Applicants' perceptions of psychiatric residency training programs

The authors report the results of a survey of senior medical students who matched to a PGY-1 position in psychiatry. With a 64% response rate, the authors found the following: 1) senior medical students were generally satisfied with the program that they plan to attend; 2) the students utilized nonprogrammatic features heavily in their decision making; and 3) there appeared to be subgroups of students defined by demographic (i.e., gender and age) and decision-making properties (i.e., time of decision) that choose programs with fundamentally different aims in mind.