- Joined
- Jan 29, 2017
- Messages
- 16
- Reaction score
- 25
Hey, everyone! It's that time; time for the constant anxiety and intermittent nightmares about our rank lists. Everyone is going to generate this list completely differently, but I think we can all agree that, like patient care, it's an assessment that can be made only after consideration and integration of all subjective and objective factors. To deal with my frustration, I made a system that might prove helpful based on criteria I thought were most important to most people. It obviously won't work for everyone, and the purpose is really to put point values to different programs so that you can see how your heart/mind respond to those in defense of certain places. This just provides a framework to do that. Obviously feel free to adjust the relative weight of each thing, subtract things you don't care about, and add things you care about (e.g. research). Being proud of my decision, vibing with residents, and being in a cool place are massively important to me, so I weighted those more highly.
FIRST: ASSIGN QUASI-OBJECTIVE POINT VALUES TO EACH PROGRAM
PROGRAM/PRIDE
FIRST: ASSIGN QUASI-OBJECTIVE POINT VALUES TO EACH PROGRAM
PROGRAM/PRIDE
- Would you be proud to attend this place, both by your standards and the standards of others? Does it give you pride to say, “I am a resident at ***”?
- 2 points if yes. 0 points if no.
- Is this a solid program that will allow you to get where you want to get? Does it give you broad enough training to change your mind about your trajectory if you think that may happen?
- 2 points if yes. 0 points if no.
- Do you vibe well with the people?
- 4 points if with residents + another group (faculty, admin). 3 points if just the residents. 2 points if with about 50% of the residents. 1 point if just admin or faculty. 0 if you hated everyone (maybe don’t rank this place). (Also keep in mind that in med-peds we have the benefit of finding friends in the entire medicine and peds classes as well!).
- Do you like the location? Does it offer things to do by yourself outside of work if you had a day off that nobody else shared? What about things to do with other people? Would you feel pride about where you lived if someone you cared about came to visit?
- 3 points if yes. 1 point if it's adequate. 0 points if you don't care. -1 if you don't like it (opportunity to subtract more points later).
- Are there any aspects about the location that make it particularly undesirable (e.g. middle of nowhere), terrifying (e.g. high violent crime), or annoying (e.g. heavy snowfall for 6 months, super humid and gross) to you?
- -1 point if yes. 0 points if no.
- Is the cost of living affordable for your salary? Can you afford to live in a comfortable space that you won’t be miserable to come home to after working a 28-hour shift? Can you afford to do fun things when not at work?
- 1 point if very affordable. 0 points if you can make it work. -1 if it's crazy expensive.
- Can you readily hop on a plane to visit friends, family, or attend things like weddings and friend-reunions without paying a trillion dollars? OPTIONAL: Is this location drivable to a place you want to be frequently (near family, SO, etc.)?
- 0 points if not applicable, you don’t care about your family and friends, and/or are single or just hate everyone.
- 1 point if good airport availability, 2 additional points if reasonable driving distance to somewhere desirable.
- -3 points if it’s too far from people you want around you.
- Are there any other factors not mentioned above that you feel are intensely beneficial or cool about this place?
- 1 point for each. Add no more than 2.
- Are there any other factors that could potentially be annoying enough to make a difference to your happiness or success as a resident (e.g. truly terrible location, poor work-life balance, crappy EMR, have to learn 4 different EMRs, have to travel to multiple hospitals far away from each other, shifts too long, traffic, program deficiencies or requirements, super weird vibes)?
- -1 for each that could affect your happiness/success. Subtract no more than 3.
- Have you heard something weird about the program from one or more people you actually like and trust and want to be colleagues with?
- -1 if yes. 0 if you don't care what they think.
- Did you have “chemistry” with the interview day?
- 1 point if yes. 0 if no. (Because who knows if this even matters.)
- Create your list based on the numbers. For any 2 or more programs with the same score, rank them in order of desirability of location. This will be highly subjective but you’ll most likely know immediately.
- Then, look at each pair in tandem and assess their places in an isolated list of two. Start with 1 & 2. Feel each pair on Match Day, and think “I matched here instead of here.” How does it make you feel? If bad, switch the pair. Keep doing this the whole way down your list. 1 & 2, 2 & 3, 3 & 4, etc.
- Look at your completed list. Do you love it? Does it make sense? Do you hate it? If you hate it, realize this process is largely subjective and based on vibes for most people, stop trying to quantify desire, scrap this farce of a system, and let your heart make the decision.
Last edited:
