National Residency Matching Program reports

[Bigredmed]

<p>[NRMP:</a> Data and Reports](<a href=“http://www.nrmp.org/data/index.html]NRMP:”>http://www.nrmp.org/data/index.html)</p>

<p>So normally, I don’t think pre-meds should really worry about their specialty choices, but there’s a lot of great stuff linked from this website about how successful people are in the match, and to try to show some transparency to the situation that 4th year medical students find themselves in. </p>

<p>I just realized that the 2007 Match Outcomes data has been out since August, even though a friend just forwarded it to me today…<sigh>
<a href=“http://www.nrmp.org/data/chartingoutcomes2007.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nrmp.org/data/chartingoutcomes2007.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sigh&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Anyways…</p>

<p>Some key points - </p>

<p>Going into surgery especially gen surg is having a big downward trend in popularity. Mainly people aren’t interested in the grueling residency. It’s all cyclical though, and in 5-10 years, there will probably be a huge uptick in the number going into surgery. Delaware, New Mexico, Nevada, Puerto Rico, and Utah were the only states to fill 100% of their available surgery residency positions state wide.</p>

<p>The number one predictor of successfully matching into one’s desired specialty field? Not USMLE Scores, not clinical grades, not research or AOA. You want to get into your field, rank programs in that field #1-#10. That was the greatest predictor - contiguous rankings in the same specialty. You might end up with your ninth choice, but you’ll be the type of doctor you wanted to be.</p>

<p>The biggest strike against applicants? Not being a US 4th year student. </p>

<p>

For U.S. seniors, the probability of matching to their preferred specialty was .75 for the highly competitive specialties and .94 for the other specialties, translating to odds of matching of 3.0 to 1 and 15.7 to 1, respectively. Any relative increase or decrease in the odds based on the predictor measures should be interpreted with this fact in mind. In comparison, independent applicants have much lower probabilities of matching to a highly competitive specialty (.31, odds of .45 to 1) or to one of the other specialties (.48, odds .92 to 1).

</p>

<p>Translation…if you are an international applicant, DO, or going through the match a 2nd time (for whatever reason), you are at a severe disadvantage compared to being a US Senior going through the match process. </p>

<p>There are other lessons to be learned, but for now let these sink in.</p>

[bluedevilmike]

<p>Important to note is that while US DO’s match poorly, at least they have a good backup: their own residency system. A Caribbean MD who doesn’t match is just stuck.</p>

[my_0.02]

<p>

Each additional contiguous rank added by a U.S. senior who prefers a highly competitive specialty corresponds to an increase of 1.30 (or 30%) in the odds of matching when all other factors are held constant.

</p>

<p>Correspondence should not be confused with causality.</p>

<p>Number of contiguous rankings in the same specialty is likely an indicator of a focused and qualified candidate, rather than a predictor of successful matching. Candidates who hedge bets across several specialties perhaps correctly recognize that they are not truly competitive in their first choice specialty.</p>

<p>Optimizing clerkship selection, electives, research, and letters of recommendation for a single specialty and then ranking nine or ten programs in that specialty is a good idea. Ranking nine programs instead of six does not predict success (cf. dermatology results and family medicine results in charts 3 and 4).</p>