Real-time and historical recruitment data published ahead of resident match season can help radiology program directors limit their application and recruitment costs, but the same statistics are largely ignored by medical students themselves, a report published in Academic Radiology this month suggests.
Medical residency match isn’t just a stressful experience for potential applicants and their interviewers, first author Anna Rozenshtein, MD, MPH, and colleagues wrote—it’s also a pricey one. The average cost of an internal medicine training position falls somewhere in the range of $9,000, and a student interviewing for radiology residencies can expect to spend around $4,555 out of pocket.
“In the competitive matching market, radiology programs and applicants tread a thin line between misallocating resources by over-interviewing and risking match failure by under-interviewing,” Rozenshtein, of the department of radiology at Westchester Medical Center-New York Medical College, and co-authors wrote. “Existing evidence suggests that medical students apply to too many programs.”
In February of this year, the authors said, seniors sent out an average of 50 radiology applications.
“This is a problem, because excessive applications sap resources of applicants and programs alike,” they wrote.
Rozenshtein et al. sought to determine whether data published by the Electronic Resident Application Service in November could predict match outcomes for the following year, and whether that information is backed up by historical data published by the National Resident Matching Program. The NRMP publishes yearly match outcomes, including the number of unfilled radiology positions, average length of successful programs and applicant rank order lists, while the ERAS provides more real-time information about monthly program and applicant standings.
Using both the ERAS and NRMP, researchers focused on a ten-year period between 2007 and 2017, comparing application pool sizes, average number of applications per program, average number of applications per applicant, number of ranked applicants needed to fill each position and number of unfilled positions after the matching cycle.
The authors found the average number of applications per program reported by ERAS in November successfully predicted the minimum necessary recruitment costs and degree of success in the match as reported by the NRMP.
“In other words, the more applicants there are, the fewer needed to be interviewed and the fewer positions that remain unfilled,” Rozenshtein et al. wrote. “This means that radiology residency programs can use these two metrics in the fall ERAS updates to determine the resources needed for a successful match season.”
While that may be positive for residency programs themselves, the authors said, students don’t seem to see the same benefits. The number of applications submitted by students by November of the match season didn’t correlate with either current competitiveness in the field, prior year match outcomes or the number of radiology positions available. Rozenshtein et al. said the gap could be attributable to applicants making their initial decisions before ERAS data are available, or data being sidelined by expert guidance.
Still, as a whole, the researchers said, the study is good news for program directors who may want to make early tactical decisions in an unpredictable market.
“Real-time ERAS reports on applicant pool size and average number of applications per program early in the match season correlate with match outcomes and can be used by residency programs to decrease recruitment costs,” Rozenshtein and colleagues wrote. “At the same time, neither the real-time nor historical data impact radiology applicant behavior.”
After graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington with a bachelor’s in journalism, Anicka joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering cardiology. Close to her heart is long-form journalism, Pilot G-2 pens, dark chocolate and her dog Harper Lee.