How well did our students match? A peer-validated quantitative assessment of medical school match success: the match quality score

Abstract

Background: Assessment of an individual medical school’s performance in the match is an important outcome of the educational program. Unfortunately, student rank lists are not public. A method to objectively gauge the quality of an institution’s match regardless of student preference has not been described in the literature.Objective: This manuscript serves to determine the relative weights of included variables and derive a statistically valid Match Quality Score (MQS).Design: Between 2016 and 2018, student affairs experts derived from a national cohort validated the MQS by scoring factitious mini-match lists that covered three variables: student’s Match Status, specialty Competitiveness, and residency program Reputation.Results: Of the variables assessed, only Match Status and Competitiveness were found to be significant. We derived the resulting coefficients for the Match Quality Score (MQS) as: [3.74A (# students successfully matched) + 2.34B (# students matching into their initial specialty in the SOAP process) + 1.77C (# students who secured a SOAP position in another specialty) + 0.26D (# students matching into a specialty where there are more applicants than spots)]/Total # students.Conclusions: The MQS is a potentially useful educational outcome measurement for US medical schools and may be considered as an outcome measure for continuous quality improvement to tailor future institutional changes to training, mentoring, and student-advising programs.

National Resident Matching Program Performance Among US MD and DO Seniors in the Early Single Accreditation Graduate Medical Education Era

“…To increase the sample power, specialties were stratified into three competitiveness cohorts: low-competitiveness (LC), moderate-competitiveness (MC), and high-competitiveness (HC). These stratifications were created by using the ratio of US senior applications who matched successfully into their preferred specialty to the number of positions available in said specialty based on the calculated Match Quality Score which has been published previously [ 7 , 11 ] (Table 1 ).…”

“…Finally, we pooled candidates into competitiveness groups and used programs ranked as a proxy for interview offers, subjecting the study to design bias. This organization was performed in concordance with previous studies to follow precedent and allow longitudinal comparisons across time [7,11].…”

“…"The Match" [6]. All candidates must excel in their academic work, national licensing examinations (NLEs), research, and extracurriculars; but there is a growing emphasis on holistic evaluation [7][8][9][10]. Considering that a majority of US DO medical schools do not have affiliated hospital systems, osteopathic medical students' access to mentorship and research resources may be limited compared to their allopathic colleagues [11].…”

Impact of Medical Student Participation in Student-Run Clinics on Education, Residency Selection, and Patient Care: A Review of Selected Articles

“…Prior published literature support both conclusions [ 29 , 31 ], and the reasons for the discrepancies are not entirely clear. One potential hypothesis is that students who are interested in highly competitive specialties such as neurological surgery, plastic surgery, dermatology, otolaryngology, radiation oncology, orthopedic surgery, ophthalmology, and urology [ 32 ] may be more likely to engage in extracurricular activities. According to the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) Charting Outcomes, a biennial descriptive report highlighting the characteristics of students’ performance in the NRMP match, students who successfully match into highly competitive specialties tend to engage in more extracurricular activities and demonstrate higher academic performance [ 33 , 34 ].…”

Computer-based test (CBT) and OSCE scores predict residency matching and National Board assessment results in Japan

“…The result of matching between medical students and a residency program is regarded as an important educational outcome [ 10 , 11 ]. Chakraborti and colleague tried to assess the educational quality of medical training quantitatively by using a match quality score [ 10 ]. Chang et al developed a novel evaluation method of undergraduate medical education [ 11 ].…”