Have we hurt ourselves? Too many applicants?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium

I think it probably hurts everybody in some way or another but certainly causes the most pain to those that out of necessity (i.e. low step, research year, couples match, deficit in application, etc.) must apply to a ton of programs to receive enough interviews to match. I don't believe it causes too much trouble to those with 250+ step scores.

I suppose the redeeming factor is that it is likely the same exact 700 people that are applying to all of these programs and ultimately you can't interview at every program. As more programs offer interviews they will trickle down from those with stellar applications, who have already filled their interview schedules and no longer need to interview at their back-ups, to those with solid stats but that don't stand out in a stack of 700. At least that is what I am hoping...
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www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24836166?rep...abstract&format=text

"The NRMP data from 1984 to 2011 supported our hypothesis that
intercandidate competition intensity for orthopedic PGY1 positions has not
increased over time. The misconception that orthopedics is becoming more
competitive likely arises from the increased number of applications submitted per
candidate and the resulting relative importance placed on objective criteria such
as United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 1 scores when programs select interview cohorts."

Eh, I wouldn't call it a misconception. While the overall number of people applying for positions may not have significantly increased the quality of those candidates and their credentials have certainly improved, making it more difficult to obtain a position, hence more competitive. If you look at charting outcomes in the match from 2011 to 2014 you can see the increase in scores. More people aren't applying because they aren't competitive enough to apply so the number of people in the pool stays the same but the quality of the pool has increased substantially.

Granted, your article stops at 2011 so its really hard to say what has happened in the last 3 years.

One way to stand out among 700 applications is to do an away rotation or otherwise have a good reason in your application to seem interested in their program.

I think that when a program gets 700 applicants, the challenge is trying to figure out who actually is interested vs who is applying to every single ortho program

Most residency programs including ours has a criteria of screens to whittle that list of 700 applicants to something more manageable. Then from there those applications are reviewed by about 12 different attending to see if you should be offered an interview. So the computer does much of the work, but perhaps the screen criteria would be less stringent if there weren't so many applications...who knows.