This post is intended to clear up any confusion that you may have about how The Match works. The Match is the process that matches 4th year medical students with their residency position for the next 3-7 years. Before we get into the nitty gritty about the match...let's discuss the steps that occur before The Match. To you this might sound like common knowledge, but I have a lot of people ask me how many years of school I have gone through etc...so I figured that I would just lay it out there for all to know.
The basic layout:
1. 4 years of undergraduate college education
2. 4 years of medical school
3. 3 - 7 years of residency (dependent on the specialty)
To break down medical school a little further, it is split into 2 parts: the first 2 years are mainly spent in the classroom where students learn by didactic lectures while years 3 & 4 are spent in hospitals and clinics where medical students learn directly through patient care.
Match Day occurs in the spring of the 4th year of medical school. The Match is a super confusing process that no one really understands but the goal is to "match" graduating medical students into a training program in the field of their choice. AKA 4th year medical students need a job...and the Match does just that (well hopefully).
So the way the process works....
In the 3rd year of medical school (amongst all of the craziness of trying to learn all the things and trying to develop your professional demeanor), students are tasked with deciding what field of medicine they want to practice for the rest of their life. This includes things like internal medicine, family medicine, general surgery, obstetrics and gynecology etc....you get it. So once a student decides what field they want to enter, they start boosting their resume to fit the qualities that line up with success in matching into that field...whether it be research, volunteer experience, global work etc.
Come September of the 4th year of med school, it is time to begin applying for residency. This process is done on an online forum called ERAS (Electronic Residency Application Service). From this one site, students simply (ha!) upload their application materials (resume, extracurriculars, board examination scores, and med school grades) and click on programs that they would like to apply to throughout the country. There are fees according to how many programs you apply to. More programs = more money.
On a specified day in mid-September, programs are all granted access to applicants' materials and they hand-pick medical students that they would like to offer an invitation to interview. The invitations are sent out and the students are constantly refreshing their emails at all hours of the day to see if they have received invitations (or rejections :( ).
After several weeks to months, all invitations are sent out and students fly all over the country to interview at the programs where they accepted interview offers. At the end of this "interview season", programs and students begin compiling lists of one another...
For example: if a program interviewed 100 students, they will rank these students 1 through 100. Similarly, if a student interviewed at 12 different programs, they will rank these programs 1 through 12. THEN THIS IS WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS....
To totally complicate things, both students and programs have the option to "not rank" a program (or applicant) that they interviewed. So if I interviewed at 12 programs and I only liked 10 of them, I have the option to only rank those programs that I liked 1 through 10. That way I have NO CHANCE of matching at the programs that I did not like. The programs have the ability to do the same (not rank applicants that they do not want to train).
The rank lists need to be finalized by mid February and then on this nerve-wracking day in March...MATCH DAY happens. Match Day has grown to be more of a "match week", as Match Day always occurs on a Friday but on the Monday of that week, students find out whether or not they matched. This happens via email. A letter is sent stating "congratulations you have matched", or the student receives the message that everyone dreads and loses sleep over...they didn't match.
Students and their loved ones gather together for a ceremony that will determine their residency placements. To torture students just a little bit extra (as though this whole process wasn't a sufficient amount of torture)...they have everyone gather a few hours before finding out where they have matched. The room is filled with high energy and students reuniting, wondering where they will be moving!
Then when the time comes and all of the results are in...students are handed an envelope that holds their job placement for the next 3-7 years. All at once, the envelopes are opened! You get your result...and within a couple of months, off you go!
Post-opening o' the envelope smiles!
My med school besties and I...all matched into obstetrics and gynecology!
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