After you have completed all of your interviews and reviewed
your impressions of all those programs, you are ready to complete
your rank ordered list (ROL). Applicants are advised to use an
organized method for noting their impressions about programs so
that these can be compared across similar categories of
information. Your list of program characteristics might include
such items as the following:
- Structure of program rotations
- Day-to-day schedule and call schedule
- Patient load of residents
- Involvement in patient care
- Where graduates go after graduation (in-state practice,
fellowships)
- Continuity of care
- Stability of the program (funding, staff)
- Whether current residents seem happy
- Whether there is adequate full-time faculty
- Whether faculty seem interested in teaching
- Whether current residents seem happy
- Quality of facilities
- Call rooms (resident sleeping-lounge areas)
- Passing rate on specialty board exam of program
graduates
- Real number of beds and hospital census (occupied
beds)
- Food costs while on duty
- Ancillary services—availability and support to
residents
- Nursing staff
- Medical library
- Medical informatics
- Moonlighting policy (working elsewhere part-time)
- Conferences and lectures available (Quality of teaching
offered to residents)
- Other perks (parking, availability and cost of housing in
the area, # facilities residents train in)
- Research opportunities
Your ultimate ranking of a program should also be based on
your intuitive (gut) feeling about the program after visiting it.
No matter how good something looks on paper, there is sometimes
an inner feeling that tells you there is a problem or it just
doesn�t feel good, at least for you. On the other hand, a program
may look poor on paper but something tells you that you would
like being there. Including these emotional reactions as well as
the "objective" factors, arrive at an overall score for each
program. You can then decide which programs to rank higher and
which to rank lower. The scores at this point are really just
guides. Those programs that receive the higher scores should
definitely be ranked, as should those with mid-range scores.
Think very seriously about the programs with the lowest scores
before you decide whether to include and rank them at all,
however. Remember, you are legally obligated to take the position
you match into, so don't rank a program at all if it would make
you miserable to have to work there for a number of years.
Residency training is stressful enough even when you are happy in
the position, so don't ask for even more by including programs
that you utterly disliked. Murphy's law, an old American saying,
says you will surely get what you want the least.