irrationally because they don't trust the other party.

Think about the classic prisoner's dilemma matrix. Two prisoners are locked away. If they both stay silent, they get 2 years. If they both inform on the other, they get 10 years. If one informs and the other stays silent, the informer goes free and the silent one gets 20 years. In this situation, in the absence of information, both prisoners are likely to get 10 years because they can't trust the other party. However, if you let the two prisoners talk, they'll both stay silent. You can postulate that you can't trust what the other party says,which is certainly a possibility, but both parties benefit from SOME communication, nonetheless.

Nash, J.F. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society, 1950

Kreps et al, "Rational cooperation in the finitely repeated prisoners' dilemma"
Journal of Economic Theory, Volume 27, Issue 2, August 1982, Pages 245-252
 
drizzt3117 said:
It doesn't matter what they rank the applicants if the applicants rank another school higher which also sees them positively. This is likely to happen at the top of the applicant pool. Maybe I'm not making myself very clear. My point is 30-40 of the applicants are interviewed by all of the top programs. If that constitutes half their interview list, those applicants can only matriculate at one program, meaning at most they'll get 2-3 of those people even by statistics alone. Depending on how the rest of their interview list falls out, they may fill there, but if they shot for all top tier applicants with a similar yield, they might have to rely on rotators/internal candidates for more than half their list (i.e. Duke) which looks bad.

My point is that you need to look at this from a PD perspective. If they get even 10% of their list to "commit" then they're guaranteed to fill and they can rank the rest of their list as they see fit without worrying. Put it this way. If you KNEW a program was going to rank you to match no matter what (pact signed in blood, swear to god, hope to die, whatever) and it was a program you liked, would that change how you'd rank the rest of your list?
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Why did you single out Duke? How do you kno wthey rely on rotators/internals for more than half their spots?
 
drizzt3117 said:
I hope you're right, because if that were true, the match would benefit applicants, the way it was designed to. That being said, my experience (again, having seen how some PDs I'm personally very close to behave) is that this just isn't how the game is played, which is unfortunate.
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Again, context is important here. Unless these PDs are coming from competitive institutions in competitive locations, they may very well fall into the irrational trap of wanting to game their rank list to ensure they only go to spot X on their ROL, out of pride or "wanting people who want to come here" or other such tripe.

But at Penn, MGH, so forth, in general the meritocracy becomes more apparent. They have the luxury of evaluating on the basis of merit rather than b.s. promises and second, third, fourth, fifth looks Of course, individual PDs and committee members may still be swayed by a phone call from your chair who happened to go yachting back in high school with him/her, but the vast majority of applicants do not have such a gimmick. Nor would I be able to live with myself if I capitalized upon said nepotism or shoulder rubbing.

So again, just do the song and dance of thank yous, fire the #1 arrow, and relax. That's my plan anyway. That and a lot of video games.
 
badasshairday said:
+1 post count.

I really should be studying for CK. I need to take a cold turkey break from SDN for a couple of days. This thread is more addictive than crack... I keep on coming back for more!

Alright. No more posting or checking SDN for the next 24 hours.....
Click to expand...

You'll be fine even if you don't study for CK. Although I guess that doesn't help your motivation.
 
Radiculous said:
Again, context is important here. Unless these PDs are coming from competitive institutions in competitive locations, they may very well fall into the irrational trap of wanting to game their rank list to ensure they only go to spot X on their ROL, out of pride or "wanting people who want to come here" or other such tripe.

But at Penn, MGH, so forth, in general the meritocracy becomes more apparent. They have the luxury of evaluating on the basis of merit rather than b.s. promises and second, third, fourth, fifth looks Of course, individual PDs and committee members may still be swayed by a phone call from your chair who happened to go yachting back in high school with him/her, but the vast majority of applicants do not have such a gimmick. Nor would I be able to live with myself if I capitalized upon said nepotism or shoulder rubbing.

So again, just do the song and dance of thank yous, fire the #1 arrow, and relax. That's my plan anyway. That and a lot of video games.
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I'll be very happy if you're right, and I'll be the first one to congratulate you if that's true at the end of February. We'll see what happens.
 
drizzt3117 said:
I thought it was appropriate to bring this post back...

Discuss.

My initial impression is that point 2 is pretty much dead wrong. I got asked about research a lot, but no one differentiated between pubs and presentations. One of the most interesting things I talked about that grabbed everyone's attention was a study we did that is still in abstract form (and not even presented yet) yet it was about 50% of the discussions we had about research. Point 4 seems wrong to me. I definitely got a few interviews in the midwest (Mayo, MIR, UW, NW, UC) but it made up about 1/3 of my interviews, with the other 1/3 being in the west coast and on the east coast.
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I agree, I have only 2 substantial research projects and I've been asked about both extensively. Although it probably helps that one was peds rads and one was neurorads, those seem to be the ones interviewing me the most out of pure chance.
 
drizzt3117 said:
I thought it was appropriate to bring this post back...

Discuss.

My initial impression is that point 2 is pretty much dead wrong. I got asked about research a lot, but no one differentiated between pubs and presentations. One of the most interesting things I talked about that grabbed everyone's attention was a study we did that is still in abstract form (and not even presented yet) yet it was about 50% of the discussions we had about research. Point 4 seems wrong to me. I definitely got a few interviews in the midwest (Mayo, MIR, UW, NW, UC) but it made up about 1/3 of my interviews, with the other 1/3 being in the west coast and on the east coast.
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well if the majority of what you have is not pubmed citable papers, of course its going to dominate the conversation at interviews. and 1/3 is a fairly strong showing on your overall list in my opinion with a more broad geographic representation in your case no doubt b/c you did aways research or undergrad at places on the coasts so you can't at all generalize yourself to point number 4. i'm surprised at the advice you're giving everyone here on love letters/second looks, etc. esp in reference to Penn after what dr. siegelman told us on interview day about not playing those games...
 
drizzt3117 said:
I thought it was appropriate to bring this post back...

Discuss.

My initial impression is that point 2 is pretty much dead wrong. I got asked about research a lot, but no one differentiated between pubs and presentations. One of the most interesting things I talked about that grabbed everyone's attention was a study we did that is still in abstract form (and not even presented yet) yet it was about 50% of the discussions we had about research. Point 4 seems wrong to me. I definitely got a few interviews in the midwest (Mayo, MIR, UW, NW, UC) but it made up about 1/3 of my interviews, with the other 1/3 being in the west coast and on the east coast.
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4 is so wrong for me it's laughable.

In the South I only got Emory and UTSW and a bunch of rejections from programs in states that neighbor Georgia.

6/13 are in Cali but my best interviews are all East Coast.

I think regional bias plays a role but not in a way that the poster suggested. The regional bias plays a huge role into yield protecting.

I go to school in the South but I am from Cali and my permanent address is still there. Anyone can read between the lines and assume I want to be in Cali. So the Southern programs said take your butt back to Cali.

The top coastal programs assume that anyone they invite will rank them highly so they don't care about region. That's how a competitive applicant w/o ties can get Stanford (Radiculous) or NYU (myself)

I think the Midwest (outside of Chicago) is the most biased towards outsiders but they have to do so not to get burned. Is there anyone on this forum w/o MW ties who got multiple non Chi programs - MIR, Mayo, Michigan etc?

I completely struck out in the Midwest and I'm sure some programs assumed I wouldn't make the move.

When it comes down to it region really only comes into play into yield protecting. It's laughable to suggest Southern and Midwest students can't get interviews outside of our region.
 
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