Which point of mine were you referring to? I know that with ENT a lot of people still go unmatched because they didn't want to rank places in the country where they didn't want to live, let alone did they even apply broadly enough to those places. If you are desperate enough to match ENT with a 238, you can do it if you apply to the places literally no one would want to go to. Some people care more about being an ENT than anything else in life and are willing to sacrifice their living situation/location in America for half a decade to make that come true.
Hm, now I'm trying to figure out if my stats understanding is poor, because I feel like I'm reading alot of conflicting information on the Oto 2016 Charting the Match page.
So yeah, the average matched is a 248 STEP 1. But I've also read on here to use the number of contiguous ranks as a more accurate predictor because the median and mean are not the same for a skewed sample, which the STEP scores probably are.
So then using that you find that the average # of ranked places is 13 for a matched individual an 6 for a non-matched, with those ranking >16 places having a 77% chance of matching. So although the overall match percent is 89% overall, should I be reading it as more like 77%? What contributes to that discrepancy?
Furthermore, when you go to the chart with the percent matching vs. number of contiguous ranks, 13, which is the mean for matched individuals, gives you about a 90% chance to match, which is confusing to me considering those ranking >16 have a 77% chance.
Basically the stats/match/graphs are confusing to me, and if anyone understands stats better and could explain, would appreciate.
[You can probably match ENT but it won't be in some amazing food, diverse culturally, big coastal city. It will probably be in some undesirable porch rocking fly over state. But if being an ENT is more important to you than life itself, a 238 will not keep you from matching by any means.
Yeah, what a terrible prospect it would be to train in one of those "porch rocking fly over states." Choosing a different specialty that you like less than ENT (and will practice for the rest of your career) is a much better option than just 5 years of training outside of a big coastal city.
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Well it depends on how much you love Oto over other specialties. Obviously if its your passion then yeah, do it wherever you have to. But at the same point if you could be happy doing something else and geography is also important, then those are factors that come into play when creating a rank list, choosing where to do away rotations, etc.
