Now comes the part where people start to worry about their chances and whether places will rank them back or not. Some places may interview, others may not. But remember, the algorithm favors the applicants choices, so it’s okay to rank a program you may not have strong chances at. If you rank a program highly and they don’t rank you back, it just drops down to the next school on your list trying to make a match, no harm no foul. So rank programs how you really want them, don’t waste energy worrying about if they rank you back, don’t rank any you don’t truly want to match to, and may the odds be in your favor.
Some of the programs may say things like you’re a “top applicant” or something but there’s no way to know if that’s actually true or if they’re just giving lip service hoping to have a long list and avoid having to scramble, so don’t let a program’s response to you sway your desires. If you interview somewhere and don’t like the vibe or info you learn, you don’t have to rank them…if you don’t rank them you won’t match there. If you rank them, you might.
If you don’t understand how the match works, there’s good
YouTube videos about it online because the VIRMP match works the same way the human NRMP match works.