The role of class rank in internship/residency

[stovebird]

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I am super curious to hear other people's opinions and experiences with class rank. A lot of schools that I considered this cycle have discontinued class rank. I am generally pretty happy to be going to a school without class rank, since I really dislike competitive environments, but I know that it plays a role (perhaps only a small role) in internship/residency placement. I am curious how important class rank really is to internship/residency, and how graduates from non-ranking schools have fared during the match process.

 

[dubvet]

I’m from an international school without official class rank (although they do keep this data as the highest ranking students get scholarship awards). I requested my rank for the match but they never got back to me so I put NA for my class rank. I still matched into a residency for what it’s worth. Obviously I’ve no idea how much they took it into account versus references, GPA and personal statement etc!

 

[CoffeeQuestionMark]

We use class rank but not GPA. I was barely in the top 50% of my class when I applied (although our class rank has been resetting every year due to new students joining the class from satellite campuses). Did not have a problem matching.

 

[TheGirlWithTheFernTattoo]

Depends on the program. When I was a member of the internship committee at my institution, class rank was one of the (many) criteria used for determining the total number of "points" a applicant could receive. If no class rank was there, they got assigned a standard number of points for the category. So if you have a really good class rank that might result in you getting less points, but if you were lower than that method worked in your favour.