the "resident factor"

At most programs you get an interview if you do an away. There are few exceptions. Even if you act like a total jerk, most programs will offer the courtesy interview. The residents rarely, if ever, decide who gets an interview.

At the interview and during the ranking, residents do have an input, but this varies considerably from program to program.

As stated by Mickey, the process varies from program to program.
Unfortunately I can assure you, from firsthand experience, that the ultimate decision is in the hands of the program director and/or chair of the department at SOME programs.
Who gets an interview is less of an issue, as most programs will give courtesy interviews to all rotators*. I don't think I've heard of a program where the residents have stopped someone from getting an interview.
As for ranking candidates...
100% of residents (and interns) in my program did not want a particular medical student at our home institution to match at "our" program. The overwhelming opinion was that he was such a suck-up, cocky, "yes man" type that he became exceedingly irritating to be around. Maybe he was just playing the game well or perhaps too well.
However he had "pretty good" board scores on steps I&II, research, publications and was overall a "very good" candidate in all OBJECTIVE categories. Subjectively however... he seemed lame.
Needless to say he matched (and we didn't go deep in our rank list)...undoubtedly because our program chair prides himself on being objective, which I cannot entirely disagree with.
Having a program full of people who are "cool/laid back" does nothing to benefit the residency program if they aren't performing well on OITE's and boards.
I'm sure the new incoming intern will do a good job, and as long as he handles his business, our subjective opinions won't matter.

-Hulk

Every program is different. At my institution, we had five applicants that we absolutely did not want at our program. All five were dropped off the rank list by the attendings. We had 2 or 3 others that we were not fond of that ended up in the bottom quarter, despite great objective data.

I was suprised by some of the comments. I feel that at my program resident imput is very valued but again as hulk said can definately be over-ruled. We no longer offer courtesy interviews to all rotators. This was discussed at a resident/attending meeting this year and attendings were kind of equivocal about doing courtesy interviews. We as residents having just gone through the process felt that it was not fair to the applicant to have them buy a plane ticket and hotel room etc if they did not have a realistic shot at being in the top half of our rank list. We invited all applicants this year that we were going to rank very highly based on their rotations and I think it worked out well. We felt that even though a rotator may be upset at having "wasted a rotation" we did not want to carry on a charade at their expense. I think this was a good decision but i'd be interested in more opinions. As far as resident imput for rotators this was basically how the list of who to interview of the rotators was developed. We had a meeting and basically discussed each rotator and put them into interview/don't interview lists...this then went to the attendings who added their imput as well and so the list was created. There were instances of where both residents and attendings disagreed and in these cases it seemed most students were given the benifit of the doubt and interviewed. post interview, again everyone got together and discussed applicants.. residents were represented by the two people on our resident selection committee and had equal voice to each attending. As you can see this is very important to us and I think the match worked out well for us and was very fair to the applicants. If you were given an interview it was because you had a serious shot at matching here (we don't interview as many people per spot as many other places). If they weren't it wasn't to say they weren't a good candidate or wouldn't be a good orthopedic surgeon the were just not percieved as a good fit for this program for whatever reason...again i think this benefits you the applicant in the long run as you don't want to go somewhere you may not fit...I truly believe there is a good place for everyone and that this place is definately is not the same for every applicant. each program is very unique and rotations are an excellent way to get a feel for that "fit" for both you and us. Good luck to you all. Hopefully this provides some insight.

Thank goodness at least some programs are not interviewing a huge # of applicants. Applause for the respectfulness and decency of your program.

Rotating and not getting an interview may be upsetting, but it's worse if you declined an interview where you had a great chance of getting in, to waste your time and money for a courtesy interview were things just didn't work out.

There are programs out there that take their luxury of interviewing too many people, and this is inconsiderate. It's frustrating because we may have to spend some $5000-10,000 interviewing at a large number of places and miss some of those where we stand a better chance.

What's the deal where the program that has 7 slots and interviews 110 people for it? This would be a major disappointment to see on interview day and that program should be viewed poorly.

I am curious, which program is this?

LIJ (long island jewish), is one of those programs that interview a crazy amount of students. This year, they interviewed only 2 days. I was on the 2nd day. I am not sure of an exact # but there was around 40-45 people on the 2nd day alone. I have no idea how many people were there the day before, but just guessing around 30... thats over 70 students for 2 spots. They should tell you those things. So keep that in mind.

Correction... LIJ has 3 spots. SO its 70 interviews for 3 spots... so thats much better odds isnt it?

Pittsburgh- I couldn't even begin to count how many people were there interview day, like jelly beans in a jar. I was chugged through my brief interview with Dr. Fu like a cheerio at a Kelloggs factory.
These guys must have interviewed 1/3 their applicants!



Then there are those I heard that rank a fraction of people they interview and dump the rest (ex Arizona, some community programs, sure there are others)- would rather take from the scramble pool if they go unmatched than take you.


WHy do programs do this? they search at great expense (affordable to them, not to u) for the "right fit", which is a load of crap. Soon Ortho will be a clone of identical people with some 'fit'. If your a genuine person who is NOT the typical clone, PLEASE HIDE IT and act the fit so you can get in, and we can at least see SOME diversity in ortho residencies. Besides, what can 2 hours tell about some for the next 5 years? I met many guys who were cool in 2 hours and turned out to be jerks within 2 weeks.

there were several places i contacted to find out how many they interview/what their policies are. Many said they are not allowed to give that information out. i needed to know because there were several interview conflicts, and we have to decide which to go to.

The FRIEDA database usually has information about number of applicants interviewed the previous year. On the places I interviewed, it seemed to be about right. Usually a little more than 10:1.

Many of the places I interviewed only rank about half of those interviewed. I'm not sure why (maybe they have to pay per rank just like we do), but it seems to be common practice.

good work asl!
I just briefed the stats.

According to those programs that do in fact volunteer how many they interviewed, many do seem accurate, but others are grossly inaccurate. So I'm not sure how much to believe from FREIDA.

just to throw some info out there. We have 2 residents per year and interview 25-30. These people are pretty heavily screened out of a pool of 250+ applicants so they are all pretty good and tough to differentiate from in the few hours you get to talk to them