Who knows your application ?

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Actually nobody sees your application. It's against the new ACGME rules for a PD to base decisions on what you have submitted to ERAS. Invites are based where you go to med school and how much your personal statement references sports, your grandmother or that one patient encounter that changed everything for you.
 
On the interview trail who knows your application? PD and your interviewer?

Do chief resident's know your application?
The program director should 100%, usually there is a committee of some sort that looks through apps and chooses ones to interview. When you apply one can print your ERAS app and essentially have all the same info you see when you do the pdf print. Most people look at the activities thing quickly (see how they can relate to you or your interest), LOR,c sores and then flip to the back to find out from your schools graph where you are actually ranked. They'll sometimes read the deans letter, most of it is cryptic. Yes, most schools that do not rank actually do. You are ranked by words not numerical rank. If that doesn't exist they look at everyone from your school and rank you against each other subjectively.

Hope that helps.
 
The program director should 100%, usually there is a committee of some sort that looks through apps and chooses ones to interview. When you apply one can print your ERAS app and essentially have all the same info you see when you do the pdf print. Most people look at the activities thing quickly (see how they can relate to you or your interest), LOR,c sores and then flip to the back to find out from your schools graph where you are actually ranked. They'll sometimes read the deans letter, most of it is cryptic. Yes, most schools that do not rank actually do. You are ranked by words not numerical rank. If that doesn't exist they look at everyone from your school and rank you against each other subjectively.

Hope that helps.
In case you are curious what verbs your school uses to rank you, I love posting this link:

http://www.jacr.org/cms/attachment/2014568276/2036036500/mmc1.doc

Not all schools do it, but most do.

http://www.jacr.org/article/S1546-1440(13)00767-9/abstract is the original article.
 
Even if the school doesn't verbally quartile rank you, committees frequently will grab all the applicants from a certain school and compare them and rank them theirselves to see who's worth interviewing. Who knows what criteria they use except for most likely number of clerkship honors, AOA if available and board scores. I am not sure which system works better.
 
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