My advice to the OP is to have someone else, a faculty member, reach out to the home PD to get the real story. From what you've written here, chances are if you ask you'll get some meaningless explanation. A mentor who reaches out and says "JayHow92 isn't going to apply here next year, I'm trying to give him/her feedback on what to do next year" is much more likely to yield useful information.
I know a guy who ranked program X (a high-ranking program) as his top spot, they ranked him to match, and the NRMP system screwed up and he didn't match anywhere. He called the program and politely said "WTF?!" They said they were totally stumped, too, since they had wanted him and ranked him high. He ended up SOAPing into a prelim year and then matching into a low-tier program. The good news is that he's now a successful attending anesthesiologist. Not sure what happened to you, OP, but it could be the same kind of thing that burned my friend.
Reports like this have been investigated in the past, and always come down to someone not being truthful, or variations on what "ranked to match" means. Some feel that it means mathematically guaranteed a spot -- if I have 10 spots, you're in the top 10 ranks. Others think that if to fill my 10 spots I usually go down to #40, then you're in the top 40 -- but if I happen to fill at #35 and you're at #39, that's too bad.
If this actually happened to a program, you can bet that they would make a huge stink and it would be very public. Several of my ranks above my last match were unmatched -- that means that they didn't rank me at all, or that they were in a couple's match and chose not to be matched. I'll be reaching out to them just to check. If either tells me I was ranked, you can bet I'll be exploring with the NRMP and it will be a huge deal.
The PD specifically said he'd been ranked second, so either that's an overt lie or some error occurred. I'd call BS on the PD if it were a vague "IDK, we ranked you high but I won't tell you exactly where," but I rather doubt a PD at a top program would fabricate an actual number to assuage a non-matched MS4 he's probably never going to see again. I think there was an error in how the program submitted its match rankings or within the NRMP system itself, and I'd take even money on either.
I doubt there was an error in either. PD's likely just shade the truth to avoid owning responsibility. Plus we don't want to be sued, so it's best to say nothing.
This actually happened before on this forum. Urology applicant well-known to the program, ranked program #1, program ranked applicant to match. Applicant matched #2, applicant super confused on Match day, sent program an email asking 'I am happy that I matched #2 but just curious why you guys didn't match me if your ranked me to match.' PD was mad too and replied 'yeah whatever u played us.' Then some more conversation, the PD and applicant contacted NRMP and there was in fact an issue with the way they submitted their ROLs or the algorithm. Let me look up the thread.
I think this has already been commented upon. This was a match run by the AUA, not the NRMP. And it was all screwed up. And programs noticed, complained, and the whole thing was repeated. It wasn't an NRMP issue at all. Totally different group.
I thought programs didnt find out until 4 pm EST today? how is this possible?
They moved the notification deadline to 4PM because of the SOAP mess. But they forgot to change the email send time, so we all found out at 2PM as was originally planned.
A few questions on this topic:
1. If u don’t match a surgical sub, and then SOAP into prelim Surg, and then u get into Gen Surg the following year, do you start as PGY2?
2. Is this the same with prelim medicine and IM?
3. Is this the same with prelim med or Surg and then going into rads or anesthesia or something, would u start pgy2?
1. Maybe, up to the PD and whether there is a spot available.
2. Much more common with IM, there tend to be more open PGY-2's. But there's no centralized list, so you just have to hunt around.
3. You would match either into an Advanced position and then have a year gap (where you could do whatever you wanted), or match into an "R" (Reserved) position which would be a PGY-2 starting that upcoming year, with no gap.
Why not make lists public after rank day?
I say this every year, but in 2005, the AUA (urology) match got completely fu><><0re3d when they apparently did this (i.e. didn't appropriately hand check or QC the results) which resulted in HMS grads with 260+, AOA and PhDs not matching while FMGs with 190s on all 3 steps were matching at Hopkins etc. Turns out, somebody entered the program ROLs backwards which would have been easily discovered if they'd pulled 10 program ROLs and checked them against what the programs actually entered.
Would you really want to know you were the last person picked for a program?
The NRMP does a tremendous amount of quality control to make sure the match is correct.
