How will you make your ROL?

Its not too hard to group them into broad pools, like top 4, middle, bottom, etc, but making a distinction b/t, say number 8 and 9 is tough. Probaly does not make too much of a difference the farther down you go. I had a tough time with 2-4. I knew where I liked the most, but I really could not decide on much difference b/t 2-4. Each person will have different criteria they weigh differently. Sometimes ties are decided by which geographic location you or your wife/husband liked. Everyone I talked to changed their list around a billion times. I would not loose to much sleep over deciding b/t programs lower on your list. I have not heard af anyone making a scoring system as formal as what you are talking about. Most people have the top few predetermined in their mind and the rest is a gut feeling type of call. You also can always flip a coin!
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I personally am going to rank them based on the reputation they have here on orthogate. Maybe do an informal poll.

jalby- are you the jalby from sdn days of yore? i remember a witty guy by that name... if that's you, you may remember GoodMonkey. that'd be me. i'm saying hey. nice to see ya.
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Hopefully you are joking. Ranking places based on their prestige and not on how you feel you would fit there could make for a long 5 years.

Some of the places with the "best rep" have been my least favorite. My top 2-3 are actually lesser known but for me better. I guess you could get down to rep after weighing almost every other criteria more heavily. People get "great" fellowships and have academic careers coming out of every single place I interview.

Come on...he was obviously joking. As much as I enjoy the friendly (most of the time) banter on this site, I don't give a damn what any of you think about where I should go, nor do I expect any of you care about what I would think.

I'm totally lost on the rank list thing. About two weeks ago, I thought I had a pretty good idea, but then I went on a string of great interview days, and now I have a group of 6 great places and don't know which to rank where. I guess that's a great thing about Ortho though, and a nice problem that we all have as applicants. Haven't found a bad place yet...just some that are in places I don't want to live.

rwbrhp29

Yes, the points thing is extremely nerdy, but what the hell else am I going to do over the next 4 weeks. It did make me carefully evaluate what characteristics I was looking for in a program and the location. Because I had already intuitively decided where I would rank everything, the points method didn't change much. If something didnt' work out the way I thought, I figured the points must be wrong and I just played around with them to make the programs fit where I thought they should. One program had so many more points compared to 2 others that I had intuitively ranked, that I moved it up, but otherwise the only reason to do it is to clarify what you think is important.

location and Gut.....i had a pre-rol prior to starting interviews and with 2 left, my list has not changed much.

I'll start by saying that my ROL is already certified...

I would say that location and GUT - stressing the GUT - would be the way to go (of course, there are many other factors to consider: spouse, children, housing needs, schools, communities, social scenes, etc.). I had a pre-interview ROL, and while - about halfway through - things didn't seem to change much, my second half interviews threw my ROL for a loop. In the end, I knew who my top two were, but it was hard to figure out which to put over the other. My 3-5 were by far the hardest - determining where I would prefer to go if my top two didn't come through. The bottom half/third/quarter is easier to work out, since I think many of us would rather rank all programs (unless you're interviewing at like 12 or 13+) than risk not matching, so even a program that isn't all that appealing will still make it onto the list. Fortunately, I haven't come across any "bad" programs that I would rather not rank than end up at.

As a joke, towards the end of interviews when all of us applicants were candidly discussing programs and ROL's, I suggested that to get a true gut feeling, sometime during the final rank week get drunk to put all of your inhibitions aside, and look at your ROL through "true" eyes. I [probably]won't be taking my own suggestion, but you never know... someone, somewhere out there, may think, "Hey... that's a good idea."
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