Available online 16 May 2024

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The average number of residency applications and the potential for interview hoarding is increasing.

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There is a desire for interview caps among the majority of applicants to surgical specialties.

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On average respondents believed an application cap should consist of about 48 applications.

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On average respondents believed an interview cap should consist of about 16 interviews.

OBJECTIVE

With the advent of virtual interviews, the potential for interview hoarding by applicants became of greater concern due to lack of financial constraints associated with in-person interviewing. Simultaneously, the average number of applications submitted each year is rising. Currently there is no cap to the number of applications or interviews an applicant may complete when applying to residency, with the exception of ophthalmology with a cap of 15 interviews. No studies have assessed the applicants’ perspectives on an application or interview cap. We assessed the attitudes of surgical subspecialty applicants towards capping, which may be useful when considering innovations in residency selection.

DESIGN/SETTING/PARTICIPANTS

About 1841 applicants to the Johns Hopkins’ ophthalmology, urology, plastic surgery, and orthopedic surgery residency programs from the 2022-2023 cycle were invited to respond to a 22-item questionnaire. Statistical analyses of aggregate data were conducted using R.

RESULTS

Of the 776/1841 (42%) responses, 288 (40%) were in support of an application cap, while 455 (63%) were in support of an interview cap. Specialty (p < 0.001), gender (p < 0.001), taking a gap year (p = 0.02), medical school region (p = 0.04), and number of interviews accepted off of a waitlist (p = 0.01) were all significantly associated with a difference in opinion regarding an application cap. Specialty (p < 0.001), USMLE Step 1 score (p = 0.004), number of interviews (p < 0.001), and number of programs ranked (p < 0.001) were all significantly associated with a difference in opinion regarding an interview cap. Of those applicants who were in support of the respective caps they believed that on average a cap should consist of 48.1 (16.1) applications and 16.0 (8.0) interviews.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings highlight the desire for interview caps among the majority of applicants to surgical subspecialties and thus this innovation may be considered by other specialties in the era of virtual interviews.

Section snippetsINTRODUCTION

There has been a recent shift towards primarily virtual interviews since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, permanently changing the landscape of in-person interviews/tours/networking once used in candidacy evaluation for graduate medical education.1 The advent of virtual interviews has exacerbated the concerns related to interview hoarding by applicants,2 given the lack of financial and time constraints associated with virtual interviews.3 A study that compared the 2 different formats of

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A 22-item questionnaire was developed for email distribution to individuals who applied during the 2022-2023 match cycle. Previous research studying stakeholder perspectives on the use of caps in OBGYN informed the creation of our questionnaire.13 Potential participants included ophthalmology applicants to the Wilmer Eye Institute (615 total), urology applicants to the Brady Urological Institute (369 total), plastic surgery applicants to the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (341

Survey Respondents

There were 776 total responses (288 ophthalmology, 169 urology, 143 plastic surgery, 176 orthopedic surgery), equivalent to a 42% response rate. Detailed demographic information is displayed in Table 1 organized by the specialty applied to. Out of all respondents, 307 (40%) were female, most (49%) were White/Caucasian with the next most common races being Asian (27%) and Black/African American (7%); 9% identified as Hispanic/Latino; most (76%) graduated with an MD degree only; and respondents

CONCLUSIONS

The average number of applications submitted, and the significant concerns related to interview hoarding is a continually increasing phenomenon, especially with the recent implementation of virtual interviews.2,5 This raises the question of whether implementation of either an application or interview cap would be useful going forward, and if so, how do applicants feel about its utilization, as it would directly impact their future. Our findings highlight the desire for interview caps among the

REFERENCES (22)

American Academy of Ophthalmology, Association of University Professors of Ophthalmology. 2021 Advice for the...

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