This may be an un-answerable question...

I'm surprised that undergraduate GPA is a factor at all.

Personal appearance is like a personal statement. Being like everyone else doesn't help you, but being different (in a bad way) will majorly hurt you.

Just to throw some statistics in there, there is no statistical significance between items 1 and 22. All you can state is that perhaps there are some trends. If the confidence interval of one value sits within the confidence interval of another value, then the two values are not statistically significant. So, 7.88 - 1.71 = 6.17 and 3.99 + 2.48 = 6.47. Therefore you really shouldn't say that Board Score is so much more important than medical school reputation. The statistics and the article do not support this statement, even if the table attempts to make you think that.

The bottom line for me when I hear about someone getting lots of interviews and not matching is that it relates to their personality or some "vibe" they are giving off when they interview. I have run into several in my time of interviewing from the other side. Also, Dirschl from UNC wrote a nice couple of articles on how to select residents. I assume they didn't lie to us when they told us during interviews that everyone who has ever interviewed there has matched. Whatever their criteria is (they have a complete scoring system... look up the article under his name), it appears to have some correlation with matching long-term.

In the end, there are lots of factors out there. Sometimes people are accidentally missed. Sometimes people are just not very interesting in person or wouldn't "fit in". Sometimes you just have to face the music that you aren't competitive with other applicants. Sometimes you are fighting biases about your background (good or bad), education, or location. There usually isn't just one issue.

hrm.. well, despite that jbjs article.. med school reputation plays big into it.

There is an inherent bias in that statistic.. it's based on importance overall, but not for 'groupings' of candidates. For instance, it does not reflect the degree of board score.

ie.. there's very little difference between a 270 and a 250, as far as an application is concerned. Whereas, there's a huge difference between a 230 and a 250.. same point differential, but everything is relative.

When you are applying for competitive programs, everyone is in the same boat.. they all have high board scores, all have high clinical grades, top ranked in the class, have the research, etc..

They all meet the check list requirements for that JBJS article... so now what's left? Who 'fits in' ? Well, that goes with personality, and of course, your pedigree. Some programs weight each one of these differently. It depends on what arena you apply in.

We all like to be idealistic and think these things don't make a difference, but the most minute of details make a HUGE difference. Sure, it may be 1 or 2 ranks.. but that is all the world of a difference. Even how you comb your hair that day on interview can have an effect.

Just put yourself in the interviewers shoes.. they see like 60 people in a day... how on earth are they going to remember who you are? We all look alike, we all have great grades, we all did research, we all have something *interesting* on our CV.. now what?? shoe size? lol

I'm a resident. I have been in their shoes, and have seen the rank meetings.

Everyone has these things, but to varying degrees. Some have very high board scores, some have lots of publications/presentations, some have great extracurricular activities, some are the whole package. In spite of what you think, not all aplicants are equal. Some just make a better impreesion on interview day for whatever reason. And some programs place higher value on different things (I.E. higher board scores vs Med school name.)

I don't mean this in an offensive way, but in every thread on the subject, you make a comment about how much med school plays a role. However, your opinion is obviously skewed in your posts because you want to place the blame of not matching last year on your school and not on yourself. Yes, there is a chance someone ruled you out due to school, but more than likely there was another factor involved. You have no better idea of how much school plays a role than any other applicant. You have not sat on selection comittees like many other posters here have. And the fact still remains that many applicants from lesser schools match over their paper equivalents from bigger name schools. I don't think you should be persuading anyone to attend a school based solely on reputation.

School name can also work against you. After I didn't match the first time, I was able to get some feedback, and one of the community programs said I dropped down their rank list because of my pedigree. They figured I wouldn't be happy at a non-university program.

Programs are looking for the best fit, whatever that means for them...

Y'all are silly if you don't think medical school name matters. OF COURSE IT DOES. Face it, some people are in the club, and some are not. That's the way the world works. Log on to some of the top residency programs, look at their current residents, and you will see that by and large, most come from the same 10 schools or so.

I don't think anybody said that.