scramble vs. undesired match?

[Rpre19]

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Hello all!

good to see everyone in a healthy state of match anxiety 😉

Question: is it better to risk the scramble or to place an undesired but safe program last even if you REALLY dont want to go there?

lets hope it doesnt come to this point bc I have 5 programs listed & that would hurt my ego sooo badly


good luck to all!

 

[DrWuStar]

Seems like it depends... If you didn't match, and you chose to scramble, you could end up at a program you like as little - or even less - than the one(s) you are thinking of not ranking. Also, having just looked at your ROL on the other thread, it seems like you want to be in NYC, and if you scramble, you are pretty unlikely to end up there. So maybe for you, a program you don't really like in NYC would be better than a program you don't like in Idaho. Your other option, if you didn't match, would be to take a year off, do research or something, and then try again next year. And still another option would be to scramble for a transitional or prelim spot (which maybe you could find in NYC?) and then try to match into psych as a PGY2. So overall, seems like not matching would leave you with more options, but they aren't that great of options. I wish you the best of luck, and I bet you will match at one of your 5. Seems like scramble is pretty rare in psych.

 

[osteodoct]

I'm going thru process right now too. Based on the unmatched list of last year, i'm going to rank programs that are pretty decent/have strengths in my eyes/and i won't be miserable going there. I've heard that most pp get thier top 3 which is reassuring. There are programs I interviewed at that I will not rank, b/c I'd rather have my choice of the unfilled ones..and hawaii isn't a bad location either! anyhow, 5 is a pretty good number.

In my opinion, if you could see yourself being fairly happy there, and the residents were friendly, etc, i would rank them, b/c scrambling-you dont know what you are gettting into.

 

[whopper]

Too risky to assess & too many variables depend on the individual applicant.

From what I'm understanding, if you scramble you can get into a program in psychiatry. I knew someone who had very serious red flags all over her file & still managed to scramble into a decent program.

But its still an anxiety laden risk to scramble. There are no garauntees. How bad were those programs you're going to rank lower? We don't know.

If you have around 8-10 interviews and most of them went well, you might want to consider not ranking the worst programs. I didn't rank 2 programs I interviewed at, but I also had the insurance of knowing that 2 of the best programs I wanted ranked me high.

You wrote you have 5 interviews. Not the worst number I've seen, not the safest. Don't know what to tell you.

 

[sunlioness]

When I submitted my ROL, I had a similar question and my faculty advisor gave me the following advice. She said that I should rank every place I interviewed (this was for internal medicine, I switched into psych after intern year) as long as I would rather be stuck there than not match at all. The scramble's a crap shoot with no guarantees, so it's kind of that you would rather be stuck not going anywhere come July than going to the program you don't rank.

Good luck with everything. That whole stress is something I am not nostalgic for at all. 🙂