Bad Childhood Posted January 3 Report Share Posted January 3 Hi everyone, Just wanted to reach out coz these CaRMS rejections have been really soul-crushing. I applied to a moderately competitive specialty. How many interview offers do people receive on average for any specialty? I applied across Canada with the exception of three French schools. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dooogs Posted January 3 Report Share Posted January 3 I think this is actually listed by speciality on the CaRMS website Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anon1 Posted January 3 Report Share Posted January 3 . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abcd1288 Posted January 3 Report Share Posted January 3 21 minutes ago, dooogs said: I think this is actually listed by speciality on the CaRMS website Where do you see it? I only see the data published by how many interview offers were given for a specialty overall but not interviews received on average per specialty. https://www.carms.ca/data-reports/r1-data-reports/interview-offers/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitochondrie2 Posted January 3 Report Share Posted January 3 If you're looking at "how many interviews an average candidate receives by specialty" I don't think they have that info because it varies from person to person (the number of sites people applied to affects that number, their MRSP/CV etc...) All I saw so far is how many invites programs give versus how many candidates apply each year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MedicineLCS Posted January 3 Report Share Posted January 3 https://www.carms.ca/pdfs/carms-forum-2023.pdf has specialty Dated but historical trends: https://www.carms.ca/pdfs/CMG-home-and-away.pdf A lot of this also varies by geography; Ontario is less selective whereas the East and West are quite biased in favour of home region. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carms20233 Posted January 4 Report Share Posted January 4 I went through CARMS last year, applied to 8 out of the 10 programs of a competitive specialty (derm) . Got 6 interviews and matched. I had also applied to FM as a backup and received interviews everywhere I had applied (roughly 5 I believe). coriosnow 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
attempt2 Posted January 4 Report Share Posted January 4 Specialty specific but the ball park metric I've been told for my specialty (top 5 in competitiveness) is that 0 is normal, 1 is good, 2 is very good and 3+ means you are excellent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bad Childhood Posted January 4 Author Report Share Posted January 4 Thanks for sharing. I found these stats that report average number of interviews attended by applicants overall and for their first choice discipline: https://www.carms.ca/data-reports/r1-data-reports/cmg-interview-experiences/ Seems like the average number of interviews attended has increased in the recent years. For first choice specialty, people on average interviewed at 8-ish programs in 2022 vs 5-ish programs few years back. Does anyone know the average # for moderately competitive specialties eg. Radiology, General Surgery etc? coffeeandmed 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abcd1288 Posted January 4 Report Share Posted January 4 4 minutes ago, Bad Childhood said: Thanks for sharing. I found these stats that report average number of interviews attended by applicants overall and for their first choice discipline: https://www.carms.ca/data-reports/r1-data-reports/cmg-interview-experiences/ Seems like the average number of interviews attended has increased in the recent years. For first choice specialty, people on average interviewed at 8-ish programs in 2022 vs 5-ish programs few years back. Does anyone know the average # for moderately competitive specialties eg. Radiology, General Surgery etc? I think the rise in interviews in the past 3 years were likely due to COVID where there's virtual invites (no costs so people take all offers) and there's no penalties for not being able to do visiting electives or electives in intended fields and no cap on R-1 specialty for electives either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PTwhatt Posted January 6 Report Share Posted January 6 On 1/3/2024 at 6:30 PM, attempt2 said: Specialty specific but the ball park metric I've been told for my specialty (top 5 in competitiveness) is that 0 is normal, 1 is good, 2 is very good and 3+ means you are excellent. That’s interesting. That seems surprisingly (and reassuringly…) low. Does that count for a program like plastic surgery too? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agent99 Posted January 6 Report Share Posted January 6 What’s the normal number of interviews for emergency medicine? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MedicineLCS Posted January 6 Report Share Posted January 6 The only data we have I'm aware of is somewhat dated (https://www.carms.ca/pdfs/CMG-home-and-away.pdf 2020, so not reflecting virtual changes). We can speculate based on what other data looks like that the general trend would be however it's worth noting the yield rate (Canada wide) has actually increased from <70% to 77% in this time frame (PDF page 18: https://www.carms.ca/pdfs/carms-forum-2023.pdf) but a good chunk of this appears to be driven by FM and to a lesser extent IM according to the specialty breakdown (PDF page 75-76) is relatively stable. So if we assume that for the table below IM and FM interview rate has improved (this year might be the exception, one program reported getting >900 applications which was more than the total number of applicants Canada wide last year and several hundred more than previous for them. Some of this is undoubtedly people applying broader but considering not every IM applicant applies to every program it's possible there are over 1,000 IM applicants this year. Bad year to try an IM backup). The table itself is organized strangely but generally, we can see that for less competitive larger (so less fluctuation-prone) disciplines the vast majority get a home school interview. This is not true for the hypercompetitive specialties (yikes EM - although I wonder how much of this can be chalked up to hail mary EM applications by future FM-EMs?) For aways it can be quite nasty but you don't know where people are getting electives and this was pre-cap. I'd imagine post-cap the yield on aways has gone up whereas if you didn't go it's gone down. So if we assume the "average" EM applicant they probably (but a sizable number did not) got a home interview + 30% of aways which if they applied nationally and don't speak French is 11 (- home school so 10) so that would be 4 or so interviews. If you see the match statistics doc the vast majority only need one, a few go to 2, and beyond that it drops off fairly quickly (and worth remembering some of the people going deep may have red flags that made them feel the need to go deep OR were couple matching). Also it's probably worth noting that there are regional and personal factors that affect this distribution (not everyone will go coast to coast to ?coast). As a final note after breaking down the data, I would really really really caution against comparisons as someone going through the process. Over the last few days I've honestly been appalled by some of the less than humble bragging I've seen about the number of interviews. I am deliberately not telling my random classmates my interview count, solely sticking to vague qualitative descriptions they can choose to interpret however they want, so that these comparisons are not possible. I know people who were pre-interview rejected by their clear #1, I'm sure they really want to hear how you got 10+ interviews or are struggling to find a way to book all your interviews without conflicts right now as they process that. I got rejections places I thought I was a shoe-in and interviews at far reaches. The process is incredibly random and speaking to people who explain it's only a few markers quickly going through applications one after the other that make life-altering decisions for you only makes it feel more random. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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