Ranking of Resident Applicants on the Match List – Does it Correlate with Their Final Ranking on the Core Competencies?

Abstract

Determining which medical students will be quality residents is an annual question that challenges residency faculty. Analyzing both objective factors (such as grades and standardized testing) and subjective factors (such as recommendations, essay quality and personality) are involved in determining how good a candidate a given student is. Prior to the Match, residencies rank each applicant on their list for submission to the National Residency Match Program (NRMP). The final rank list scores of medical students who applied to, and were accepted by, the Joan C Edward School of Medicine’s (JCESOM) Family Medicine residency program between the years of 2005 to 2011 were analyzed to determine if there was any correlation between the order in which the students who entered the program were ranked during the Match process, and the order in which these same students (now residents) were ranked on their final scores (just before graduation, three years later) on the Core Clinical Competencies. Furthermore, the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) Part 1 and Part 2 scores were also compared to their final scores on the Core Clinical Competencies to determine their significance. Using the Pearson Correlation Coefficient, it was determined that there was a statistically significant correlation (0.621; 95% confidence interval 0.39 to 0.78) between the order that the residents were listed on the rank list and their order on the final evaluation. No such correlation was found for USMLE Part 1 (-0.13; 95% confidence interval -0.42 to 0.19) or USMLE Part 2 (-0.26; 95% confidence interval -0.53 to 0.054). This result shows that the process used by the Family Medicine Residency at JCESOM to rank prospective residents does correlate with the final evaluations of these same residents three years later.