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<p><a href=“Residency Data & Reports | NRMP”>http://www.nrmp.org/match-data/main-residency-match-data/</a></p>
<p>The most recent NRMP program director’s (PD) survey lists 35-40 factors that are used by plastic surgery PDs in selecting which applicants to interview and in ranking applicants. In both offering interviews and in ranking applicants, the surveyed plastic surgery PDs indicated that graduating from any US med school is a more important factor than graduating from a highly regarded US med school. So based on the responses from the plastic surgery PDs, the answer to your question (as to plastic surgery) appears to be it has an impact but not to the degree that graduating from any US med school has on their decision making process.</p>
<p>I suspect that the many people you have asked have given you many different answers with the answers tending to lean towards the med school’s name as having a significant impact. However the fact that you don’t get a concrete answer is because nobody outside of the world of PDs actually knows. How any one PD would assign importance to any one of 35- 40 factors in both interview and ranking at any one plastic surgery program is impossible to know with any level of “concreteness.” To my knowledge the NRMP data provides the best available answer for your question.</p>
<p>As an example of importance of factors: at one interview S went on (not plastic surgery), the PD indicated that applicants who received interview offers were tentatively ranked A, B, C. After interviews, the applicants could be moved up or down on this list. Some were moved to the D column (D equaled “do not rank”). Sometimes applicants can look pretty on paper but not so much in person. Poor interview skills can sink any applicant even from a well known med school and make one’s chance of “landing a residency” in any specialty zero.</p>
<p>Getting into any US med school gives one the opportunity to get into plastic surgery somewhere if one has the complete package (high Step 1/ 2 score, AOA, strong LORs, strong third year clerkships, research etc) and some luck as plastic surgery is highly competitive. If you add the fact that you in a well known med school, congrats. However, it’s just one of many factors, many of which seem to have a more significant impact in the eyes of PDs according to the NRMP.</p>