Residency Match Data for decision making

unless you are really, really bored, don't do it.

your residency match will reflect your performance in med school, especially your rotations, and has nothing to do with the school's match record. IMHO.

 

This topic has been debated to death...do a search.

 

Some schools publish exactly the kind of list you are asking for and post it on the 'net. Others publish it and give it to their students but don't put it on the 'net. Some don't publish that data at all.

No centralized source exists where all of schools lists are compiled together. If you want to see a particular school's list, google it.

 

Agreed. Going to the country's worst med school will not turn an orthopod into a family practitioner.

 

Agreed. This topic comes up at least monthly so it's not like you'd be searching for a single thread.
Match lists are not particularly useful for premeds. This is so because (1) as mentioned above the match represents individual efforts far more than any benefit provided by schools, (2) a premed lacks the data necessary to read a match list because you don't know (a) whether a particular match represents what a person wanted vs the best they could get, (b) what programs are good versus malignant in a particular specialty, or the hierarchy of programs in each specialty (it is different in every specialty), and (c) you don't know what specialty you are likely going to want to go into yet (you may think you do, but in most cases you don't), and since the quality of a match is specialty specific you can't get much value. (Eg if you ultimately decide you want to go into OBGYN, why do you care that a program does well matching folks into peds). Bottom line, you lack data you need to read a match list usefully. You tend to do yourself a disservice counting specialties or big school names because that often doesn't tell you what you think. Waste of time. Schools give this to you because they know you won't know how good this is and will think that if a program has a few folks matching into derm or to programs at Mass General then it will look impressive. But pretty much all med schools have similar looking lists to the undoctrinated, and this form of analysis won't ever separate out a good from a horrible match. So don't waste your time with this. Where people match depends largely on their board scores (and individual effort), their contacts and away rotations, and most importantly what they want to do and where they want to live. It is unlike college or med school because people often snub the objectively "best" name program for the one that puts them in the geographical region they want to live in, or lets them do what they want to do. At many many med schools the top student will choose something like IM or gen surg over something like derm or plastics. They could have gotten those, but that's not how they wanted to spend their life. And personal career wants outweigh credential building at this stage. You are picking what you want to do for the rest of your life, and so a program where you can do that is going to be more important than getting a crimson H on your sweatshirt. Or staying in the same city as your spouse might also be more important (and this is a common concern at the age most folks are by the end of med school) and so on. The match list doesn't tell you the "why", just the end result of a match choice. And, as mentioned, a list where everyone gets exactly what they want subjectively is a better match than one where everyone seems to do well objectively. But you can never know this.

In fairness, when I was a premed I thought this kind of thing was useful. But now I know better how little I knew as a premed and truly how useless this kind of list was in my hands. I sure wouldn't bother with it now. But hey, good luck with that.

 

L2D, I'm going to quote this in the Pre-Osteo FAQs, where I have all the match lists. I compiled them because most students want to see them, but I definitely agree about their degree of usefulness. I was going to add a disclaimer to them, but now you saved me the work (and did so more eloquently than I would have). Thanks!

 

During a recent interview, I was told NOT to worry about residency match data because it's SUPER misleading. When a school says that X% of its students go to one of their top choices, that stat is MEANINGLESS. Here's why:

-Fourth years make their preference lists based on where they've interviewed only, so what may have been their 4th or 5th choice originally ends up being their "1st choice" if they didn't get interviews at their original top choices...
-Students often have to submit their preference lists to an advisory committee at their schools before they officially submit them. Often, the school committees will persuade students to rearrange their lists based on where they have a good chance of acceptance. For example, a student may preference a Harvard program first but if the school thinks the odds of getting into that program are low, they will strongly advise the student to move that program to a lower place on their list.

So, don't place too much faith in the "our students get their top choices" data because there is quite a bit of fine print attached to those stats that most schools don't share...

 

This is true. What is more important (at least in my mind) is choice of specialty. Your average student isn't going to complain if they didn't get an interview at their 1st choice Neurosurg program, but they get into their 5th choice Neurosurg program. On the other hand, if your neurosurg hopeful gets stuck in Family Practice, they will.

Granted, I don't know how many schools give out 1st choice specialty vs 1st choice program.

My school had no "advisory committee", nor did anyone review our ROL unless we specifically asked someone to. I personally think that the "chances of acceptance" is usually built in to the ROL by the students themselves; I don't think many people have extremely unrealistic expectations about their matching possibilities.

In addition, once people get the interview, they are at least somewhat competitive for the program, so I'm not sure how big of a deal this is anyway.

So, don't place too much faith in the "our students get their top choices" data because there is quite a bit of fine print attached to those stats that most schools don't share...

 

I have never heard of this happening. Also, given the nature of the match algorithm, it would make no sense to move more desirable but less likely matches down the ranklist.

 

This is exactly what I have read.

The only thing I can figure is that a med school is meddling in the process by trying to get students to rank their program choices in the most likely order instead of the student's preferred order so that the school can boast that "a high percentage of your grads got their first choice residency program..."

 

It doesn't seem like schools would try to engineer match rank lists, but I've heard it does happen with specialties. I.e. If at the beginning of 4th year you express interest in a field your scores are not competitive for, the school will make you choose another one so they can maintain their 95%+ match success rate.

 

Like I said, I've never heard of this happening. I would be delighted if anyone could point to a medical school where this goes on.

As a rule, you cannot rank places where you didn't interview, and you won't get an interview if the program doesn't think you're good enough to match there.

 

The school can't make you do (or not do) anything. Where you apply and how you rank is totally up to you.

 

They can strongly encourage you to reconsider.

 

I have heard of that sort of "advising" taking place when students are applying for interviews, asking for LORs, etc - med schools may suggest that a particular student is unlikely to be successful applying to this or that residency - but I think Gut Shot is totally correct about how one ranks their preferences post interview...

 

Reconsider what? You can only enter the match if you have received interviews. If you receive interviews then you have some chance to match. If you receive no interviews then you cannot enter the match and will not affect the school's match %.

 

Gutshot is right - just to reiterate because this is always a misconception.

If your chances of matching at a program are considered low, but you still want to go there, it is highly in your interest to rank that program #1. This will not AT ALL diminish your chances of matching at programs ranked lower on your list. This is why you rank programs in the order that YOU prefer them. The match algorithm works in your favor.

Med schools do not persuade students to rearrange their lists of residency choices based on chances of acceptance. They might try to persuade them based on suitability for the individual.

 

Agreed. Gut Shot and Tired are correct here -- med schools aren't likely to make you tinker with how you apply within a particular specialty and if you want to pay the cash to also list a top program you aren't competitive for, they probably won't fight you -- you just won't get the interview.

What I HAVE seen schools do (and probably where philly's confusion comes from?) is pressure students not to waste time with specialties they are not competitive for. Meaning if someone has lousy stats but is saying -- I'm going to apply for derm, many schools will sit the dude down, have a heart to heart with him, basically tell him "no", and have him go back and rethink where he is going to apply, before he wastes everybody's time writing derm specific LORs, chairman's letters, etc for a field he has no business applying to. I've also heard of schools doing the same thing with a person who was not physically capable of doing the specialty he indicated he desired, due to a handicap. Schools are not shy to straighten out folks. But if a school is okay with you applying for IM, they won't have a problem with you applying to a range. They just might not advise wasting time with a competitive field if you don't have a prayer, and some places certainly may be heavy handed in how they do it. Which is part of the reason folks shouldn't look at the high match percentages of folks in certain competitive fields and assume that it's easy to get into.

When you do apply to schools on ERAS, you only get to rank the ones that invite you for an interview. So it doesn't matter that you applied to Mass General in September if they didn't interview you -- you cannot rank them and so when folks compile stats indicating whether you got your first, second etc choice, the program you never interviewed at doesn't factor in. In fact, you can apply to a dozen programs, only interview at one, rank it, and get it and the stats will suggest you got into your first choice (even if going in it was your twelfth). Many med schools are better at gauging this though and might not let you apply to a path where you aren't that likely to get interviews.

 

Wow really? There just seems to be something terribly wrong with this. What right does a school advisor have to tell me how to spend the rest of my life? and this for some statistical value? I highly doubt that this happens very much at all, considering the absurdity of such a practice and the fact that quite a few seniors go unmatched for competitive residencies every year.

 

Not everyone who goes unmatched is non-competitive...

 

Pompacil is correct, you're looking at this backwards: schools will attempt to save you from almost certainly not matching by preventing you from pursuing a field you are clearly not competitive for. The seniors you cite who go unmatched are often quite competitive for the fields they applied for.

During my intern year, I had a medical student who wanted to apply to Neurosurg with a 194 Step 1. You think I shouldn't have said anything to him?

 

yeah I wrote that last statement knowing there was a fallacy in my premise but I was too lazy to formulate a better argument . My objective however was to denounce the practice as absurd.

 

But if the student with a 194 on stepI got an interview then the rest of his application is probably really strong. Why shouldn't he go for it?

 

I was thinking this meeting would happen before he even applied let alone interviewed (misread an earlier post). And I think the 194 example is so low he wouldn't even get past automated screens.

 

194s don't get interviews, and even if they catch one, they're not going to match.

As pointed out above, the intervention normally occurs long before the interview stage, and generally before the start of 4th year elective rotations.