Once you are done with the interviews, you will have a fairly good idea of how you liked each place, city and program. You can then sit down and make the ROL. This is in fact your ‘wish list’. The good news is that the matching process works in favor of the candidate. The following link will explain how the matching process actually works - http://www.nrmp.org/res_match/algorithms.html
But to put it simply, it will try to match you at your first choice and if the residency program has ranked you at all, you will match there. If your first choice does not work out, the computer moves down to the second choice and so on. It keeps moving down till you have matched. Hence, your ROL should not be governed by the ‘I will definitely take you’ impression that most program directors give, but by whether you want to go there at all or not.
You can go about making the ROL in two ways:
1) Make a table with the things that matter to you in a residency... (program standing in academics and research, attitude towards residents, city, presence of friends or relatives, visa offered, weather, social life etc.) And then grade various programs according to that. Then, rank them according to the scores you have come up with.
2) The second way is really simple. Sit, meditate, and go according to your ‘gut’ feeling.
Generally people put all the programs that they interviewed at, on the ROL (max of fifteen) since they fear going unmatched. In specialties like Surgery, ENT, Ophthalmology, and with couple matching this might be a very prudent thing to do Eight to ten places is a reasonable number.
Website: https://services.nrmp.org/R3/Home/Login/Login.cfm
Note: This article has been derived from "Roadmap to Residency" authored by AKU graduates, with permission from few of the authors. Name of the original author, has purposely not been mentioned on request of one of the authors, for privacy reasons. If you are the original author of this article and want your name to be mentioned or wish this article to be modified/ removed from this website, please contact us and we would be more than happy to entertain your request. We fully respect your privacy, acknowledge your efforts put in authoring this article and appreciate your hard work involved in it.