How Altus Suite Supports Your Residency Application
Final-year trainees in undergraduate medicine have a lot on their plate, from balancing clinical rotations to preparing materials to support their residency — which includes filling out applications, interviews, and audition rotations. Of course, we can’t forget about The Match, officially known as The National Resident Matching Program (NRMP). Competition is fierce, which has led to “application fever”. In the last decade we have seen applications from a single undergraduate medical education (UME) graduate double, resulting in an overwhelming number of applications for each program to sift through.
Just in case nobody has told you this already: It’s completely reasonable to be intimidated by The Match. It’s typical for applicants to feel pressure to stand out and find ways to support their residency match. However, apart from your academic qualifications, showcasing the professionalism and interpersonal skills you’ve honed in medical school is important to match with a residency program that values those qualities. This is why last cycle Acuity Insights piloted a new Acuity Insights for Graduate Medical Education (GME) applicants, which includes our Casper, Snapshot, and Duet assessments.
Let’s take a look at each of these assessments, and the results from our 2021 pilot.
Casper
What is Casper?
Casper is the the assessment that started it all. It’s an open-response situational judgment test (SJT) that evaluates for ten aspects of social intelligence and professionalism, including empathy, collaboration, and resilience.
What did GME applicants think of Casper during the 2021 GME pilot?
Results from the 2021 GME pilot included feedback from Casper test takers, of whom 76% completed at least 3 survey questions at the end of their assessment. Acuity uses this feedback to continue building its applicant communications and test prep resources to further improve the applicant experience for future cycles. Test takers rated their overall test experience with a median score of 7 out of 10. When asked how appropriate Casper test content was based on their cultural background and beliefs, applicants said the content was quite appropriate.
Snapshot
What is Snapshot?
Snapshot is our structured one-way video interview that evaluates applicants’ communication, self-reflection, and motivation, offering applicants the opportunity to express these skills through verbal communication. Unlike Casper, Snapshot responses are rated by programs. Programs often use Snapshot after applications have been screened, and usually right before interviews or final offers.
What did GME applicants think of Snapshot during the 2021 GME pilot?
Applicants felt that Snapshot allowed them to portray their communication and motivation moderately well. Of the 98% of applicants that chose to complete the exit survey, 78% rated their experience with Snapshot as fair or good.
Duet
What is Duet?
Duet is a value-alignment assessment that helps programs find applicants with values and priorities that align with the programs’ own missions, values, learning opportunities, and more.
What did GME applicants think of Duet during the 2021 GME pilot?
Over 400 applicants rated their experience with Duet, with 76% indicating that it was easy to use Duet’s rating scale. 97% of respondents felt that the
order of priorities for each category generated by Duet matched or somewhat
matched what they were expecting.
Acuity will continue to use the feedback provided by applicants for each of the assessments to improve their experience in future cycles.
Watch our applicant webinar, where you’ll learn all about how Acuity Insights Assessments for GME applicants can support your residency application!
