Residency comes next

Not exactly.
During the phase one of Match, each program would be allowed to fill 70% of their available slots. Basically this is an opportunity for programs to fill their slots with high flyers, people who have clearly indicated they want to match in certain city/region (couples match, local students, signal token), or who have a special relationship with the program (in-house applicants, away rotators, etc)
Phase 1 match lists would be submitted in early Feb and match results would be announced a week or so later.

In Phase 2 of the Match, the remaining 30% of seats would be offered with a shorter period for programs to review and interview new candidates for the rest of their slots. Phase 2 match results would be released in mid-to-late March. Applicants would still submit rank lists and could use signaling to alert programs about their level of interest.

It appears to me that the main purpose of the 2 phase match is remove those desirable residency candidates who use up an unfairly large number of interview slots from the second round. It would also offer an opportunity for those who applied to uber competitive specialties who didn’t match to switch to less competitive specialties without having to suffer through SOAP hoping for a FM or gen surgery prelim match. This would give them more control of their future.

There would still be 2 rounds of SOAP for any unfilled slots after the Phase 2 match has happened.

Concurrent with the two phase match, a cap on the number of applications per candidate for each round was proposed. (But the uncertainty that a cap would pass legal anti-trust muster has put the kibosh on that idea.)

It makes no sense to cap applications since no one knows where they can get interviews for very competitive programs.

I would think it is preferable for applicants to provide most desirable programs and locations to a specific number so programs are allowed to focus most on applicants who are truly interested in their programs. It is a catch 22 for applicants but they still need to choose some safeties in their list and not 50 safeties out of 100 programs.

Just going by what the obgyn applicant told me, they applied to 75 programs but labelled 3 gold and 15 silver and received interviews pretty much from all of them. Not sure how many didnt participate in the gold/silver process (they mentioned 10% of all programs) who they might still get interviews from but it is hard to do more than 15-20 interviews.

One of the big issues at the moment is that the virtual interviews have made good applicants great and weaker applicants not noticeable. The travel used to allow more choice points and students were being forced to decline interviews when they needed almost 2-3 days of allocation per each interview. D was allocating 1 hr for meeting fellows on an evening and at the most 6 hours for fellowship interviews and in some cases it was over in 3 hours. The residency interviews which were in person some times had 2 day programs and one day of travel and I remember booking 2 days of hotel in several places.

I follow some of the fellowship spreadsheets on SDN and found that the biggest gripe people had was with the stars accepting 30 interviews and doing them all while some had only 2.

That’s not a new phenomenon. D1 complained about that way back in 2015 when she was on the interview trail. She only applied to 25 programs–which is what ERAS/NMRP indicated was the enough to net a match. She got 7 interview, ranked 6 and matched at her number 2 (Yale). At one interview, she met someone who had already gone on 22 interviews by mid-December. D was extremely annoyed because this person told her they had zero interest in almost every program they had interviewed with and were just accepting interviews to see how many they could get.

They needed to spend a LOT of money and time to do 22 interviews. Now there is no expense and time went down to hours instead of days. I saw a cardiology thread where a few were doing 30 interviews.

Not sure if your D1 was doing residency or fellowship in 2015? It is common for residents to do a lot more interviews because they have time if not money. Fellows have to get time off or make up time.

D was applying for residency.

And it’s the whole prisoners dilemma w/r/t the Match. People overapply which overwhelms the resources that the programs have for reviewing applications so fewer apps get reviewed and a smaller percentage of applicants to a specific program get interviewed at that program which cause students to send out even more applications. And so on and on ad infinitum. 10 years ago students applied to about half as many programs as they do today. Match rates were same as they are today, but more people matched at one of their top choices. (The percentage of students who match at one of their top 3 choice has dropped by 5% in the past 2 years–which is a lot --and can probably be attributed to remote interviewing since there is now no cost to the applicant to accept as many interviews as possible. Before, in person interviewing had costs in both time and money so applicants were more selective about which interviews they attended.)

Correction: I got it backward on the two part Match.

First round would offer 30% of a program’s available slots. Second round would be for the remaining 70%.

There would still be 2 rounds of SOAP after the second match.

And speaking of fellowships—

one of D1’s friends–a MD/PhD-- visited over the weekend. She was in CA to interview for a GI fellowship at UCLA and USC. She said the hot new topic in GI is the HUGE backlog of colonoscopies. She said that a 2 year colonoscopy fellowship for PAs and NPs is being discussed to help relieve the problem. Like a CRNA or CAA, they would work under direct the supervision of a physician but for routine colonoscopies, a midlevel would do the bulk of them.

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She was interviewing in person for a fellowship?

There has been an uproar in all GI programs in over the last month because someone published a study claiming the prescribed age based colonoscopies are not needed (I am sure I dont have the verbage right) and so every program is on record now claiming that study is wrong!

Yes, all the Gi fellowships she’s applied to do in-person interviews, especially because, as a MD/PhD, she’s on the research-intensive fellowship track for hepatology.

Kaiser encourages poop tests over colonoscopy. They send home kits and send reminders.

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At appears that an increasing number of residency programs are now requiring an Altus Suite profile for interview consideration. Looks like it it’s been used as a replacement for the Step 2 CS and Level 2 PE.

The profile is comprised of three separate tests (Casper, Snapshot,Duet).

Programs in anesthesiology, IM, OB/GYN, opthalmology, surgery and urology are now requiring it before October.

Casper is required for the Canadian Match.

To see which programs require Altus–check here: Casper test dates and fees - Take Casper

Late edit–

to get to the list, go to the bottom of the page from the second link, select “Browse Test Dates and Fees”. On the next page, select United States and then Graduate Medical Education + specialty.

Casper is a situation judgment test (SJT), but Snapshot and Duet are customized by each program to see how well an applicants will “fit” at a particular program by comparing the applicant’s responses to the questions to those provided by the faculty and current residents.

D is staying back for fellowship.

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My D will be marking the halfway point of her 5 year residency at the end of the year.

She works her last PICU shift on Christmas Day.

I wonder how the time has gone by that she is already doing a last PICU shift?

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Checking in with my residency parent peeps. Our DD will finish her ED residency on June 30 or so. Stay tuned for next steps. She says she has it under control.

These years sure did zip by!

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My daughter is half way through 6th year of seven. SIL took his second boards yesterday. It never ends.

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DD is out celebrating with her cohorts who are going into fellowship next year. Two more years to go. Much respect for these young people who are masters of delayed gratification!

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D2 is halfway thru fellowship and has a busy week with 2 job interviews scheduled. The one this morning went very well. She meets the dept chair at the university where she did her residency/fellowship tomorrow to discuss her options there.

D1 is trying to decide if she wants to leave her CMG and go to work as a junior partner with a doctor owned group practice. Less money, but a much shorter commute.

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Add two more job interviews today for D2.
Both with the same healthcare system, but with two different practice groups at two different locations. One is at the system’s flagship hospital with the practice group she’s been moonlighting with for the last several months.

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Is D1 abroad?

D1 was living abroad in 2019, but had problems getting a medical license in the new country so she came back in early 2020 just in time for the covid pandemic to hit. She worked through the absolute worse part of the early pandemic. Lots of deaths. Not enough PPEs for hospital workers. Not enough ventilators. Not enough staff. No drugs. No vaccines. Bodies overflowing the morgue
 and this was at a well resourced major hospital in New Haven, CT.