The reason I'm for limiting it to 10 (adjusted to 20 in later post) is because I feel I was very subjectively left out of interview invites at certain programs around me. And being familiar with the programs, I know I was definitely qualified to interview there since I knew others who did. I also know there were many top top applicants who interviewed who had no desire to go here and just used the interview(s) as safeties. And as expected, they ranked those programs low and matched at better programs. I feel if they had been limited to 10, then they would not have wasted a spot applying there. As a result, those programs would actually be more likely to interview ppl actually interested in those programs and ppl like me would have been less likely to be left out of being interviewed.
If you really think the match is a perfect system and the whole interview invite process is objective then you're delusional. The truth is there are tons of ppl with similar apps and they have to very subjectively, arbitrarily choose to invite and leave out great applicants in many cases.
If you think 10 is too limiting for top applicants, then cap it at 20 instead. In ophtho, you have 117 programs with the top applicants applying to 40+ and the average applicants applying to 70-80+ because they just want to match. That's way too many.
This is not the craziest idea ever. The idea would be to limit the number of applications so that programs would know that applicants are more "serious" about them. The theory would be that although applicants would have less total applications, the would have a higher interview offer rate as programs would have less total applicants to review. Note that this has nothing to do with the match at all.
Would this change the results? As mentioned above, in ophthal essentially all of the spots fill. So, if rocketbooster got different interviews and then matched at a different location, presumably some other applicant would also have gotten different interviews and would match elsewhere. Since all of the spots are filled, if any applicant who didn't match the "old way" now matches, that means that someone else now doesn't match. Basically, you simply trade winners and losers -- and whether the net result is "better" is going to be hard to say. My guess is that people will still go on the maximum number of interviews, so the net cost would be the same.
Plus, you would need to make the rule 20 applications per field -- so this might simply drive people to apply to 2 fields and completely defeat the purpose. Also you probably need to make an exception for couple's matches, which might encourage students to create fake couples to get more applications. Not going to work, I think.
Now, for the question of the match itself. Suggested on this thread is the idea of allowing multiple offers, which then the student picks by some certain date, followed by additional offers off a waitlist. This is EXACTLY what happens in SOAP. Whether this is "better" or "worse" than the match depends upon your situation. One big difference is that medical school is education where you pay tuition, where residency where you are paid a salary. If I have a medical school with 10 spots, I can offer spots to 20 people, as whether I get 8 or 12 people in the end doesn't matter -- my school works fine either way (plus there are 9/10 people who applied who didn't get any spot at all, so I can always fill my last few spots at the end if needed). In residency, I have 10 salaries. I can't have 12 people. So I can only offer 10 spots at any one time, because I can't afford too many people.
Here's what will happen: the top 25% of people will get all of the offers in round 1. They will have lots of offers, and get to pick and choose what they want. The other 75% will get no offers at all, and will need to sweat it out. Assuming that each round lasts a week (or perhaps half a week), this will continue round after round. If you're a really strong candidate, this system will work well. If you're a middle of the road candidate, this will be misery as it will take several rounds before any offer arrives.
Above someone mentioned that the match doesn't give you "choice" because you're forced to take your match. This isn't exactly true. For all you know, you would get "offers" from every program on your match list. You just choose which program you want first on your rank list. So the amount of choice is the same, you just make your decisions in a different order -- you choose where you want to go prior to offers. Does that matter? Assuming you ranked 10 places and all of them offer you a spot -- wouldn't you simply take the program you ranked #1? Or is there something I am missing?
As I mentioned in another thread, the only thing I can think of that might actually help is an early admissions process. Let candidates apply to a single program as early admission. If the program decides to take them, then they can cancel all other interviews and be done. Programs would be limited in how many early admission offers they could fill (perhaps 25-33%). This would cut down on some interviewing. It would likely benefit the most competitive applicants most, but I could imagine that students who want to stay at their home program, or people with a clear need for a certain location might be able to do so. No idea how this would work for couples (although I guess if only one person in a couple got an early offer, they could decline it). Is this worth the agony of implementation -- not sure.
