Not All is Lost: Career Options for Unmatched Plastic Surgery Applicants

Abstract

Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery • December 2022 identified several areas for improvement to the ACAPS standardized letter of recommendation form by surveying ACAPS faculty. Most notable was the movement toward use of percentiles for the attributes section. Perhaps moving toward a percentile format for overall rank would provide more evenly distributed and comparable data.The standardized letter of recommendation is highly used in the evaluation of applicants to plastic surgery residency and analyses into its patterns are important. Caution must be used when interpreting the overall ranking as the distribution is heavily skewed and strong biases exist between home and away program letters. Understanding trends in the standardized letter of recommendation form will be vital as it gains importance in the evaluation of applicants. Further investigation on ways to improve the implementation and design of the standardized letter of recommendation form is needed.

Reply: Impact of the Virtual Format on Plastic Surgery Residency and Fellowship Interviews: A National Cross-Sectional Study

“…4 Unfortunately, the number of interviews needed to secure an integrated plastic surgery residency position appears to be increasing; as such, we fear that the practice of interview hoarding will become more prevalent with future application cycles. 5 If this turns out to be true, interview hoarding will only be corrected with formal intervention by the American Council of Academic Plastic Surgeons in the form of interview capping. This measure, however, comes with its own set of issues related to its practicality and ethics.…”