Two More Days for D&D Digital Rearranging!

The official end of "online reordering," or rearranging our D&D Digital matching internship choices is on Monday, March 26th by 11:59 pm CST (or 8:59 pm PST). See the Spring 2012 timeline here.

I am still unsure of my final internship choices, and I hope to finalize my decision soon. How you rank your internships is a huge deciding factor on whether and where you get accepted, and I hope that you will get accepted to your best choice! :)

I was talking to a co-worker about the low rate of applicants getting matched to a program, and we were discussing the benefit of non-interview internship programs releasing applicant info, either their highly ranked applicants or "discarded" applicants, to their applicants. Wouldn't it be great to know that you didn't stand a chance in certain programs you applied for, so you can rank the internships you are most likely to get into higher? I think that would greatly increase the match rate, because there are many resulting programs with open spots that are unfilled. Unfortunately, only two of my internships require interviews, so I am unsure of how well I rank in the other four internships I applied for.

I am currently comparing my applied internships forwards and backwards to finalize my priority of possible matches.

What are your decision criteria for ranking your internships?

- Program focus
- Length of program
- Location
- Types of rotations
- Available rotation sites
- # Hrs spent in each set of rotations
- Compatibility with director through contact (e-mail, open house, phone call, interview)
- Cost (cost of program, available stipend, cost of living, transportation)

I feel like applying to these internships is so much harder than applying to college! Just knowing that you need to choose the right programs which will help expose you to all the different areas of dietetics and help you grow as a dietitian is pretty challenging. I feel that the most important thing is you are enthusiastic about what the program has to offer; you can deal with the other decisions, like how am I going to pay for this?, later. This is serious professional training, a giant step that separates us from nutritionists to dietitians. I really hope that we will get matched to good programs this round. :)

Good luck with your internship rankings!