This year the ENT match will allow applicants to send a signal to five residency programs as part of their application. These signals are supposed to allow applicants to tell a program that he/she is giving the program his/her top consideration. A concern among med students is will non-signaled programs even consider their application.
The information at the heart of this question is how many of the interview spots will be reserved for those that use one of their signals and how many non-signaled spots will be available.
Below are some stats, assumptions and an estimate of the ratio of signaled to non-signaled interview spots.
Applicant Side Stats
Number of applicants ~= 500
Number os signals per applicant = 5
Program Side Stats
Number of positions ~= 350
Number of interview days =299
Number of interviews per day ~= 15-30
Number of interviews ~= 4500-9000
Assume all signals will generate a guaranteed interview. This will overestimate the number of interview spots reserved for signalers.
Estimated Signaled Interview Spots = 2500
So at maximum, a little more than 50% of interview spots will be reserved for signalers. On the low end, it may be closer to 20%. This doesn’t answer the question of whether signaling will go into a program’s decision on how to rank the applicants they interview, but it does give some reassurance that programs will interview at least as many applicants that send them a signal as don’t.
In my opinion, the signaling system will give programs information they previously didn’t have about applicants. This may help them offer interview spots to applicants that are the most highly interested in their program. In the long term, this may even cut down on the number of applications per applicant but
However for this year’s cohort of applicants, I suspect that the interview number vs match rate curve will be very similar to past years. ENT is still a highly competitive field to match into. I am still advising medical students to apply broadly and take as many interviews as they can.
—sam