Matching into an Orthopedic Residency: Which Application Components Correlate with Final Rank List Order?

To determine if any of the unique elements of the applications of medical students who were granted interviews to an orthopedic residency program correlate to the program's final rank order list of candidate residents.

Eight domains of the standard residency application were considered as independent variables for 36 applicants. Personal, identifying information was removed from the application material within each domain, thus blinding the application domains for 5 core faculty members from the program to review and rank independently. These 8 domain rank lists were then compared to the program's final rank list order to determine the correlation of each domain with the final rank list order.

Academic medical center.

Applicants to a university-based orthopedic surgery residency program who were granted interviews in the 2016 academic year.

Two domains of the application correlated with the final rank list order: interview and personal statement. None of the other domains had a significant correlation with the final rank list order. Interobserver variability among the faculty members was high for the rankings of the different domains.

Interview and personal statement were the only domains within the application that had correlation with the final rank list for an orthopedic residency program. A better understanding of how these 2 components affect the rank list may provide opportunity for process improvements.