The number of residency spots open vs filled

[cmshopeful]

Hey everyone....a premed here with some questions..

I've noticed by reading the NRMP (? spelling??) that even some of the more competitive residencies do not fill all of their spots....ie anesthesiology and orthopedic sx. Why is this so? They did turn down certain number of applicants....so does this mean if they don't get certain type of applicants they want (ie step 1 score) rather than taking someone with low step 1 score, they'd just rather not fill the spot?

Secondly, I've noticed by reading this report that even for less competitive residencies (ie PMR) 60% or more do research (not necessarily published). For competitive residencies such as anesthe, sx, radiology, derm, optho, something like 75% or more do research. So, I'm assuming that research is important. Would you agree?

Thanks.

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[RTrain]

They did turn down certain number of applicants....so does this mean if they don't get certain type of applicants they want (ie step 1 score) rather than taking someone with low step 1 score, they'd just rather not fill the spot?

Programs definitely want to fill. Remember, residency placement is a match. Programs interview and rank enough candidates to fill their programs many times over, but the match is weighted in favor of the applicants. So no matter how many applicants a program interviews and ranks, if their candidates don't rank them, or rank other programs higher, then the program won't fill.

For an explanation of how this works, see the NRMP's description of their match algorithm (http://www.nrmp.org/res_match/about_res/algorithms.html) or any of the excellent discussions on SDN of the matching schema.