I think it's absolutely hilarious how this spreadsheet tries to compare ERAS application/NRMP trends from other specialties, when no other specialty works at all the way Derm does behind the scenes when it comes to matching. Boy if you all knew the stories in the last 20 years. Don't get me wrong, the field is absolutely wonderful, but it's a very tight field, and the people in control of the specialty in terms of academic derm faculty aren't like academic faculty in other specialties. This is especially the case if you suddenly go unmatched. <- are you saying the unmatched people had it coming for them bc of faculty who tanked them? < It's more a comment on academic derm faculty than on M4 derm applicants themselves. My point is academic derm faculty have done a lot of shady & passive agressive shit (that Mt. Sinai Derm research fellowship example below is a good example of what I'm talking about) as well as making promises to med students that they'll match at a certain place and then those people magically match somewhere lower, or as you mention, blackballing (not ranked at all or ranked so low there is no way the person will match there) a student, although that doesn't happen as often, but can sometimes happen to derm research fellows. What I'm saying is that the reality of it all (no matter how many nice & wonderful things are said to your face and no matter how well you genuinely thought that you "connected" with a derm faculty member in research or at an audition rotation) comes to the surface, especially if you go unmatched, can be a very huge shock. It really makes you realize as a med student, that you can't necessarily fully trust even the best of derm faculty in what can be and/or feel like a very dog-eat-dog process. That's different from the approach of academic faculty in other specialties, even in the more competitive ones (i.e. ENT, Ortho, etc.)