Unsuccessful Applicants Research Articles

A prospective study of character strengths as predictors of selection into the Australian army special force.

For entry into the Australian Army Special Forces (SF), applicants undergo a barrage of strenuous physical and psychological assessments. Despite this screening, subsequent attrition rates in the first weeks of initial selection courses are typically high, and entry testing results have had limited success for predicting who will complete these courses. An SF applicant's character is often thought to be a decisive factor; however, this claim has remained untested. Accordingly, SF applicants (N = 115) were asked to rank themselves on 24 character strengths at the start of the selection process. Successful applicants (n =18) assigned their top ranks to team worker (72%), integrity (67%), and persistence (50%). Applicants (n = 31) who did not include any of those three strengths in their top ranks all failed to complete the selection process. In contrast, successful versus unsuccessful applicants did not discernibly differ on physical assessments and a written test. Results are discussed with respect to their implications for enhancing the assessment of SF applicants.

Correction: Past performance, peer review, and project selection. Research Evaluation 18 (2009) Peter Van den Besselaar, Loet Leydesdorff

The data used in van den Besselaar & Leydesdorff (2009) were based on several assumptions. Recently, when reanalyzing the data for another project, an error in the dataset was found (and reported in van den Besselaar 2013). The 2009 study is based on automatic mapping of author names between the grant application data and the Web of Science Social Science Citation Index data. This was done using the family name and first initial for publications with a Netherlands address. Variations of how names are spelt, leading to under- and over-estimation, were accepted because the dataset was very large and we expected the occurrence of different name variants to be not systematically distributed over the applicants. However, the results of the computer matching were not checked manually at the time, and when reanalyzing the data following publication of the article it was found that in some cases the title (PhD, Dr, MSc, LLM, etc.) had inadvertently not been removed from the data. In these cases the first initial was taken from the title rather than the name. This error affected 3.8% of successful applicants and 5.2% of unsuccessful applicants. We recollected all data manually, and in addition to removing the title error, the error coming from the above-mentioned under- and over-estimation was removed too, e.g., applicants using different initials in applications compared to publications. Reanalyzing suggests that the title error and the error based on the name variants did not influence the outcomes of the 2009 study. For instance, our 2009 paper argued that the best performing non-successful applicants performed at least as well in our analysis as the successful ones. These results hold for the new set of corrected data both for the whole set, and for the two largest programmes and individual disciplines we analysed separately.

False hope for Canadians who study medicine abroad

Every year many Canadians go abroad for medical training. About three-quarters of them are unsuccessful applicants to Canadian medical schools. Currently, almost 3600 Canadians are studying medicine at schools in the United Kingdom, Australia, Poland, the Caribbean and elsewhere. Most hope

Attributes of successfully matched versus unmatched obstetrics and gynecology fellowship applicants

We sought to determine the attributes of successful and unsuccessful fellowship applicants of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology Inc (ABOG)-approved fellowship programs and toidentify salient differences between subspecialty applicants. Anonymous questionnaires were completed by obstetrics and gynecology fellowship applicants using a web-based survey after match day of 2012. Fellowship applicant practices were evaluated and included importance of prematch preparations, interview process, networking practices, and postmatch reflections. A total of 327 fellowship applicants applying to programs accredited by the ABOG were surveyed, and 200 completed the survey (61% response rate). A comparison between prematch educational preparations pursued by applicants showed that matched applicants were more likely to come from allopathic medical schools (94%), attain membership in Alpha Omega Alpha and/or Phi Beta Kappa (27%), and receive a letter of recommendation from a nationally known subspecialist (77%) than unmatched applicants (P=.03, .005, and .007, respectively). Applicants to reproductive endocrinology and infertility were more likely than female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery to be members of academic honor societies (P= .008). Research publication was common among matched subspecialist applicants, with over half publishing 1-3 peer-reviewed manuscripts prior to matching. Applicants to gynecologic oncology did more visiting electives than any other specialty applicants (P < .001). Successful obstetrics and gynecology fellowship applicants have superior prematch preparations, strong letters of recommendation from leaders in their field of interest, and multiple research publications. These data will guide applicants to a critical self-analysis before deciding to apply.

The Elite Illusion: Achievement Effects at Boston and New York Exam Schools

Parents gauge school quality in part by the level of student achievement and a school's racial mix. The importance of school characteristics in the housing market can be seen in the jump in house prices at school district boundaries where peer characteristics change. The question of whether schools with more attractive peers are really better in a value-added sense remains open, however. This paper uses a fuzzy regression-discontinuity design to evaluate the causal effects of peer characteristics. Our design exploits admissions cutoffs for Boston and New York City's heavily over-subscribed exam schools. Successful applicants near admissions cutoffs for the least selective of these schools move from schools with scores near the bottom of the state SAT score distribution to a school with scores near the median. Successful applicants near admissions cutoffs for the most selective of these schools move from above-average schools to schools with students drawn from the extreme upper tail. Exam school students can also expect to study with fewer nonwhite classmates than unsuccessful applicants. Our estimates suggest that the marked changes in peer characteristics at exam school admissions cutoffs have little causal effect on test scores or college quality.

The Doris Duke Clinical Scientist Development Award

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Clinical Scientist Development Award (CSDA) supports early-career physician scientists in their transition to independent research funding. The authors aimed to analyze the characteristics associated with success in CSDA competitions, determine whether attainment of a CSDA is associated with receiving subsequent research funding, and assess whether alumni remain in research. In 2011, the authors tested for associations between gender, age, race/ethnicity, academic degree, National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding rank of the applicant's institution, and success in CSDA competitions. They compared NIH R01 grant attainment, defined as the percentage of individuals who received at least one R01 grant, between CSDA alumni and highly ranked but unsuccessful CSDA applicants (1998-2007). Finally, the authors surveyed alumni to learn more about their professional activities. Demographic factors were not predictors of success in CSDA competitions; academic degree and funding rank of the applicant's institution, however, were. A greater percentage of CSDA alumni than nonalumni received at least one R01 grant (62% [74/120] versus 42% [44/105]). For CSDA alumni who were 10 or more years from the start of their award, their median percent effort toward research activities was 68%. The factors associated with success in a CSDA competition included a combined clinical and doctoral research degree and affiliation with a well-funded institution. More alumni received NIH independent research funding than those who applied but did not receive the award. Thus, the CSDA is associated with physicians establishing independent and recognized research careers.

Miserable Migrants? Natural Experiment Evidence on International Migration and Objective and Subjective Well-Being

We compare successful and unsuccessful applicants to a migration lottery in order to examine the impact of migration on objective and subjective well-being. The results show that international migration brings large improvements in objective well-being. Impacts on subjective well-being are complex, with mental health improving but happiness declining, self-rated welfare rising if viewed retrospectively but static if viewed experimentally, self-rated social respect rising retrospectively but falling experimentally and subjective income adequacy rising. We further show that these changes would not be predicted from cross-sectional regressions on the correlates of subjective well-being in either Tonga or New Zealand.

Characterizing researchers to study research funding agency impacts: The case of the European Research Council's Starting Grants

We describe the development and testing of a framework to characterize researchers individually (a profile) and in aggregate (as types) at the first stage, baseline step of a controlled, two-stage study of public research funding agency impacts. Our framework characterizes researcher attitudes and attributes, and conditions and opportunities experienced, addressing: ?demographic? factors; researcher ?approach?; and ?standing? (organizational career, knowledge community career, and local and national research environment aspects). This integrated demographic-approach-standing (DAS) framework is tested using a survey of 184 applicants to the inaugural, 2007 call for the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants (StG). Successful applicants are characterized to match-pair with a control group of quality-screened unsuccessful applicants. Given the inherent difficulty to identify in advance the ?frontier? researchers the ERC aims to fund with its StG, we characterize ?frontier-potential? factors that might lead researchers later to become regarded as frontier. We develop researcher types using several of our framework elements: researcher intellectual field mobility; novelty and risk-taking; independence; output productivity; and local research workplace standing. We find a variety of grantee types, but primarily not yet independent researchers whose ?standing? could be impacted upon by the early-career StG scheme. Lastly, we suggest impact pathways between types we could capture following a second stage survey, and discuss limitations to our framework including revising it to characterize better local research environment aspects.

Unsuccessful Dietetic Internship Applicants: A Descriptive Survey

We examined the demographic characteristics of applicants who applied and were unsuccessful in securing an internship position, what these applicants did afterward in their efforts to obtain an internship position, and which career paths they pursued. We also searched for any differences in eligibility between applicants who had not obtained an internship position and those who eventually were successful. A 68-item online survey was administered. The study sample (n=84) was relatively homogeneous: female (99%), heterosexual (98%), Caucasian (70%), Canadian-born (75%), having English as a first language (73%), multilingual (40%), and having completed a previous degree (29%). Mean self-reported cumulative grade point average (3.35) exceeded the minimum (3.0) required by most Ontario internship programs. Over 25% eventually secured an internship position. Applicants who rated their packages strong in community nutrition were less successful in attaining an internship. Little difference in qualification was found between those who were eventually successful and not-yet-successful applicants. Unsuccessful applicants met academic and other requirements for admission to dietetic internship programs in Ontario. Insufficient training opportunities, costs associated with internship, and competition may be contributing to a loss of human potential in dietetics.

Filling holes in the safety net? Material hardship and subjective well-being among disability benefit applicants and recipients after the 1996 welfare reform

Some of the rapid recent growth in disability income receipt in the United States is attributable to single mothers post-welfare reform. Yet, we know little about how disability benefit receipt affects the economic well-being of single mother families, or how unsuccessful disability applicants fare. We compare disability recipients to unsuccessful applicants and those who never applied among current and former welfare recipients, and examine how application and receipt affect material hardships and subjective measures of well-being. We then examine whether alternative ways of making ends meet mediate differences in well-being. After controlling for alternative sources of support, no significant differences in overall actual hardships or difficulty living on current income remained between the three groups. However, even after controlling for these strategies, unsuccessful applicants were significantly more likely to report that they expected hardships in the next two months. Our results suggest a pervasive level of economic insecurity among unsuccessful applicants.

NATURAL EXPERIMENT EVIDENCE ON THE EFFECT OF MIGRATION ON BLOOD PRESSURE AND HYPERTENSION

Over 200 million people worldwide live outside their country of birth and typically experience large gains in material well-being by moving to where wages are higher. But, the effect of this migration on other dimensions of well-being such as health are less clear and existing evidence is ambiguous because of potential for self-selection bias. In this paper, we use a natural experiment, comparing successful and unsuccessful applicants to a migration lottery to experimentally estimate the impact of migration on measured blood pressure and hypertension. Hypertension is a leading global health problem, as well as being an important health measure that responds quickly to migration. We use various econometric estimators to form bounds on the treatment effects because there appears to be selective non-compliance in the natural experiment. Even with these bounds, the results suggest significant and persistent increases in blood pressure and hypertension, which are likely to have implications for future health budgets given recent increases in developing to developed country migration.

Miserable Migrants? Natural Experiment Evidence on International Migration and Objective and Subjective Well-Being

Over 200 million people worldwide live outside their country of birth and typically experience large gains in material well-being by moving to where incomes are higher. But effects of migration on subjective well-being are less clear, with some studies suggesting that migrants are miserable in their new locations. Observational studies are potentially biased by the self-selection of migrants so a natural experiment is used to compare successful and unsuccessful applicants to a migration lottery in order to experimentally estimate the impact of migration on objective and subjective well-being. The results show that international migration brings large improvements in objective well-being, in terms of incomes and expenditures. Impacts on subjective well-being are complex, with mental health improving but happiness declining, self-rated welfare rising if viewed retrospectively but static if viewed experimentally, self-rated social respect rising retrospectively but falling experimentally and subjective income adequacy rising. We further show that these changes would not be predicted from cross-sectional regressions on the correlates of subjective well-being in either Tonga or New Zealand. More broadly, our results highlight the difficulties of measuring changes in subjective well-being when reference frames change, as likely occurs with migration.

Long-term outcomes of disability benefits in US veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder.

Most studies examining the clinical impact of disability benefits have compared aid recipients with people who never applied for benefits. Such practices may bias findings against recipients because disability applicants tend to be much sicker than never-applicants. Furthermore, these studies ignore the outcomes of denied claimants. To examine long-term outcomes associated with receiving or not receiving Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) disability benefits for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the most common mental disorder for which veterans seek such benefits. Comparison of outcomes between successful and unsuccessful applicants for VA disability payments. Because we could not randomize the receipt of benefits, we used exact matching by propensity scores to control for potential baseline differences. We examined clinical outcomes approximately 10 years later. Stratified, nationally representative cohort of 3337 veterans who applied for VA PTSD disability benefits between January 1, 1994, and December 31, 1998. Assessment on validated survey measures of PTSD; work, role, social, and physical functioning; employment; and poverty. We compared outcomes with earlier scores. Homelessness and mortality were assessed using administrative data. Of still-living cohort members, 85.1% returned usable surveys. Symptoms of PTSD were elevated in both groups. After adjustment, awardees had more severe PTSD symptoms than denied claimants but were nonetheless more likely to have had a meaningful symptom reduction since their last assessment (-6.1 vs -4.4; SE, 0.1; P = .01). Both groups had meaningful improvements of similar magnitude in work, role, and social functioning (-0.15 vs -0.19; SE, 0.01; P = .94), but functioning remained poor nonetheless. Comparing awardees with denied claimants after adjustment, 13.2% vs 19.0% were employed (P = .11); 15.2% vs 44.8% reported poverty (P < .001); 12.0% vs 20.0% had been homeless (P = .02); and 10.4% vs 9.7% had died (P = .66). Regardless of claim outcome, veterans who apply for PTSD disability benefits are highly impaired. However, receiving PTSD benefits was associated with clinically meaningful reductions in PTSD symptoms and less poverty and homelessness.

Psychological Hardiness Predicts Admission Into Norwegian Military Officer Schools

We examined the role of hardiness in predicting admission into Norwegian Military Officer Schools with data from officer applicants (N = 1,111) who completed a questionnaire containing dispositional hardiness measures (Bartone, 1995) on the first week of a three-week selection period. Successful applicants (M = 36.76) scored significantly higher in hardiness than unsuccessful applicants (M = 35.55, t[1091.44] = −4.64, p < .001, Cohen's d = .28). Furthermore, results of logistic regression analysis showed that, after controlling for gender, age, and social desirability responding, hardiness significantly predicted admission into Military Officer Schools (odds ratio = 1.065).

The Independent Plastic Surgery Match

The independent plastic surgery match is an extremely competitive process that remains the most common training model for residents. The purpose of this study was to analyze the candidates and the overall process, both quantitative and qualitatively. Between 2006 and 2008, an anonymous 25-question online survey was sent to all applicants of the match. Questions regarding demographics, the match process, financial burden, and qualitative issues were all included. Information from the American Board of Plastic Surgery and The San Francisco Match was also used to evaluate the application and distribution process. A total of 137 applicants responded (29.2% response rate). Of the responders, 62.5% were aged 30 to 34 years, 77.2% male, 66.2% white, 94.1% in general surgery residencies, and 66.2% at an academic setting, with 39.7% at an institution that also had a plastic surgery residency program. For successful matchers, an average of 13.6 invitations were awarded, 10.02 interviews were attended, and they matched to number 2.52 on their list. Of all, 64.5% spent more than $4000 on the process, whereas 9.2% spent more than $10,000. Applicants receiving 1 to 4, 5 to 9, and 10 or more interviews had successful match rates of 47.2%, 62.9%, and 92.9%, respectively. In all, 45% of unsuccessful applicants stated that the stress on themselves and their family was the number one reason to not reapply. Candidates applying to the independent plastic surgery match need to be aware of the competitiveness and financial commitment the process requires.

Experiences of the fairness of recruitment from unsuccessful applicants in the field of nursing

The purpose of this study was to describe the experiences of unsuccessful applicants for permanent nursing positions with regard to the fairness of the recruitment process. The international shortage of recruits in nursing and the rapidly increasing number of nurses retiring implies new challenges for recruitment. The nurses' experiences of fairness affect the availability of nurses and the attractiveness of the organization. The recruitment process is approached through traditional organizational justice theories. The material was gathered from thematic interviews with 12 nurses who had applied for a permanent nursing position but were not selected. The material was analysed using theory-driven content analysis. The nurses felt differently about the result of the recruitment process. The experience of distributive justice alone was not significant in terms of the general sense of justice, since other dimensions of justice compensated for it. The effect of applicants' experiences of fair treatment in the recruitment process affected their future behaviour positively, negatively or not at all. and implications for nursing management It is crucial to recognize applicants' experiences of the fairness of the recruitment process, because unsuccessful applicants constitute a pool of potential new employees. Furthermore, applicants with different experiences cannot be seen as a homogenous group. For example, internal applicants with negative experiences pose challenges for nursing management with regard to retaining them in the organization.

Land Recycling, Community Revitalization, and Distributive Politics: An Analysis of EPA Brownfields Program Support

This article examines social, economic, and political factors influencing the distribution of resources to local governments under the EPA Brownfields Program, an innovative federal effort to encourage the remediation and redevelopment of contaminated properties. Signed into law in 2002, the Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act provided the program with a congressional mandate, new tools to promote reuse such as liability protections, and increased funding up to a level of $250 million per year. This article contributes to research on environmental regulatory reform with an analysis of successful and unsuccessful local government applicants for EPA Brownfields Program support between 2003 and 2007. Building on prior research, we develop a series of expectations and an empirical model, and estimate the influence of program priorities, government and civic capacity, interest group pressures, and institutional politics. Results point to significant relationships between program priorities and award patterns. Contrary both to EPA's explicit commitments to equity and to analysis of pre‐2003 award patterns, however, we find negative correlations between the proportions of local populations that are nonwhite or low‐income and the likelihood of receiving an award. In addition, better‐resourced governments and several dimensions of political representation show strong associations with the likelihood of winning awards. We conclude by discussing implications.

Natural Experiment Evidence on the Effect of Migration on Blood Pressure and Hypertension

Over 200 million people live outside their country of birth and experience large gains in material well-being by moving to where wages are higher. But the effect of this migration on health is less clear and existing evidence is ambiguous because of the potential for self-selection bias. In this paper, we use a natural experiment, comparing successful and unsuccessful applicants to a migration lottery to experimentally estimate the impact of migration on measured blood pressure and hypertension. Hypertension is a leading global health problem, as well as being an important health measure that responds quickly to migration. We use various econometric estimators to form bounds on the treatment effects since there appears to be selective non-compliance in the natural experiment. Even with these bounds the results suggest significant and persistent increases in blood pressure and hypertension, which have implications for future health budgets given the recent worldwide increases in immigration.

Medical school admissions

Re: “Mission impossible: the quest for medical school.” [1][1] If the author is suggesting that more medical student slots are required, I would agree. If the author is suggesting that successful non-GTA applicants to these two medical schools are not as “bright” as unsuccessful applicants

National Board Certification and Teachers' Career Paths: Does NBPTS Certification Influence How Long Teachers Remain in the Profession and Where They Teach?

Investment in the certification of teachers by the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) represents a significant policy initiative for the nation's public school teachers. This article investigates the potential impact of NBPTS certification on teachers' career paths. Using a competing risks model on data from North Carolina public schools, we find evidence that those teachers who apply to NBPTS are more likely to be mobile than are nonapplicants, particularly after they have gone through the certification process. Regression discontinuity estimates suggest that National Board–certified teachers are more likely than unsuccessful applicants to leave the North Carolina public school system and that this appears to result from certified teachers exiting high-minority schools, particularly Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools.