med schools match rate

[anon183838]

anyone have any preliminary information on match rates? I heard uoft match rate was only 93% this year, this seems very low. Seems like more and more people going unmatched every year 

[1D7]

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[caramelpanic]

9 hours ago, anon183838 said:

anyone have any preliminary information on match rates? I heard uoft match rate was only 93% this year, this seems very low. Seems like more and more people going unmatched every year 

Every year it seems like there's a school that fares worse in the match; no particular trend, I imagine it comes down to more people having an interest in competitive specialties. 

[LUUO]

On 4/13/2022 at 2:01 PM, anon183838 said:

anyone have any preliminary information on match rates? I heard uoft match rate was only 93% this year, this seems very low. Seems like more and more people going unmatched every year 

The national match rate was 93.6%

[sadstrawberry]

42 minutes ago, LUUO said:

The national match rate was 93.6%

Where did you hear of this number? 

[xiphoid]

Queen's was 97%

[LUUO]

1 hour ago, sadstrawberry said:

Where did you hear of this number? 

From the University of Ottawa FoM Twitter.  

University of Ottawa was 95%.

Nationally it was 93.6%

[quibble]

NOSM is 100%.

[medschool10000]

Dal currently around 88%.

[Xbox Skully]

17 hours ago, medschool10000 said:

Dal currently around 88%.

I wonder if that has to do with the taking more oop that year. 5 of the 30 nb class were oop and all of those seats are suppose to be 100%. I guess that year anyone from nb who were above the cutoff got in lol.

[medschool10000]

1 hour ago, Xbox Skully said:

I wonder if that has to do with the taking more oop that year. 5 of the 30 nb class were oop and all of those seats are suppose to be 100%. I guess that year anyone from nb who were above the cutoff got in lol.

Could be! Anecdotally, the people I've heard of that didn't match were gunning for mid- to highly competitive specialties, and like every school, lots of IM backups - with a few that didn't work out. I think more and more we'll be seeing that IM is not a great backup option as it gets more competitive year by year. Sadly not a lot of Dal seats left after 2nd iteration for really anything other than genpath and a couple FM seats here and there. 

[askingquestions]

18 hours ago, medschool10000 said:

Could be! Anecdotally, the people I've heard of that didn't match were gunning for mid- to highly competitive specialties, and like every school, lots of IM backups - with a few that didn't work out. I think more and more we'll be seeing that IM is not a great backup option as it gets more competitive year by year. Sadly not a lot of Dal seats left after 2nd iteration for really anything other than genpath and a couple FM seats here and there. 

Why is IM getting more competitive?

[MedicineLCS]

19 hours ago, medschool10000 said:

Could be! Anecdotally, the people I've heard of that didn't match were gunning for mid- to highly competitive specialties, and like every school, lots of IM backups - with a few that didn't work out. I think more and more we'll be seeing that IM is not a great backup option as it gets more competitive year by year. Sadly not a lot of Dal seats left after 2nd iteration for really anything other than genpath and a couple FM seats here and there. 

CaRMS elective data (dated and pre-cap admittedly) bears this out, since 2016 IM is transforming from a backup specialty to a first choice specialty:

https://www.carms.ca/data-reports/r1-data-reports/electives/

Unless the new seats Dougie is promising include a sizable number of IM seats I think IM will likely end up in a spot where programs can choose to select from more than enough first choice applicants to make backing up dangerous. My worry is you have people getting career advice from mid-late career surgeons and the like who remember an era when an IM backup was possible and you'll end up in a scenario where competitive specialty>IM leads to more and more unmatched. 

[who_knows]

43 minutes ago, MedicineLCS said:

you'll end up in a scenario where competitive specialty>IM leads to more and more unmatched. 

I agree. It's worrying to see this trend. I think programs should be more judicious with who they choose. Why choose someone who clearly thinks of you as plan B? It does not make sense. To me, an applicant with an inferior CV who ranked IM a 1st choice is more valuable than someone with a great CV but does not really love to be an internist. I listened to a podcast with an IM program director and she said exactly what I am saying.
From the student's perspective, it's effed up when unmatched surgeons take IM spots. But I get it, no one wants to go unmatched. So, it's up to the programs to choose their future residents wisely.

[medschool10000]

2 hours ago, askingquestions said:

Why is IM getting more competitive?

Like others have said, a ton more applicants since the 8 week elective cap, lots of people max out 8 weeks in their preferred competitive specialty and then do 6-8 weeks in internal and backup internal. So the number of applicants to IM programs is huge nowadays. Many other factors come into play, but in general the bigger the pool for limited seats, the more competitive.

Career-wise, IM is also a solid choice if you like hospital medicine and want to specialize. 

[Pakoon]

1 hour ago, who_knows said:

I agree. It's worrying to see this trend. I think programs should be more judicious with who they choose. Why choose someone who clearly thinks of you as plan B? It does not make sense. To me, an applicant with an inferior CV who ranked IM a 1st choice is more valuable than someone with a great CV but does not really love to be an internist. I listened to a podcast with an IM program director and she said exactly what I am saying.
From the student's perspective, it's effed up when unmatched surgeons take IM spots. But I get it, no one wants to go unmatched. So, it's up to the programs to choose their future residents wisely.

Yet for whatever reason they're still going for the strong on paper/ on interview candidates

[who_knows]

2 hours ago, Pakoon said:

Yet for whatever reason they're still going for the strong on paper/ on interview candidates

It was just one program and I hope the culture is changing. 

[Masterpizza]

1 hour ago, who_knows said:

It was just one program and I hope the culture is changing

Which program is that? 

[McMasterMD]

To be fair, a lot of surgical applicants are also really good at medicine. Everyone gets the same base education. Just because you were an "IM gunner" doesn't make you any better at medicine than a "surgery gunner". I know some folks that matched to competitive surgical specialties that would have been excellent internists.

If you want an IM spot - step up your game, work hard on electives, get excellent reference letters, publish papers, get involved in extra curriculars, be a good person, and interview well. Stop whining that students interested in surgery are taking "your" spots. It just means that they worked harder than you to get that IM spot.

[Edict]

6 hours ago, who_knows said:

I agree. It's worrying to see this trend. I think programs should be more judicious with who they choose. Why choose someone who clearly thinks of you as plan B? It does not make sense. To me, an applicant with an inferior CV who ranked IM a 1st choice is more valuable than someone with a great CV but does not really love to be an internist. I listened to a podcast with an IM program director and she said exactly what I am saying.
From the student's perspective, it's effed up when unmatched surgeons take IM spots. But I get it, no one wants to go unmatched. So, it's up to the programs to choose their future residents wisely.

Lots of people are undecided and I'd argue you can't know for sure if someone wants you first versus second. All you really have to go by are electives and that isn't really a great judge. For sure, in extreme cases where someone's app screams uro and they are applying to IM with 1 IM letter, that isn't someone you'd want, but if there is some effort and interest in IM, with at least a few electives and actual IM letters, i'd strongly consider that person especially if their CV is better than someone who only had IM electives but doesn't have a strong application otherwise.  

[SML]

How much is the IM competitiveness really a problem? I heard the vast majority of IM applicants match

[Comcastaway]

1 hour ago, SML said:

How much is the IM competitiveness really a problem? I heard the vast majority of IM applicants match

probably saying more like IM isn't objectively on the competitive side of all R1 programs but it is getting more competitive, perhaps forecasting a trend going forward

[indefatigable]

15 hours ago, SML said:

How much is the IM competitiveness really a problem? I heard the vast majority of IM applicants match

13 hours ago, Comcastaway said:

probably saying more like IM isn't objectively on the competitive side of all R1 programs but it is getting more competitive, perhaps forecasting a trend going forward

IM has officially become a competitive specialty where supply < demand for first choice (the ratio was 0.98 last year).   Some IM gunners are probably getting squeezed out by strong applicants who are backing up/parallel planning, but that's probably going to be less of a viable strategy going ahead if the trend continues.  At a certain point dedication to one discipline will usually result in a more competitive application.  

What makes it notable is that it's the second largest discipline after FM - so its competitiveness affects way more applicants than a small specialty like derm - a 2% competitiveness change might affect the outcome for one derm gunner vs 10-20 IM applicants.     

The following graph shows that up to 2015, FM/IM tracked each other pretty closely as safe for back-up/parallel plan, but afterwards IM has become increasingly more competitive and FM less competitive. 

tl;dr consider other disciplines than IM for backing up; don't underestimate competition for IM gunners.

 

[zoxy]

9 hours ago, who_knows said:

To me, an applicant with an inferior CV who ranked IM a 1st choice is more valuable than someone with a great CV but does not really love to be an internist.

Why would loving being an internist more valuable?  The program is going to spend 3-5 years with each IM resident and quite possibly even longer if they decide to work in that city/province. They take the resident who they think is going to perform better and make their lives easier rather than someone who "wants" it more.

[Monkey D. Luffy]

9 hours ago, zoxy said:

Why would loving being an internist more valuable?  The program is going to spend 3-5 years with each IM resident and quite possibly even longer if they decide to work in that city/province. They take the resident who they think is going to perform better and make their lives easier rather than someone who "wants" it more.

It's a bit of both. 99% of people are going to perform well as they progress through training. What really makes people's lives easier is having someone on the team genuinely interested in the work they are doing as they are more fun to work with and won't mind pitching in extra when needed (as opposed to a "genius" that has no interest and will clock out at 5 pm every day).