post-interview calls and letters

What's the real deal with these calls and letters? I know so many stories of applicants that received these calls/letters, ranked those programs 1 or 2, and ended up matching at their 7th or 8th choice.

Rules 1 and 2 on the interview trail:
1. Trust no one.
2. Believe nothing

The take home message is, Take all these offers with a grain of salt. In short, don't go house hunting in the program's city until Match day

Although I sincerely believe that of the programs that contacted me they were all straight up with me about my chances of matching. Hey, call me naive.

Email from program director at Greenville Memorial "reaffirming their interest," whatever that is worth and means.

i was under the impression from the NRMP website that for either party to ask where the other will be ranked was a violation of the rules.

[url=http://http://www.nrmp.org/res_match/integrity.html]NRMP Website[/url]

A program director "guarantees" an applicant that he/she will rank the applicant within the program's quota, but only if the applicant will rank the program first on their rank order list.

Of course it is against the rules, but this does not mean that it doesn't happen. Many of the questions that are asked at interviews are against the rules too, but what are you going to do, not answer?
The programs (and you) can be vague enough to avoid a direct violation and still get the message across. Obviously no director is going to "guarantee" anything, but they can certainly "imply" a lot.
just my impression of the situation... :smokin: