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What Is Duet and How Can It Help My Application?

Whether you’re a pre-med student looking forward to medical school, or a med student looking at different residency options, the concept of program “fit” is bound to come up in your search. How do you know if a medical program or residency is right for you, and what exactly does that mean?

We’re excited to share that Duet, our latest assessment, takes the guesswork out of finding the right program “fit”. Instead of vague answers, Duet offers an evidence-based assessment that supports finding the right match between medical programs and students.

All About the Duet Assessment

Duet is a value-alignment assessment that allows medical and residency programs to better align with applicants who share similar values and priorities. We developed this evidence-based assessment to help match programs with applicants that align with their values—whether it’s the program’s teaching style, its research opportunities or culture.

How Does Duet Work?

Programs and applicants complete the same Duet assessment and then their results are compared and evaluated for alignment. On the program side, multiple faculty and non-faculty stakeholders within the program will complete the same assessment. Then a profile is generated which clearly reflects the program’s values and priorities—based on the important perspectives from all those individuals. It’s important to note that Duet is program-specific, which means that rather than looking at an entire institution’s culture and typical program features, Duet gets an up-close and personal look at the direct program features, culture and values of that specific program. If an applicant applies to several programs that require Duet, they only complete the assessment once, and these results are then compared separately to each program.

What Are These Values?

When we created the Duet assessment we wanted to make sure that we were evaluating the program characteristics that differentiate one program from another.

Duet is an evidence-based assessment because we used a modified delphi research technique and literature review to build a common consensus amongst identified experts, including medical education faculty and admissions stakeholders. What this means is that experts weighed-in to help establish the assessment’s categories and characteristics—to ensure that we’re looking at the right characteristics of each program.

For undergraduate medical education (UME), the three categories (each with 7 characteristics) are:

  • Teaching and Learning (e.g., training for competitive residency)
  • Mission and Culture (e.g., excellence in research)
  • Program Features (e.g., size of cohort)

For graduate medical education (GME), the three categories (each with 7 characteristics) are:

  • Culture (e.g., diverse culture)
  • Clinical Experience (e.g., individual supervision)
  • Academics (e.g., research opportunities)

Please note that the categories for UME and GME applicants are different because the applicants are looking for different things when it comes to program “fit”. In addition, the characteristics that fall within each category will also be different.

What Makes Duet Unique?

There’s no other value alignment assessment out there that is evidence-based, takes only 15-minutes to complete, is cost-effective and program-specific like Duet. Duet offers answers to the program “fit” question in a way that is concrete and objective. Our assessment is also unique because it assesses applicants’ alignment with multiple programs—not just one program; when an applicant completes the assessment, their profile is compared against the multiple programs to which the applicant applied, based on the assessment’s standardized 3 categories and 21 characteristics. The applicant cannot change their answers for different programs, which allows for an honest and authentic assessment.

How Will Duet Help My Application?

Duet’s science-backed assessment will help programs find applicants that align with their values based on their overall Duet alignment scores and sub-category scores. With Duet we’re looking to the future, beyond the initial acceptance phase. Duet was created to help support the applicant’s success by empowering programs to consider applicants most aligned with their values, from program opportunities to the program’s mission and values, learning style and much more. By focusing on that alignment, programs can find applicants who would more likely thrive in the learning environment they provide, helping to set up those students for success in the future.

Get more details on Duet by watching our video and checking out our assessment page!