By Maureen Ayers Looby
If you've ever known someone who graduated from medical school, you've probably heard of "The Match." It is the process that all med school graduates must go through in order to place into a residency. It's more than just an application, though. Here's a NYTimes article about it.
To contrast it with other applications -
When you apply to college/graduate/medical school, you're allowed to apply to as many places (or as few) as you want, and you can also get in to as many as accept you. So, if you find out you got into a school, you can hold your spot at that school until you hear from the ones you wanted to go even more, and then drop your application from the first one. The Match does NOT work that way. In The Match, you only get into ONE PROGRAM, or in other words, every person is matched to one position. (It's sort of how the sorority rush works, as opposed to how the fraternity rush works, from my understanding)
The good part to doing it this way: everyone finds out in March, and you have a couple of months to get things in order if you're going to move, etc (as opposed to med school, where people sometimes get in from the wait list the week before school starts!). The bad part: it is extremely stressful since you only get ONE CHANCE to do it right. What this means for med students is that even though you might love a certain program, and they might really like you, there is no guarantee that you'll get placed in that program, so you are forced to apply at many other programs. And when I say apply, I also mean travel to and spend a day and a half doing an interview. So you spend a pretty penny on applying and interviewing. But there's no way around it, it's just what everyone has to do.
If you're doing a really competitive specialty, you have to apply to a lot of programs, because you'll want to put more places on your Rank List (some of my friends applied to 40, 50, or more programs!). And keep in mind that these are often all over the country, since there might be only one or two programs in an entire state (for example, MN only has two Ob/Gyn residency programs -- the U and Mayo).
So it starts in September, you submit your application and wait for the interview offers to roll in. As you start to hear back, you buy plane tickets, book hotels, arrange to take time off from rotations, and keep crossing your fingers to hear back from your top choice programs. Interviews typically start in November and are done by the end of January. For those couple of months, life is hectic and intense. But also fun! You get to visit new cities, meet new people, and usually you even get a free meal or two out of the deal. You ask tons of questions and take notes, and try to keep track of which programs had which different features. Typically you try to get a good feel of the current residents to see if they're truly happy to be there, and you also want to know if you'd fit in with them.
Heading out to my first interview
Once interviews are all over, the Rank List comes. Every program makes a list of the candidates they interviewed, and they put them in a list of who they'd like to have (and in what particular order). Every applicant makes his or her own list, from their top choice program down to their I'd-rather-go-there-than-not-go-anywhere choice. Then the lists all go into a big computer algorithm with everyone else in the country, and this whole process ends with Match Day.
Match Day is the third Friday in March, and at noon Eastern time, fourth year med students all over the country (and the world, for that matter, since many international doctors want to train at residency programs in the US) take a collective breath and open the envelope that tells them their future!!! Some programs make the students read their envelope on a stage in front of their whole class -- SCARY!!!!
At the U, everyone gets their envelopes at the same time but can open them whenever they want, in front of whomever they want, like Columbia, seen here:
At Johns Hopkins, they have everyone open their envelope at the same time:
I will leave you with these videos for now. Hopefully I will be rejoicing on March 16!
Up Next: What I learned on my Dermatology rotation
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