SHOTS FIRED-Wallner Kachnic comm. re retracted PRO"quality of residents ... drifting ...downward"

[MDACCRules]

More like the people of ARRO don't want to get blackballed from every job in the country for daring to disagree.

I don't know. Seems like overkill .. The guy Shah that wrote that article got "blackballed" and "exiled" to CCF, only one of the top cancer centers in the country.

It wouldn't have been unreasonable or antagonistic to say "Wait a second buddy, just a few years ago you said the quality of residents was pretty high, and now a few years later you're saying it's low?"

Plus, this was not the residents/ARRO publishing something on their own. They were asked to respond to a reasonable editorial and a somewhat snide commentary - "The test isn't getting hard - actually, the residents are getting stupider". Though don't necessarily disagree...

I'm surprised that people are saying residents literally can't respond to an editorial that they are asked to respond to b/c "you'll ruffle feathers", "get blackballed from every job", and could experience "the possibility of derailment of their career" . This article is literally about a fundamental of physician practice - board certification.

There are academicians on here. Is this true? If this is the case, there is a larger problem at hand than not being able to find Hunanese food (much less Yunnanese food, that's the new hot one) in certain locales.

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[medgator]

"The test isn't getting hard - actually, the residents are getting stupider". Though don't necessarily disagree...

I kinda wonder about this. Intuitively, I would think the proportion of MD/PhD 260+ step, mensa/Rhodes scholarship/Nobel laureate violin players with publications in nature and cell, would go down when you increase spots by >50% in less than a decade

 

[2014XRT]

I kinda wonder about this. Intuitively, I would think the proportion of MD/PhD 260+ step, mensa/Rhodes scholarship/Nobel laureate violin players with publications in nature and cell, would go down when you increase spots by >50% in less than a decade

lol dude you cannot be serious.

you have no clue at all about the stats and applications of current applicant classes these days do you?

get a clue, man.

 

[medgator]

lol dude you cannot be serious.

you have no clue at all about the stats and applications of current applicant classes these days do you?

get a clue, man.

Not at all. It's been well over a decade since I applied.

Care to clue us in?

 

[evilbooyaa]

lol dude you cannot be serious.

you have no clue at all about the stats and applications of current applicant classes these days do you?

get a clue, man.

I mean I'm 99.9% sure medgator was being sarcastic, but I don't even know what side of the argument you're on with a statement like that. Are current residents better applicants or worse applicants?

 

[2014XRT]

I mean I'm 99.9% sure medgator was being sarcastic, but I don't even know what side of the argument you're on with a statement like that. Are current residents better applicants or worse applicants?

Dude you tell me. You’re a current resident who just went through the cycle a few years ago, you know how competitive it is right now, and what the applications look like across the board compared to people who had to apply 10-15 years ago plus. Maybe if the sky really falls like the average SDNer worries about then ten years from now the applicant pool will weaken, but there’s no doubt that the average caliber of a resident right now (by any measure) is high.

 

[evilbooyaa]

It is very competitive right now, I agree. However, I will say that this past year, I saw many applicants applying with worse stats and research output than I would've ever imagined. I think the overall Rad Onc resident now is a more competitive applicant than they had to be in the past. I agree that Wallner's article smacks of elitism and silliness. But medgator does have a point - if you open the flood gates of residency expansion then there will be less impressive applicants getting spots as well - it's not like expanding-faster-than-the-universe programs are going to NOT fill because somebody isn't a 260 MD/PhD with 10 pubs. They're going to take the best they can get. We've already seen programs go unfilled before they SOAP, I wouldn't be surprised if the number of Rad Onc programs SOAPing increases year to year going forward as people learn it's not all sunshine and rainbows on this side of the fence.