Effect of application score strategy on interviews offered to postgraduate year 1 pharmacy residency applicants

Residency programs may need to spend a large amount of time on the application review process in order to invite the best candidates for interviews. By using a different scoring strategy, this process could be made more efficient while still resulting in selection of the most appropriate candidates to interview. The objective of this study was to explore hypothetical scoring strategies for past residency applicants and to determine the percentage of these applicants that would have received an interview offer compared with the program's standard scoring strategy.

Two years of residency applications to a postgraduate year 1 (PGY1) program providing the majority of clinical experience in ambulatory care were analyzed. Four models were explored: 1) standard model (original method); 2) simplified model (derived from statistical methods); 3) intuition model (criteria thought to best exemplify program success); and 4) objective model (criteria easy to objectively record, e.g., grade point average). All 3 new models were compared with the standard model to determine the percentage of candidates who would have received an interview if their applications had been scored according to the new model.

A total of 110 applications were reviewed (42 interviews offered). After a multivariable analysis, academics, leadership, interest in ambulatory care, and professionalism were included in the simplified model, which predicted 81% of the interviews offered through the standard model. The intuition and objective models predicted 71% and 48% of interviews offered through the standard model, respectively.

Models scoring only 4 of the initial 12 criteria would have likely predicted 71% to 81% of original interview offers. Residency programs should consider periodically reviewing their application review processes to determine areas for improved efficiency.