My experience was that SAEs mattered very little. I was above the 90th percentile consistently and interviewed at a lot of pain programs, granted most of them were anesthesia based and therefore didn't give one rip about my SAE scores. The one program, the UCLA PMR Pain Fellowship was the only place where I was commended on my scores. Fish said, "wow nice SAEs". That was the last I heard from him. No offer. So, I'm thinkin my SAEs didn't really matter. Hope that helps.....