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6 Steps to Radiology: Part 4 – Postinterview, pre-Match. What now?
Thankfully I completed a residency without this sort of hyperbole. BCBonarigo, MD
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11 Replies
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The article left out an important item in the Match Week guide at the bottom.
On Friday night of Match Week, you create an email address that is official-sounding such as [email protected] , and a little past midnight you send your best friends in med school fake emails either telling them that they didn’t match and that they are ineligible for Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program because of a missing letter of recommendation, and that they may re-apply the following year.-
No kudos for that? I pranked my med school roommate with that. Sorry Sid ! (not really)
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Haha flounce.
Its a shame nobody reads the medical student section of AM anymore. When I was in med school there were 10-15 active threads here. Millennials arent into internet chatting? The trolls won? Radiology no longer desirable?
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Quote from hey
Haha flounce.
Its a shame nobody reads the medical student section of AM anymore. When I was in med school there were 10-15 active threads here. Millennials arent into internet chatting? The trolls won? Radiology no longer desirable?
Social media groups (e.g. Facebook groups) and Reddit have taken a sizeable chunk out of web traffic that would otherwise finds its way to message boards like these.
The internet continues to evolve.-
Unfortunately, med students interested in radiology and radiology residents are not very active on reddit, or even SDN. Not sure why, but none of those forums seem to be very lively.
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I don’t get how people can recommend these type of “love letter” contacts about telling a program they’re your first choice or whatever. All that stuff undermines the entire system. The whole point is it is a mathematical solution so that people end up in their highest place possible. Any kind of altering your list based on “this program said they’re ranking me highly” or one of the programs standpoint because they have ego and want to match at number 10 on their list or whatever literally ruins the entire purpose of why it’s being done.
People should just interview where they want to go. They should rank the places they want to go, in the order they want to go. The programs should rank the candidates in the order they want the candidates. This will results in an efficient outcome.
It’s amazing after this system being around for this long that people still try to game it.-
Quote from IR27
I don’t get how people can recommend these type of “love letter” contacts about telling a program they’re your first choice or whatever. All that stuff undermines the entire system. The whole point is it is a mathematical solution so that people end up in their highest place possible. Any kind of altering your list based on “this program said they’re ranking me highly” or one of the programs standpoint because they have ego and want to match at number 10 on their list or whatever literally ruins the entire purpose of why it’s being done.
People should just interview where they want to go. They should rank the places they want to go, in the order they want to go. The programs should rank the candidates in the order they want the candidates. This will results in an efficient outcome.
It’s amazing after this system being around for this long that people still try to game it.
This.
Sadly, even PD’s who have been in the game for years don’t even understand the match and look for some sort of strategy. There is no strategy. Everybody should rank to their preferences and nothing else. I was involved in 1 conversation in which I heard a PD 10 years on the job say “we will not rank this candidate but offer a position in the SOAP if she is still available.” This is an idiotic line of thinking.
The fact that the love letter strategy works is a sad testament to medical education. Sure, people wanna be loved or whatever, maybe even moreso today, but why the heck are people still so dumb that they don’t realize that the same letter was sent to a ton of other applicants?
As to the lack of activity, yes, social media has taken over this. Students can get better advice that is more regionally tailored from the actual relevant people who know the answers to their questions using social media.
These threads used to have mostly 2 types of advice threads:
1) I am in the bottom tier of competitiveness for radiology and want you to help me choose the least bad program that still gets me everything I am looking for.
2) I am in the top tier of competitiveness and want you to help me rank these (supposedly) top 20 programs that are all in different regions without explaining the personal factors that should really drive this decision. Then I am going to pick the place in New York and live in somebody’s closet for 4 years while being used and abused because I thought Times Square was cool that one time I accidentally got off the subway at the wrong station.
I guess people wised up and figured out that the responder is probably from a community program in the Midwest is probably not the best person to ask if UCSF or MGH is better. I don’t miss “the old days.”-
Love letter stuff for rank lists doesn’t do much.
However, pre-interview emails/letters stating that you have interest in X program, especially if you have interest in the location and can prove it, definitely helps the chances of getting an interview.-
Love letters work for 2 reasons I think:
1. Programs scared of going unmatched
2. Medical schools evaluating academic residency programs based on how far they drop on rank list.Has anyone else seen or heard of the second reason?
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#2 is definitely real (and stupid, IMO).
Residencies also brag that They didnt go past X on their rank list, and gaming the level of interest of the applicants helps maintain this metric.
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