Unfilled Programs?

Georgetown: 1 spot open of 3
LIJ: 1 spot open of 3
Palmetto SC: 2 spots open of 2
Wisconsin: 3 spots open of 5

what the heck is going on here? does anyone have any insight into how this happened? for those of you scrambling, good luck...those are some pretty decent spots!!

Lets just say that you know you matched, and LIJ was on your list?

This means that you matched at one of your higher choices otherwise they wouldn't have unfilled spots.

Unless, of course, they didn?t rank you on their list at all?

Right???

All this detective work... :roll smile:

That's exactly what I figured too freeheel. Wisconsin having 3 empties is kinda weird to me because everyone at the interview seemed to loved the place and the rol discussion shows that a lot of people ranked the place pretty high...maybe they didn't rank too many candidates? Oh well...I guess we'll all know pretty soon but it's driving me crazy. I cleaned up my entire house trying to stay busy so I won't think about it...guess I better hit the gym and tire myself out and fall asleep until thursday!

The Madison "situation" is a result of a clerical error, which is unfortunately out of our hands at this point. 300 applicants, 50 interviews, 40 offers, but only five offers were entered into the computer. We matched two of those.

We have three spots that are probably filled by the time you read this. theres probably a secretary position open though

I've got the lowdown on why Madison (Univ of Wisconsin) didn't match. Word is that their secretary person or whomever entered their rank list only submitted their top 5 choices and conveniently forgot to enter the rest of their choices for candidates and thus they only filled 2 / 5. Too bad for those who ranked UW their top but were at the bottom of UW's list (spots >6). My heart goes out to you all and to everyone who didn't match. Good luck with the scramble. :smokin:

I gotta admit that this error sucks my pasty arse. I have Wisconsin ranked highly and was putting my $ on matching there if I had to guess. Now I may miss out on that great program because I was slightly higher than #5 on their list. Also for the 2 matching there they are thrown in with 3 people who scrambled in and, in my opinion, have a higher liklihood of tool factor or not fitting in with the personality of the program because of a rush match. Do those that scramble fly to programs and interview or just send their info and a possible chat over the phone? This whole fiasco definitely has changed several pods destiny, hopefully for the better.
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The Wisconsin issue is definitely a technical snafu. Three scramblers are going to find themselves in an awesome program.

I absolutely agree, it's inconceivable that something this important wouldn't be double checked by the man in charge. 4 times a day might be a more accurate estimate of how many times I checked my rank list right before the deadline.

This sucks for the 45 other guys and gals that wasted their time and money by interviewing there, sucks for the 3 people who would have matched there but ended up at a school they ranked lower, and sucks for the 2 people who match there on Thursday - takes some of the joy out of matching there when your program makes a fool out of themselves two days before match.

By the way, I interviewed at Madison and really liked it. Great residents, attendings and town, and it seems like they get a very solid education. It's a damn shame that the residents and this year's applicants have to suffer because of this stupid mistake. Somehow we all managed to get our rank lists in correctly.
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maybe it's just me ...
it's interesting that all 40 ranked(or so they thought) by wisc matched.
but we don't know that they did. what i mean is that the people who are going to get those spots are likely anyone they meant to rank, but didn't and were unmatched yesterday. that is unless they all matched.
big piece, how do you know that you aren't 1 of the 2 who matched (unless you didn't match)?
WTF was up with georgetown going in 1 hour after not answering a phone?
and you can't even get a fax thru. it's 2003, lets try email or eras people. the scramble for ortho just plain sucks

still bitter

Everything you have heard about Madison is unfortunately true. Over 40 applicants were on the "precertified" ROL. Somehow, someway only 5 applicants came up as "certified." We realize what broad sweeping implications this has--affecting many applicants and many programs.
We can assure everyone that the moment we learned of the "situation" (1101am) every attempt was made to rectify it with the NRMP. This was unsuccessful. To all of you affected (either directly or indirectly) we are truly sorry as this affects you, us, and the entire match process.
I understand your anger and disbelief, as we as a program have similar emotions. Look for an official statement from our program in the near future. Good luck to all of you tomorrow.

boyd lumsden
University of Wisconsin
PGY-5 and Chief Resident

Thomas Zdeblick

g-love
I was fortunate to match and for all I know I may be one of the two who matched at Madison but in my limited contact with the program my read was I was ranked highly but not to match, just a gut feel. I will tell you that if I match at Madison or below on my list match day will be a bit tainted and I'm sure many of us will say at some point, "What if?"

Actually, now that I think about it, unless you match at your No. 1 program this F-up may have affected you through a domino effect of one of those 3 bumping someone out of another program who bumped somebody else out of another and so on down the road. So unless we match at our No. 1, there will always be that little question of what if?

I am interested in how the how scramble works and if you got any feedback or tried to match at Madison. I still believe Wisconsin is a stellar program and may be more than a little jealous of those scrambling in. Call me a @#$%^&*, I am whatever you say I am.

Luck to all you studs and studettes out there, looking forward to seeing some of you on a 5 year basis.
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big,
i wish i would have known you were interested in scrambling. i would have traded you your spot for my day of bs. ha ha
how it works 1130 am you get the list of unfilled spots. you are allowed to contact programs at 1200. you call a number where the voice mail is on or is busy because about 400 people are calling. you finally get through and they say fax a cv or your entire file. 15 min later you hear that the spot has been filled and your fax hasn't gone through because, again 400 people are faxing that same number. then you start contacting surgery programs who need $6/hour slave labor, while they pay some nurse practitioner (sp) 70K to work 1/3 of what you do.about $35/hr. if you contact less competitive specialties they offer you a job onthe spot when they see your numbers.
that's my take atleast.
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Regarding spots early at Wisconsin. THis absolutely did not happen. We spent the first hour or longer confirming that this had happened and in numerous discussions with the NRMP. Obviously, these discussions were unsuccessful in changing the outcome.
We then began sifting through hundreds of applications and phone calls and eventually filled the three spots by about 230pm. THis is what happened--I was there.

Good luck to everyone today.


Boyd Lumsden

For all those interested. Here is a copy of the letter that has been sent to all of the applicants that should have been on our certified rank list. This was sent By Dr. Zdeblick 3 days ago.


I wanted to take this time to explain the situation at the University of Wisconsin for the Orthopedic Surgery match. Due to an error in the web site and a misunderstanding between the NRMP and the University of Wisconsin only 5 names were listed on the certified rank list for the orthopedic surgery match for 2003. This resulted in us matching 2 residents and filling the other 3 spots with residents outside of the match. The moment I found out about this error I made every attempt through the NRMP to rectify this. I considered violating the match agreement and calling all of those on our match list, and I strongly encouraged the NRMP to re-run the orthopedic portion of the match, but I was unsuccessful in these endeavors. I take complete responsibility for this mistake and misunderstanding between ourselves and the NRMP. We will have an extremely strong residency year. The 5 residents coming to the University of Wisconsin this July are all exceptional. My heart goes out to all of you that had us high on your rank list and were hoping to participate in our residency. I am very sorry for this situation. Rest assured, it will never happen again.


Sincerely,




Thomas A. Zdeblick, M.D.
A. A. McBeath Professor and Chairman
Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation

regarding the previous posts about being misinformed by a secretary at 1140ET. This is a misunderstanding. We(UW) were not aware of being unfilled until 1101am (CST, 1201pm ET). We were alerted to our vacancies after the very large barrage of phone calls starting at around 1101 am CST. I do not know for sure, but when glove and orthopal called (earlier than 1100 am CST and before we even knew we had spots) the secretary they spoke to was speaking of our PGY-2 and Pgy-3 spots being filled. We expanded this year to 5 residents a year and in order to fill these PGY-2 and PGY-3 spots we had been interviewing many applicants for these spots. Of course we filled these spots outside the match. We filled them and finalized this On Monday 3/17/03. I feel that it was these spots the secretary was referring to as "being filled"-since they were.
sorry for any misunderstanding.

Boyd Lumsden

Congrats to those who matched, and keep your head up to those who didn't. i had the unfortunate experience of not matching initially. (w/ good credentials). I did a gsurg prelim at a place w/ an ortho program (not a great one) and worked my butt off. you have to be the goto guy, the guy people want on their team. i got feedback that they wanted me at the home program but started the interview process all over again and was offered a position outside the match in January. It can be done and will be if you set your mind to it. just get over the set back and come back stronger! :pimp:

Anyone has any info on Georgetown? Last year they had about twenty-some-odd number of people going into ortho among the 4th years. Was the number much lower this year or did they rank only a few?

about the same # as last year. Heard they matched a spot outside of the match that wasn't really outside the match

Georgetown did have the usual 20 suspects...apparently on interview day however they only interviewed 15 applicants. Rumor had it that they were holding two spots specifically for G-town students and 1 maybe for an outsider...interview is basically going out with the residents and seeing how well you fit in...as the program has only three residents per year they really want to make sure they don't get a bad egg so they want someone they feel they know pretty well.....Its a great program with excellent people....I can't believe they didn't fill but maybe they only ranked the 15 on interview day for that last spot and they didn't get any...or didn't rank enough of their own students for that last spot....or one of their guaranteed spot people could have screwed them...not a good idea i don't think with all the people that their chairman and program director know....well those are my ideas of what might have happened...it'd be interesting to find out what really happened....it definately didnt fill because it was a bad program because there are a lot worse out there that did fill....

thanks...I think that all these programs that go unfilled are just flukes when you consider the hundreds of people who go unmatched in ortho.