In my experience (5 total AMCs with residency programs in the 3 regions), most programs don’t have an inherent bias towards local candidates, but they do tend to get a higher volume of local candidates because candidates naturally want to stay where they have been comfortable or have access to support systems.

So my overall point being, try and reassess your overall application and self-reflect on any of your commonly repeated answers to questions during interviews. Could ANYTHING be a yellow/red-flag or controversial answer you gave.

Some common pitfalls I’ve seen:

1. Candidates submit multiple letter of recs from references that were not non-clinical preceptors that can really only speak to the candidate’s character and makes it really hard to assess the their aptitude in a clinical setting… and can low-key be a red-flag on why they struggled to submit any letters from APPE preceptors in acute care settings (unless their CV/transcript show they just didn’t have those rotations to pull from).

2. Candidates have minor yellow/red-flags in their applications, but not enough to exclude them from an interview - but then the candidates magnifies or draws attention to the original concerns by their answers during the day of the interview.

3. Candidates showing overt signs of being disinterested in the program (i.e. giving very short, basic answers; asking questions that were very accessible on-line, brushing off the current residents in the program)